[AT] new duties

Tue Jul 4 08:07:19 PDT 2017

That's a great story Jon. It's funny where people will store tractors.  I have a neighbor who stored his tractor  in smoke house which was a good quarter of a mile away from his house.  Said he enjoyed the walk.

We did plastiguage the bearings and had shims to work with.   Pulling the sleeves was the hardest part.  Speaking of,  I left my sleeve puller in his shop.   It was a very stout homemade job a friend of mine sold me.  I really liked it.  On my last trip, when I was helping him clean up from the rebuild, I couldn't find it.   I never found another I like anywhere near as much.  I haven't pulled sleeves in 15 years so I don't need it and probably never will.  Paul Bazetta - another list member - came down for a visit and helped with a Ford *N rebuild I was doing for another friend.  That was early 2000s.  That was the last sleeves I pulled.   They are dry sleeves if I remember right. 

Spencer Yost

> On Jul 4, 2017, at 8:04 AM, John Hall <jtchall at nc.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> Spencer, I doubt in todays farm economy one could justify a building 
> like that, a pre-ordered metal building would be much cheaper. I could 
> fill it full of bales every year and doubt I could ever come close to 
> covering the cost of a wood barn.
> 
> Regarding the Case. A lady gave it to my father. How could you go wrong 
> with an offer like that? Well here is how. The tractor was halfway up a 
> hill in a cinderblock building. It had been there so long one of the 
> rims was eaten up by calcium chloride. We hired the local Deere dealer 
> to haul it home, but first we had to scale the hillside and drag it 
> down. I say scale becasue it was so steep the 4020 Deere couldn't make 
> it up the hill in reverse without a running start. Undoubtedly one of 
> the strangest locations to build a shed, did I mention it overlooked a 
> river? Anyway, we got it in and got it running. Must have been smoking 
> bad so dad put in a set of rings. I believe we ordered them and gaskets 
> from Central Tractor--don't think they are around any longer.  Engine 
> uses babbit rods and all the shims were removed, so I flat filed the 
> caps to tighten things up a bit. No we didn't use plastigauge or 
> anything else, just stuck it back together. 25 years and a few hundred 
> hours later it ain't knocking or smoking. The radiator leaked bad so we 
> went to Fitts Salvage in Cascade Va and got another. Also got a rear rim 
> off a Farmall--made a little different but bolted right up.
> 
> The fuel tank had 2 compartments. It was leaking between the two so we 
> somehow hacked away the gas starting portion. so we could fiberglass or 
> somehow repair the leak. Somehow it has held all this time. I know, 
> quite a butcher job on our part but nobody around here then or now would 
> put any money into one of these machines. The front tires were 
> practically new, although old--made by FISK. The rear tires were shot. 
> Helped a buddy put a set on the rear of his Deere A he was restoring and 
> he gave the old ones to dad. Now those are dry rotten and coming apart. 
> Been keeping an eye out for another CHEAP used set, no luck so far. I 
> can't see putting $500 in tires on a tractor that would sell for $400. 
> Some time later the magneto went kaput. Case mags can be a little 
> pricey, so the guy at the mag shop told me unless it was a perfect 
> restoration, he would just run aftermarket/another brand. So we put on a 
> H4 magneto--no modifications required. I must say this is the fastest 
> cranking tractor here. Drove it for years with a bad spot in the starter 
> gear that got worse/larger every time we cut the engine off. I finally 
> told dad enough was enough and ordered one. Built a couple "legs" to 
> hold the engine while we split the machine. Worked well I might add.
> 
> I need to pull the disc brakes and clean them up. A couple years ago the 
> AT List helped me figure out how to salvage the brakes on my Deere 
> combine. Somebody came up with the idea of buying a dedicated toaster 
> oven, putting the brake discs in a pan of speedi-dri and baking them for 
> an hour. In the meantime, the parts that couldn't easily be remachined , 
> I ground down any perimeter ridges with a small disc in a Dremel. Did 
> likewise to the transmission surfaces. After perimeter ridges were gone 
> I hand sanded with coarse paper where the discs would run. If needed I 
> cut out the grooves on the discs themselves. The center pcs were taken 
> to work and put on a surface grinder. They had warped quite a bit 
> actually, took an hour to grind them back in our our wet grinder. Would 
> have took 3x's as long using a manual grinder. Anyway, if it will stop a 
> combine, it ought to stop this tractor.
> 
> Anyway, thats a little story on the machine. One other note, everybody 
> that learns to drive it has trouble with the gears---It shifts 
> left/right instead of front/back. And then there is the stomping the 
> left brake thinking its the clutch pedal.
> 
> Spencer, glad to hear your daughter is OK. Amazing how we can suddenly 
> become allergic to stuff. A 60 year old guy I work with suddenly became 
> allergic to bee stings a couple years ago.
> 
> John Hall
> 
> 
>> On 7/3/2017 7:09 PM, Spencer Yost wrote:
>> First off: great picture John!  Wish I had a barn like that; but boy does it take money to build something like that now, even with sawmill lumber.  My dream and my pocketbook disagreed, so my barn is quite a bit smaller with a lot less headroom in the hay mow.
>> 
>> I have never driven one of these Cases, but I did rebuild the engine for one. It was for a fellow who used to be a list member back in the 90s. This is before wrote I wrote the books or anything. I haven't talked with him in probably close to 10 years but even 10 years ago he said it was still running like a top. I could not imagine driving that thing. Looks like more work than I wanted to handle.   The last time I was up there we were still doing the 15 minute warm-up and cooldown's for the head bolts and I never drove it.
>> 
>> I bring it up because there is an interesting story attached. They had horses, so I brought my daughter to ride horses with his wife and children on one of my visits.  My daughter had ridden horses many, many times before and was an accomplished rider at eight years old already. But for some reason on that trip she developed a deadly allergy to horses.  She was a quarter-mile away from the barn when suddenly she couldn't breathe. His wife led her on a fast gallop back to a neighbor - who was a pediatrician .  He knew what was happening, administered EpiPen and that saved her. That rebuild trip was interrupted by a ride in the ambulance to the hospital. To this day she can't even be in the horse barn without having taking Benadryl first, and she can't be close enough  to breath dander  at all.  Very weird that she developed that after being around horses for several years
>> 
>> There but by the grace of god go all of us.
>> 
>> Spencer Yost
>> 
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