Tractors and wood! Show your pics

[check]

I have a 20 ton wood splitter with a Honda GC 160 motor, that we can’t keep going. It starts, then sputters and dies. My friend is working on it, and he is an expert in small engines, but can’t figure out what the problem is. Does anyone have one of these motors and has a special problem getting it to stay running?

Good news - the splitter is fixed, and the motor is running great! The problem was simply water in the gas. (it did not show up in the carb, so my friend did not investigate the gas tank, until later.) So, all's well that ends well. And thanks, guys, for all the suggestions.

Merry Christmas to me!

 

[goeduck]

Good news - the splitter is fixed, and the motor is running great! The problem was simply water in the gas. (it did not show up in the carb, so my friend did not investigate the gas tank, until later.) So, all's well that ends well. And thanks, guys, for all the suggestions.

Merry Christmas to me!

Glad he found the problem. Some of it must have passed through the carburetor for it to sputter. I use ethanol free gas and run it dry at the end of the season. Ethanol retains water if it sits too long. Do you have a source of ethanol free gas?

 

[Skeans1]

Who needs wedges.

 

[Molalla1]

Nice slope . . .

 

[Gordon Gould]

Good news - the splitter is fixed, and the motor is running great! The problem was simply water in the gas.

Glad your all set now check It is so easy to miss stuff the first time around.

gg

 

[Boss 302]

Keep up the good work, great pictures

 

[John_Mc]

I've posted on here before about Brutus, my 1951 Dodge M37, a Korean War Military pickup truck. I got it for it's great ground clearance and rugged build. It's not fast (way under-powered by today's standards), but it will go anywhere and has a lot of "character". I think of it as my "fast tractor" rather than a slow truck. I regularly use him in the woods getting firewood, and have set him up for towing my log forwarding trailer. I always get compliments and questions when driving him around town.

Since buying him, I've upgraded the brakes, added a brake controller and receiver hitch (but kept the original pintle hitch), swapped in a rebuilt engine, and had the transmission and transfer case rebuilt. I finally had him running like a top. I was down to considering the little things, like fixing seals around the windsheild which had rotted away to nothing and were letting in the rain and cold air. ... Until several weeks ago, when he got in a little argument with a telephone pole:

I was driving down a small dirt road, slowed way down to go around a 90˚ bend. As I came out of the curve, another truck was coming around a small bend from the other direction, driving almost down the middle of the road. I pulled over as far as I could, but he barely moved over at all. I pulled over a few inches further, and my right wheels dropped off onto the soft shoulder of a deep ditch. I rode the edge for a bit, I tried to turn back on to the road, but it was not use. I was afraid to turn the wheels too far out of concern for rolling the truck into the ditch. Even hard braking was chancy, since it seemed to shift the weight toward a roll. Most of these trucks had a soft top (canvas). The hard top on mine is not structural. It would have collapsed like a tin can if I had rolled. I ended up just riding it out for about 200 feet. I tried to miss the pole, but the ditch held me right on that track.

The other truck kept right on driving, probably oblivious to the mayhem he had caused.

I was completely uninjured. Not even a little sore the next day. I am glad I had seatbelts installed... the truck did not come with them.

 

[hunt4570]

I've posted on here before about Brutus, my 1951 Dodge M37, a Korean War Military pickup truck. I got it for it's great ground clearance and rugged build. It's not fast (way under-powered by today's standards), but it will go anywhere and has a lot of "character". I think of it as my "fast tractor" rather than a slow truck. I regularly use him in the woods getting firewood, and have set him up for towing my log forwarding trailer. I always get compliments and questions when driving him around town.

View attachment 723472

Since buying him, I'm upgraded the brakes, added a brake controller and receiver hitch (but kept the original pintle hitch), swapped in a rebuilt engine, and had the transmission and transfer case rebuilt. I finally had him running like a top. I was down to considering the little things, like fixing seals around the windsheild which had rotted away to nothing and were letting in the rain and cold air. ... Until several weeks ago, when he got in a little argument with a telephone pole:

View attachment 723473 View attachment 723475

View attachment 723477

I was driving down a small dirt road, slowed way down to go around a 90˚ bend. As I came out of the curve, another truck was coming around a small bend from the other direction, driving almost down the middle of the road. I pulled over as far as I could, but he barely moved over at all. I pulled over a few inches further, and my right wheels dropped off onto the soft shoulder of a deep ditch. I rode the edge for a bit, I tried to turn back on to the road, but it was not use. I was afraid to turn the wheels too far out of concern for rolling the truck into the ditch. Even hard braking was chancy, since it seemed to shift the weight toward a roll. Most of these trucks had a soft top (canvas). The hard top on mine is not structural. It would have collapsed like a tin can if I had rolled. I ended up just riding it out for about 200 feet. I tried to miss the pole, but the ditch held me right on that track.

The other truck kept right on driving, probably oblivious to the mayhem he had caused.

I was completely uninjured. Not even a little sore the next day. I am glad I had seatbelts installed... the truck did not come with them.

So sorry Btutus got an owie!

 

[Jstpssng]

That stinks. Hopefully you can bring him back to the way he was.

I don't believe that the other driver was as clueless as you think he was.

 

[John_Mc]

Brutus will ride again. I'm fortunate to have a local friend whose full-time profession is restoring old Dodge trucks.(Most of his jobs are award-winning quality restorations, but I think he gets a kick out of seeing one as a working truck.) It turns out he has most of the parts needed to get Brutus back on the road. It does not appear that the frame was damaged. Maybe a slight twist on the part extending forward on the right side that supports the half-bumper on that side. The winch which had just been rebuilt was leaking oil, so that may have been tweaked a bit - hopefully it's nothing major.

We stripped the damaged parts off the front in the driveway of my friend's shop. Since the replacements will need some reconditioning and painting before installation, I ended up pulling all of the cowling and fenders off the front end to get painted as well. I like the "been around the block a few times" look of the old patina on the truck, but a mish-mash of freshly painted and old stuff on the front end would just look too weird. From the windshield on back will stay the same.

My friend is swamped with other projects right now, so he gave me a loaner radiator (the old one is trashed) which we installed for the ride across town to my place. We knew the radiator leaked badly, but figured it would hold coolant long enough to get me home.

Without a cowling around the engine, the fan picked up the leaking coolant and sprayed it all over the engine and windshield. That wet windshield you can see in the photo is not rain, melted snow, or road slush, it's coolant. (The driver's side wiper died on me on the drive over, making a drive a bit more of an adventure. I never turned on the passenger wiper, since the switch is difficult to see from the driver's seat.)

My friend is swamped with other projects right now, so Brutus is sitting in the basement of my wife's woodworking shop while we're searching up other things we need. He'll spend the winter there while I will be prepping some of the parts for installation. I removed the radiator, and will be sending it out to be recored.