I have been looking all over the internet at TO-20 and Ferguson, ....and am AMAZED at the following these tractors have, especially in Europe. The other really neat thing is that SO MANY parts are still right off the shelf, and at reasonable prices. Mike and I have been seriously thinking about bringing it up to 12 volt, with a self-regulation alternator kit, but that will be down the road.
I tried to remove the hood today, thinking it would a simple matter of just removing the pivot bolts and lifting it away. Apparently there is a captive nut that each bolt goes into, and those nuts are spinning. Sooooo..I gave the whole nut-bolt mounting area a shot of penetrating oil to ease the rust bond between the bolt and nut....In a few days we'll try to get in there with some kind of pliers to tighten the sheet metal 'wrap' on the nut and try again.
Not too clear in the photos is a tiny bit of rust through in the very bottom of the front grill. After it is out and blasted, I will have to look and see how hard it will be section in new steel, or to just buy a new front...amazingly STILL available right off the shelf.
Headlights and fender taillight were missing, but the hood hardware for the light housing stems was there, and those parts are removed and under restoration. The inner plates have been blasted, primed and painted already. The outer castings are cleaned, but need a little straightening, and then rather than gray, I will paint them with a nice shiny silver paint. It has two right hand castings, ....wing-tail high on one side, low on the other..We thought about getting new parts, but keeping these is kinda fun and quirky. Because there was so much variation in the shade of gray from the factory, we decided to make it easy and use a standard Rust-olium color, for which we can get spray cans, and real spray gun enamel at a local store. The parts I have done with spray can look fine, and this way future touch up will be a snap. The PTO cover has been done and re-installed as a glimmer of color and inspiration to get it all the same color some day!
More pix
Here you can see the 'shadow' of there the headlight mounting hardware was, note the high and low tail one side VS the other side
Rad looks OK, not like new, but darn good for an old tractor.
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums
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Next, hood removal and prep for its bodywork....and to find a nice blue paint to "fill" the emblems with...