Hurricane Farm

After several long and stressful months of changing spark plugs, ignition wires, and magneto caps, my Farmall Cub is up and running again!  I was able to get Leon, owner of Reliable Tractor Repair in Lebanon, CT, to come over and correct the incorrect timing on my magneto.  He also checked over the tractor generally and told us we have a great little tractor on our hands.  Who hoo!  If you need any tractor work, I would highly recommend Leon.  We can put you in touch with him if you live here in CT.

Aside from the rebuild on the magneto and the timing, I did a little tinkering myself and the tractor is looking sharp and running strong.  What follows are some photos and some commentary.

First of all, here is my helper, Liev, ready with his tools at hand.  Notice his tractor all ready to be worked on in the background.  We'll get to that after we work on mine.

So I set out to replace the entire exhaust system.  You can see the old one below after removal.  It is supposed to be six distinct parts; however, the old one has been fused together over time into one long and rusty maze.  Just thinking about the new muffler was exciting.  It sure would be a step up from the old one to which I referred to as the "exhaust-redirecting-hole-filled-tube."  Sure, it looked nice, and the rust matched the earthtones so prevalent here on the farm, but it was LOUD!

This is the engine's intake and exhaust ports after removal of the manifold.  Note my shiny new plugs and wires along with the new fuel line and in-line filter. 

I had to be very careful scraping off the old gasket.  If any pieces worked their way into the intake, it would be bad news for the pistons.

Speaking of gaskets...Check out how much was missing on the old set.  No wonder the tractor was having a hard time running.  It may have been sucking in air through a gasket leak.  Or, it may have been leaking exhaust.  At any rate, old ones=bad.  The new ones are quite a step up in the gasket department.

Below on my tool box are some additional parts that I had recently installed.  Lucky for me I got to practice putting them on again after having taken them off to work on the exhaust.  You can see the new carburetor and air intake pipe below along with a pile of tools.  I should really get those organized, but it does give the kids something to do while we work.  "Hey guys, I need a socket that is a little smaller than this one!"

I have found, while working on my tractor, that I need to acquire some new, larger tools.  I never seem to have a wrench large enough for the bolts and nuts on the tractor.  Just today I needed something around the 1" size.  Luckily, I found an old wrench that happened to come with an old table saw that a friend gave us (thanks Bruce!).  It came in handy in removing the oil drain plug this afternoon.  For, as you know, "hand tight" is only good in some applications...

Ah.  The new parts all nestled snuggly in their packages.  These Farmall Cub tractors are so popular that even though they are decades old, many parts are still newly manufactured for them.  That's nice.

Here is the manifold installed on the tractor.  I had to fit the nipple and the elbow onto the manifold and then sneak the whole thing up and under the hood WHILE AT THE SAME TIME sliding it all onto the four bolts that attach it to the engine.  Whew...That took some patience.   But, it was easier than taking off the hood, which is also the gas tank, which is filled with gas.

I had to pull out "Old Cranky" to align the fittings so that the underslung exhause pipe would point down and to the rear as it should.  I think Galileo was indeed onto something.  It's amazing how much torque you can get with a tool like "Old Cranky."  And to think, he was only $4.00 at the livestock auction. 

Check out how little clearance they provide one in accessing the bolts that hold on the manifold.  Luckily, I had the foresight to shoot lots of PB Blaster onto those bolts for a couple of weeks to free up the rust.  They came off and went back on like new (with lots of tiny, short wrench strokes...thanks to that clearance).

I do have a shop manual for the tractor.  It is a genuine International Harvester publication.  But, for some reason, they like to write confusing things like:  "adjustment and alignment will be evident upon removal and inspection of..." 

Huh?

Well, I suppose that these manuals are written for people actually trained in tractor repair.  If the prose is obscure to me, at least the expanded diagrams--with all their arrows and numbers--are somewhat useful to my untrained understanding of what is going on inside these parts.  These annotations and arrows and letters and numbers are probably just like those on the back of the 8 x 10 color glossy photographs from Alice's Restaurant.

Someone out there put a more understandable and usable tractor manual on my Christmas present list...

Well, the tractor is working great now.  We plan to use it tomorrow to plow the manure in the garden and then later on in the day to pull out some trees that I cut down to make room for our new orchard and bee hives.  Yes, bees are indeed on the way to the farm.  Photos on that later!

But wait, oh no!  I'll have to first use the tractor to reclaim Liev's loader from its precarious perch atop a pile of cedar logs.  How did he get it up there?!

Here are some of the much anticipated photos of our baby farm animals.  We've been quite busy getting things prepared for their births and arrivals, as well as with sugaring, but here are some shots of the recent additions to our farm.

Moments after birth--and still wet--the baby lambs hang with their mom.

Later in the day, all nestled into their own private stall.  They are twins, though it does not look like it!

Here are the hogs, still quite young, but not looking like babies any longer!  Looks quite comfortable.  Perhaps I'll join them for an afternoon snooze...

We also acquired a new calf this past week.  He is a week and half old and already he towers above our kids.  His name is Aloysius (but our son calls him "Monster Truck") and he is an Ayershire bull calf.  This breed is larger than the Jerseys and is sort of neat for us to have as they originated in southern Scotland. 

He has two bottles a day, and is already starting to eat some hay and a little grain.

We've spent most of this rainy day rebuilding, cleaning, and repainting the bee hives that I had picked up last summer.  We ordered a 3 lb. package of bees and will be getting them into their hive in about three weeks or so.  There will be several updates on that project, I'm sure.

So one of the coolest things about having a farm is having a tractor!  We've managed to all share in its use.  When it is not being used to stretch fencing, haul manure or wood, plow snow, or pull logs, it spends its time doubling as a jungle-gym for our kids and their friends.  Many a visitor fired it up for a trip around the pasture this past summer...

Here is one of our son striking some sort of pose.

Here is Erica, my wife, pulling a log down the road.  It sure is great living on a road without any traffic!  Look at that form...

Our good friend Mose came for visit.  Not only did we put him to work tilling the garden, but we had him help capture and hold the sheep whilst we trimmed their hooves... Luckily, he came prepared with that fine hat.

The next one is my dad, also known as "Bumpa."  We were stretching fence that day.  He also came prepared with a fine hat, as you can see.

Finally, for now, here are my wife's grandparents.  They were on one of their "red-eye" road trips from VT and happily mounted the tractor for this shot.