Now, next is where the whole show almost came to a grinding halt. The 3-point lift. Wow. what a mess.
Thankfully, as I had mentioned, I had finally acquired the proper manual for the tractor, which showed me how to service the lift and all the hydraulic, and mechanical gadgetry that goes with it. Holy crap! There is a bunch of FM that enables that thing to function! If I hadn't been so far into this thing at this point, I might have actually scrapped the project-but the huge investment of new tires had me kind of married to it at this point, so it was do or die.
This broken hydraulic switch (note the nasty fluid/water/dirt) was just the first of the issues hiding under that cover.
I will spare you the details, but once I had this lift cylinder/servo set out of the tractor, it took another 10 HOURS(!!!!) just to get it disassembled!!! Long story short-the contaminated fluid had conspired to seize two little (app. 1/2" bore) sleeve servo valves into their respective bores. Ever try to remove something that sensitive and small from a blind bore? YIKES!! I finally got a tap to thread into the most difficult one, which gave me purchase on it enough to free it up in the bore.
Once the night mare of getting it apart was over, it only took a few hours to thoroughly clean it and reassemble it with all new o-rings.
But when I went to put the rebuilt lift assembly back into the hitch cover, I discovered some more damage that had to be dealt with. So the lift arms and rock shaft had to come out to straighten out some bent parts and replace a few widgets.
This is no fun to work on right here. There is a bunch of stuff you have to work on buried in there that requires a mirror just to see. And there is no room. By the time I got it all back together, my hands were all bruised and cut up from cramming them into this area.
Check out my big shaft!
The good news at this point, is when I got it all back together and fired it up, the 3-point lift seems to work just fine! Which is great, because if it hadn't, I don't know what I'd have done. It remains to be seen it the draft control functions as it should under load-hopefully it does, as adjusting it looks time consuming, difficult, and really hard to do because you have to tear so much stuff apart just to adjust it.
I still have a ton of stuff to do, but at this point I'd say this tractor will live to work again. Stay tuned!