I've been hard at work getting this old disc restored. I sandblasted it and primed and painted it Allis Chalmers orange. It's now ready to reassemble! Got new 24" smooth 1/4" discs, new bearings, new hydraulics, new wheels and tires, fasteners, and fabricated several new steel parts that were broken. I also welded repairs on the tongue, and plan to repair the scrapers. Removing the bearings from the housings gave me fits, and now in retrospect, I probably could have not been so careful to salvage those. I broke one in my learning curve, but last night, after carefully cleaning them and placing new bearings, I discovered the new bearings were very loose in several of the housings, so loose, that the shaft would spin the whole bearing in the housing, not spinning internally as necessary. I conclude that the disc was used with bad or locked up bearings, resulting in extreme wear in the internal surface of the housing as the whole bearing spun in it. This system is dependent on a tight leakproof fit, which is necessary to be able to inject grease into the fittings. The loose fit interupts the pathway grease follows from the grease fitting to the balls. So unfortunately, I am having to replace 3 or 4 more housings (at $86 each). But at this point, I have no choice, so I am over budget at $2000 plus (I don't want to add it up!) But even so, when done, this will be like new and new discs like this are over 10 grand new. Athens Plow is even sending me some new decals for free!
