Thursday, April 07, 2005

Cotter pins

The idea for my earlier cotter/carter pins post came from a little incident the other day where I was riding along in the Ferguson and the right front wheel fell off. Sorta. It didn't come completely off, but it was close. Naturally this was a mile from the barn, so I had to leave it sitting. It had a wobble last fall, so I pulled the hub apart and tightened everything, in the process discovering a crappy cotter pin and a home-made castle nut. So, when this happened the other day, I naturally assumed the crappy little cotter pin had disintegrated, but that wasn't the case. Twas the outer bearing that came apart. I'm guessing that normal wheel rotation worried the nut the rest of the way off and caused my near-accident.

We had a neighbor several years ago who bought a White 2-85 for some bizarre reason (not that there was anything wrong with White, it's just that the nearest dealer was nearly a hundred miles away) who had the same thing happen whilst plowing (or chopping silage, I forget) one day. Difference was his wheel came completely off and he buried the nose in the ground before he got it stopped.

I've got that put back together now. Hopefully, I'll be ready to go when it's time to do hay. I need to put out fertilizer in the next couple of weeks... I guess I could just go stand in the field and talk. That's fertilizer ain't it?

I've got one price on baler belts so far. Worse that I'd hoped, but not as bad as I'd feared. It's looking like new belts will run me a little over $500 for 2 ply and a tad under $600 for 3 ply. That's assuming I put wide belts all the way across. I need to get with TC about that. The outer belts are 1" wider than the three inside belts. I don't really see any reason why I couldn't run wide belts all the way across. Something to ponder I 'spose.

I helped TH unload the junk MF135 he'd bought at the sale yesterday. He said some fellow had called him with a bunch of junk tractors for sale, but he wanted to sell all of them as a package, which TH wasn't real keen on doing. One of the tractors is an Allis G with a bad starter. That is supposed to be all that's wrong with it. TH doesn't want it, but I told him that I would try to buy the G if there was any way in the world I could afford it. One of the others is a 3020 JD with a blown head gasket. I called Bigger Brother this morning and told him about it and made noises about getting rid of the Deutz in favor of the 3020.

I'd still rather figure out a way to buy the 7610. That would be more doable if I could find a buyer for the Nissan, the NH Stackwagon and the Deutz. That would be a VERY healthy down-payment towards the Ford. On the other hand, it would probably be just as easy to pay off a couple of other farm-related notes and apply the money for those payments toward Ford payments.

I'll figure something out shortly. It'd still be easier to win the lottery. Although I 'spose it'd help if I bought a ticket?