The engine fits now to make a hood fit as well

 Quite a few weeks earlier I posted about the build of my diesel 1050.  With the big diesel motor on the frame there was no way to fit the original hood on.  In the first place the engine is almost five inches taller and the fuel tank and muffler stick out around two inches on the sides.  I love the look of the Bolens front grill so that is the still the basis of my hood.

I cut the front grill off from the hood and my boss and I started building the framework that would soon be the hood.  Everything that the framework is made of was all used material that we had hanging around the shop.

As seen here I used the rear of the hood up against the dashboard and mounted it with nuts welded on the inside and so it is easy to remove and put the battery in and out.  It also gives a solid place for the new hood frame to rest on.  In this picture there are no cross members from front to back. I added the cross members so when something gets set on it the hood wont bow down.

The next order of business was to put a grill in the front for good airflow.  I used a piece of covering for old cast iron fin pipe that we had at the shop and once the whole thing is painted I will hand paint the grill black. 

At this point the hood is merely set on top but I will be welding it in the next few evenings.  Like I was saying about the used parts, the sheet metal has been hanging around the shop for years.  My boss's father had saved a large Burnham boiler years back but ended up sending the cast iron to the scrap yard but the jacketing had gotten tucked above the garage.  The jacket was large enough that I was able to make my hood out of just one panel. 

With a front view here you can see the big gaps next to the grate,  I plan on getting the sheet metal completely welded to the frame and then putting more of the fin tube grating in those gaps.  Another important part will be cutting in a hole for the exhaust out the side of the hood and making a stack to go onto the side.

The view from the back the hood doesn't look bad.  I am also toying with the idea of putting a cup holder on the right side of the hood and just making a plug to fill the hole when it isn't in use.  I also hope to put the latches on tomorrow and get some closer pictures of the sheet metal welded to the frame and the hood open and working.  I also need to put a chain to keep the now heavier hood from snapping the hinge off and bending the hood. 

Just a snapshot of the next project just to keep everyone interested.  I will be building brackets for the estate keeper snow blower so that I don't do like I did with the mower and take all summer to fix and not get to use it because the grass is done growing.  This project is second to my hood right now so updates will be tacked onto other posts slowly.  Next time hopefully the hood will be welded and the tractor will come home to have the hood painted.

Putting another trailer together

A short while back I tore down an older pop up camper that was given to me a few years back.  The camper was full of ants and mold so I ripped the outer shell while saving all the aluminum and bits of stainless for scrap.  The camper actually came apart quite well and fit into my small box trailer to go to the dump.  I haven't decided if this trailer is going to stay but if it does it is done right. 

So as you can tell I did my boarding of the trailer at night under the flood light.  Under the boards are 2x4's screwed into the frame about a foot apart.  I had planned on buying some tractor supply fenders but couldn't find any in my cheap price range or the right size so I built them out of wood.

These fenders may be just wood but I was jumping up and down on them and they are sturdy.  I haven't really done much with angles like that but I think that it came out quite well. 

I haven't put lights on it yet because like I said I don't know what I am going to do with it.  We do need another chicken coop to hold all of our "second crop" chickens.  The trailer is fairly light as it sets now and I towed it around with the estate keeper. 

My other FUN project was working on the roof of Allyssia's horse barn.  We have been having troubles with the roof leaking especially bad on the back side.  The bad part of this is that the tack/grain room is on the backside.  I have tried a few different solutions like checking to make sure all the nails and screws have washers and even caulking the roofing seams. Nothing seemed to do much so I went for the harder route.  The five gallon bucket there is an aluminum roof sealer most commonly used on mobile homes.

It goes on with a bit of a brown shade but dries silver.  It took Allyssia and I about 2 hours to spread the ten gallons of sealer across about forty feet of roof.  In the process I found out that it comes off your hands very tough and ruins pants but low and behold it does not reseal boots.

So that's the finished product and yes I did get that small spot that's bare because it bothered me.  Now we are waiting for rain to see if it holds up, but we aren't wishing to hard as we are enjoying the warm sunny weather. 

Just for reference here is the roof color and look before the sealer.  I am just hoping that it doesn't bother the shedding of the snow this winter and cause me to have to climb up there and shovel even more.  stay tuned because next update is the diesel 1050 hood build. 

Starting Jacob's tractor addiction

I'm sure that everyone has noticed that I have had Allyssia's younger brother Jacob helping me on quite a few projects and even when I don't mention him sometimes he is helping.  I would say that he has helped in some small or large way on almost every tractor that I have worked on lately.  I decided that I wanted Jacob to be able to work on something of his own if he wanted to so I talked to Jeff (my father-in-law) about a old Bolens 1220 that was his fathers and Jeff said that Jacob could fix it up. 

