chore day

Soundguy · Aug 29, 2008

Lately I've been spending 95% of my off work timegetting a new pasture ready.. water pump, lines, pens, moving animals.. etc.. today I don't have to be to work till 5pm, so i decided to do a farm chore day.. got up early, fed the animals at both pastures, and then mowed my lawn and edged it.. hmm.. mower is banging pretty hard.. sounded like a piston slap .. hope the old murray rider ain't going out... I've only had her for 13 ys.. got to looking and saw the motot vibrating.. sure enough.. the 4 hold down 'screws' were a tad loose.. and bow are they hard to get to.. had to put the front on jackl stands and get on the creeper.. frame rails are box tubing with little holes in them just big enough to get at the screw heads with a swivel socket.. got that done.. engine sounds new again.. finished mowing...weed wacked.. blew of driveway.. etc.. while parking the mower decided garage was a little cluttered so tossed some junk to make it a lil more orderly. Next on the list was my spare trailer tire for my 16' tandem..I had swappe dit on, as one of the tires had a slow leak.. took about 4 days to go down. As I've been trailering my 660 back and forth to the other pasture to use the laoder and runt he pto generator, I decided to fix the leaky tire incase I got in a jamb.. put about 20 psi in it.. soaked it.. found the bubler.. was a finishing nail.. plugged it, and then aired it up to 35 and left it to set to see if it still leaked... then went and did some tractor maintenance... small stuff.. new fuel cap for the 7610s, tighten a leaky hyd line on the 850's loader lift cyl, and then properly cap of fthe cyl on the new 711 loader I bought instead of using a rag in the hole!. Those tractors are all parked under a tube fram tarp 'city' at the back of my property, and when fay came thru, one tarp went down, and I just took another down to save damage.. put those back up... went back to the tire.. ARGH!.. down to 10 psi.. threw it in a tub of water and put some more air in it ( mental note.. pancake compressor inthe barn is broke and only makes 40 psi.. need to fix that.. or go grab the 30g upright from the garage...).. thought I might have had a bead leak. but then i noticed the valve stem just a bubbling..

pulled the core.. valve looke dfine however the oring seal on it was quite anemic.. grabbed my tire kit and then cleaned the stem seat, and dropped a new core in with a nice fat oring on it.. put the air to it to 40psi and let her set.. Decided to pull apart the also 13yr old chinese pancake compressor.. I figured she's have died completely by now as I've used that 2hp / 4 gallon job with a extra 15 gallon tank to paint a couple tractors over the years... I figured the reed valves were shot, and if they were.. I was probably gonna trash the head anyway... I was surprised to find the reeds fine.. but a gasket betweent he chambers had blown out.. chinese gasket was some sort of green fiber-goo.. Figured I had nothing to loose by cutting some new gaskets out of gasket paper, and cleaning up the reeds and the plates they set in.. was like heck to get it all lined back up.. figured it'd never work. but i was pleasently surprised when it went to 120psi and cut off.. and made it there faster than it has in years.. that gasket's probabyl been leaking bad for a while now.

went back to the tire.. it was holding fine.. dunked it again.. and no bubbles.. so i thre it ont he rack with my spare tractor tires..

I just came in to relaxe now for a couple hours before work.. I'm beat!

soundguy

schmism · Aug 29, 2008

i love those days... when you feel like you acutally got something done.

worse is when you spend all day with A project in mind and every time you go to start it, something else rears its ugly head... till at the end of the day you have done alot, but none of it was ON the project you set out to work on....

THOSE are the days i hate!

rox · Aug 29, 2008

I'm tires jsut reading it. You must have started your day at 5am to get all that done. Plus I was impress on how knowledgable oyu are on so many different things.

Soundguy · Aug 30, 2008

Actually started about 6:30.. but that was walking the dogs.. etc.

Got to know lotsa stuff like that when you own old tractors.. always got to fix them!

soundguy

czechsonofagun · Aug 30, 2008

Doing stuff all day

- just to keep things rolling. It is not really visible, but if one stops doing it, it goes to dogs fast

I prefer to fix things ahead of the time, than to be without tractor or tools when I absolutely need them. But boy, sometimes it is hard to push myself

Schmism: That always drove me crazy with my dad. We would plan to say pour concrete in our summer cabin. When I was a boy, that was exciting to do man's work - actually still is. And he would spend half a day or more just fixing and improving things he stumbled upon while getting ready the concrete forms and mixer and pour site and such.

Now I do it myself, I think it comes with the sense of ownership

OK, off my soap box now