It seems

my luck is running about the same as always. I took off early last Thursday to mow and made about four rounds and noticed that there was fuel absolutely pouring out of the front fuel filter on the Ferguson. For some reason one of the seals for the new filter failed. I've never had that happen before. Wasn't that big of a problem to fix, but it knocked me out of an hours mowing time. 

A little later I started having problems with the belts spinning in thick grass and remembered that I had forgotten to loosen the tension on the belts last fall and they had probably stretched over the winter. Naturally, I didn't have the right wrench in the toolbox, so I lost another half hour on that. 

Finally got finished in the main field ('cept for about half an acre that is waaaay too wet) and made about a round and a half on the other field when it got dark on me. Not a problem! I had the bright idea that I'd just get up early and mow it before I went to work, so the next morning I got up at 5am and headed to the field. As I was driving down the path to the field, I hit a rut and heard something go "pop" and the next thing I knew, the mower cutterbar was laying across the back wheel. It seems the weld in the main shaft that the mower pivots on* had broken. 

I wasn't able to get a new shaft until today, but I'm close to having the mower back together.

I also had to get one of the neighbors to roll my hay for me, because I'm a moron of course. I started doing some work on the Ford tractor just before hay season, thinking I'd have it back running in a day or so. Nope! It's been sitting for over a month in many, many pieces and naturally, being the idiot that I am, I parked it right in front of my round baler....

*The mower only pivots when you hit something hard enough to trip the breakaway. This is supposed to keep from damaging the mower, but all it seems to do to my mower is destroy the driveshaft every freaking time it trips. So, naturally of course, I had to do a little redneck engineering on it to keep that from happening.... that of course, will be a forthcoming Redneck Engineering™ post.

dang

I went with Tony today to look a tedder that he was interested in and may have found myself another tractor provided I can secure the funds...

This one probably qualifies as a Redneck Engineering post...

because of the lovely wooden "brackets" on the generator...

Although it may not look that big in this picture, that has got to be the largest Briggs I've ever seen.

Allllllllmost have the 3600 back together... need to bolt the radiator down, plug the wiring harness back in ( that is the result of another moron moment I had last fall which I will save for another time) and stick the nose back on.

In the lawnmower world, I have parts and pieces of FIVE pushmowers scattered around the barn and can't get any of the three (theoretically) "running" ones to crank... on the other hand, I have all of the weedwhackers working now.

Bigger brother slung a rod in his little Terramite backhoe and charged me with the task of finding him another motor.... and boy did I ever. His only stipulations were that it be a "big" horizontal shaft engine. One of the neighbors has an ancient garden tractor with an huge single cylinder briggs on it that I think dates back to the sixties... the problem is, its so blasted huge, he doesn't think it will fit on the frame! There will be pictures to follow of this monstrosity... 

I'm getting dumber by the day

I've got the front end off the 3600 right, putting a new radiator and water pump on. Not really that much of a chore, until my inner moron kicked in. I got the bright idea to clean some of the crud off the block while I had it exposed. Sprayed 2 cans of good ole' gunk cleaner/degreaser on it, dragged the waterhose down there... and promptly filled the $^&%$ intake full of water.

Now, that isn't a good thing to do on any engine, but on a diesel it's velly, velly bad. Sooooo, my relatively simple chore turned into a fairly involved project, because I had to pull the injectors and drain the oil. I thought I was going to have to pull the manifold too, but managed to dodge that bullet. I invested $2.65 in a bottle of Marvel Mystery Oil, poured it into the holes for the injectors and spent about half an hour with a wrench cycling the crankshaft by hand until I got all of the Marvelous Mysterious oil out of it. That still wouldn't have been too bad, but instead of doing it this morning whilst it was relatively cool, I had to be a big dummy and do it during the heat of the day.

Hmmm, also managed to break Sweetie's ™ pushmower today too, but my current lawnmower misadventures is another story for another day.

wow

I did not realize that it had been THAT long since I'd posted anything. A lot has happened in the past couple of years, but one of the biggest reasons I've not written anything is because I simply have not had the time. Another reason is I forgot my stupid passwords and just didn't want to take the 10 minutes to reset everything. I am going to try to start doing a little more posting, maybe once a week anyway. I think I will concentrate on my "Redneck Engineering" posts, as they seem to garner the most comments.