[AT] Fun with the manure spreader

Vaughn Miller vemiller at gmail.com
Fri Nov 17 08:10:47 PST 2017


Hand start tractors always start easier when no one is watching and you are
not in a hurry.  When you need to get something done or you have people
watching is when they will give you trouble. :-)

Vaughn

On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 7:22 AM, Henry Miller <hank at millerfarm.com> wrote:

> My hand start B is easy as times, and at times I struggle. Fresh gas in
> the starting tank makes a big difference. (I put old junk fuel in the
> main tank, rotten stuff I wouldn't let any other engine see).
>
>  It starts the easiest when you don't want it to. I changed the oil once
>  and moved the flywheel just looking for leaks and off it went. If the
>  fuel is on and a kid plays with the flywheel even the slightest when
>  you are not looking you will have a surprise running engine. Note that
>  kids are likely to have jumped on the seat and turned the fuel valve
>  before getting off and playing with the flywheel.
>
> That is one reason I drain both fuel tanks after I'm done.
>
> Like Dean I'm conservative with this tractor. My grandpa before me was
> asked to enter it in a pull. He said "no, if I pull it I might break it,
> and then I have to fix it". I do work, but nothing that needs all 16
> horsepower it could deliver. She is getting close to 80 years old and
> should enjoy retirement just pulling kids on a hay ride. I'll buy a new
> tractor if I want to work hard. (I get an employee discount at John
> Deere which changes that calculation)
>
> --
>   Henry Miller
>   hank at millerfarm.com
>
> On Fri, Nov 17, 2017, at 05:46 AM, Al Jones wrote:
> > Dean, not to derail this thread but  I saw your comment about your
> > hand start H.......that is a tractor on my must-have list, and the
> > "itch" for one is getting stronger and stronger.  I only have
> > Farmalls, all with starters.  How tricky is it about starting and
> > running?  I have seen guys with hand start Bs and so forth and
> > sometimes they struggled.....
> >
> > Al
> >
> > On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 2:19 AM, Dean VP <deanvp at att.net> wrote:
> > > Dean,  That had to be really hard to accept. 😊  Reminds me of when I
> had my wife pull my hand start JD H with another JD H because I couldn't
> get the damn thing started. Down the driveway on to the asphalt road. Not a
> pop. She stopped and asked me if I had gas in the tank. Next subject! Yes,
> but not in the tank that I had connected to the carburetor. Duh!!!
> > >
> > > Dean, a hint that I too had to learn the hard way. Sometimes we think
> we are still using newer tractors and implements and push them to their
> design limits.  But on the older/used implements it is sometimes very wise
> to not quite fill the manure spreader completely full. 😊   Learned the
> hard way. It pays to be a little conservative.
> > >
> > > Dean VP
> > > Snohomish, WA 98290
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com [mailto:at-bounces at lists.
> antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Dean Vinson
> > > Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2017 6:46 PM
> > > To: 'Antique tractor email discussion group' <
> at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
> > > Subject: Re: [AT] Fun with the manure spreader
> > >
> > >> Winter hogs in the barn and manure spreader made for some long
> > >> Saturdays
> > >
> > > Paul, that takes me back about 40 years.   While in high school I
> worked for
> > > a dairy farmer, who'd had a pretty nice dairy barn:  Maybe 40 milking
> stanchions in two facing rows with a center aisle for the silo unloader and
> grain cart, and a manure trough/chain around the outside that then ran up a
> ramp outside the barn and over the spot where we'd park the spreader.  But
> he'd grown tired of the relentless dairy schedule and eventually sold his
> > > cows, tore out the milking equipment, and converted to hogs.
>  Compared to
> > > relatively minor manure cleanup around the trough, which had been the
> routine with the cows, I had to clean the entire area with a scraper and
> manually shove all the manure out to the edges and into the trough.
> > > Besides all the additional effort it was just a very different
> consistency
> > > and of course almost all manure and no straw.   Didn't work nearly as
> well
> > > with the manure chain.
> > >
> > > And then of course came winter, as you mentioned.  The manure chain
> was driven by an electric motor turning a big sprocket at the very end of
> the unloading ramp outside the barn, and every now and then the chain would
> come
> > > off the sprocket and the whole thing would stop.   Climbing up that
> hog-crap
> > > covered ramp with some wrenches and a pry bar or whatever, in the
> frigid January wind, and hanging out over the edge of the ramp to wrestle
> that chain back onto the sprocket, makes for kind of an entertaining memory
> now but was much less fun at the time.
> > >
> > >> I didn't mind forking manure too bad growing up but I did hate
> walking 25'
> > > with each fork-full to get to the spreader...
> > >
> > > Farmer, I didn't have that particular experience but we did do all
> > > barn-cleaning and spreading by hand:   Kids and pitchforks in the barn
> > > pitching onto the old single-axle wagon, then out in the field
> pitching it
> > > back off the wagon.   Seems like we got pretty good at pitching the
> stuff
> > > quite some distance while spreading, to minimize the walking but also
> to avoid having to stop so often (and slow down the ordeal) to move the
> tractor and wagon.
> > >
> > >> I hope you had a front end loader to load the spreader with. That is a
> > >> lot of hand labor to load with a manure fork!!
> > >
> > > Cecil, yep, I was living large...loaded it all with my trusty little
> Kubota
> > > BX2370, and then fired up the Super M to go spread it.   Didn't so
> much as
> > > touch a pitchfork.  :)
> > >
> > > I did have one related (mis)adventure, though.   That Kubota is a
> workhorse
> > > but still just a little machine, and for almost four years now I've
> used the living daylights out of it.  All the finish mowing but also
> light-duty brushhogging when it seems more convenient than going to get one
> of the real
> > > tractors and the brushhog, and lots and lots of loader work:   80 tons
> of
> > > riprap, huge quantities of dirt and mulch, countless loads of
> firewood, shoving in the ends on dozens of giant burnpiles, all the zillion
> chores that you can find for a front loader even if you only have a little
> one.
> > > At the start of this year I realized it'd go over 400 hours and
> therefore need some shop servicing to tend to the heavy stuff listed in the
> maintenance schedule, but I'd hoped it would wait until after some frosts
> so I wouldn't have to worry about mowing grass while it was in the shop.
> No such luck, 400 hours came and went sometime over the summer, and I just
> kept
> > > running it.   Kept the usual eye on fluid levels and such but had some
> worry
> > > that I was pushing my luck, especially with the heavy use.    So then
> of
> > > course I bought the manure spreader and started into that giant pile
> of manure, loading that spreader up over and over.
> > >
> > > One day I went out to make some more progress on the manure pile,
> started up the Kubota and went to back out of the shed, lifting the mower
> deck as I went, and all of a sudden it just stopped dead in its tracks,
> wouldn't move
> > > forward or backward.   Engine sounded fine, loader worked fine, but the
> > > pedals felt mushy and weird and the tractor wouldn't move at all.   So
> I
> > > consulted Google, which led me to assorted webpages explaining the
> limitations of these relatively light-duty machines and the risks of
> > > overheating the transmission fluid, etc.   Dadgummit, they got my
> number.
> > > So I called the local farm equipment dealership where I'd bought the
> thing from to begin with, and they came out and winched it up onto a truck
> and hauled it off to the shop.
> > >
> > > A few days later I talked to the service manager, dreading the bad
> news and
> > > the size of the repair bill, and he explained the problem:   Evidently
> while
> > > raising the mower deck I'd bumped the hi-lo range lever into neutral,
> and turns out it works way better if you put it in a range that involves
> motion.
> > >
> > > Dean Vinson
> > > Saint Paris, Ohio
> > >
> > >
> > >
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