Now this tractor is a 1971 or 1972 and has already had a new engine installed on it and has been sitting for quite a while.  I set Jacob to pulling the shrouds off and cleaning the mouse nests out of the engine and he encountered three mice that were happily living in his tractor and promptly evicted them.  His project was then put on hold as he waited for new battery cables as we had to cut the old ones off to remove the old battery. 
           After cleaning and checking it over multiple times yesterday he was ready to fire it up.  With him on the seat and me next to it with a squirt bottle of gasoline we gave it a try.  It started up smoothly but had to be shut down quick because the muffler was forgotten.

We fired it back up with the muffler on and Jake headed straight over to show his father that he got his Grandpa's tractor running.

We still have work to do as it had been sitting so long.  The next order of business is new belts and getting the hydro lift to work.  Come Monday I should have new belts and when I update on the other projects I will let you know how Jake is doing as well.

Still plugging along on the estate keeper

As promised today I will continue the super long saga of the diesel Estate Keeper.  For starters I finally got my new tires and got them installed.  I did them all myself and tubed them from the start to avoid future problems with leaking tires because if there is one thing I hate - it is constantly filling leaky tires. 

Here is the first sneak peak of my new tires.  I can honestly say that they went on so much easier than the old ones, that I believe were original turf tires.  I ended up cutting the tread as close to the rim with a saws all and finishing off the steel cable bead with a cold chisel

The tires with the deep tread actually lift the tractor up off the ground more and boy doesn't it make it look mean.  Jacob and I used it quite a bit today now that it can be steered decently and not on a flat tire.  The trailer came in handy moving a bunch of Bolens attachments out of the shed that I sold today.  I have also been working slowly on the mower deck so maybe I can get one mow out of the tractor this year. 

I finally have all of my spindle assembly's put together and almost all of the parts ordered.  I am waiting on one more idler pulley and I need some more green paint to finish off the bracket and the gearbox.

All of the spindle assembly's are installed and working. At this point it is again a waiting game as we are waiting on the parts store and on Owen to get it in gear and finish painting the parts to reassemble it. 

Now for the best part of my week - I know that most would think that some nice new tires would be the best part of the week but for me finally finishing up the woodpile and having all my wood in the basement drying for this winter is a great feeling.  Now I am back on the fixing path because my little super-splitter exploded on me half way through the last tier of wood.  I patched it back together but this winter it needs a big overhaul to get ready for next winter's firewood.

Stay tuned for more, I'll try to keep it exciting

Some well needed improvements.

After the diesel engine swap on my Bolens estate keeper I have begun to really love the little tractor.  It has proved very useful at hauling firewood as I showed in my last post and to top it off it is really cool. 

As you can see she is leaning quite heavily to one side due to an extremely flat front tire and a rear tire on the same side that loses air very quickly.  The rear tire I have been able to pump up and use but the front tire just blows out through a large hole in the tread. Since all these tires are original, (or so I think) I decided I would put new ones all around especially since the front one cant even be tubed. Today I ordered four R1 tread tires which are better known as AG's.  I have the aggressive AG tires on my other diesel Bolens and love the traction and the look of them so I decided that I just had to have them on this one as well.

Off came all four tires and up onto blocks went the tractor.  I am still lacking in the jack stand department so you can see I cut some hardwood blocks and set the estate keeper on them while waiting for the new tires.

Here is where I again talk all about the tools that I use because after much use and abuse I have found out how great they are.  These are two of my most used tools; my combination craftsman impact socket set and my Milwaukee impact drill.  The socket set is pretty basic except for the ratchet which is super comfortable.  The real great part though is the M12 impact drill.  I put a socket adapter in it and I do almost anything with it from removing small 3/8 bolts to lug nuts on the car.  It's a compact little tool so it fits well into small rims and still has the torque to pull the nuts off.

I started painting the deck this weekend after wire brushing and sandblasting it and I just received the rest of my bearings and belts today to put it together when it is painted. 

For a project this small I just use the rattle cans but on a full paint job I would use a paint sprayer. When I get the hood to fit I may repaint the whole tractor but that's a project for another day.  Speaking of hoods, tune in tomorrow for an update on project number three that I have going where we are building a hood for the diesel 1050 Bolens.

Getting the first heat out of the firewood.

So over Labor day weekend and through the last week I have been pretty focused on doing firewood.  As seen in an earlier post I had a wheeler load of wood dropped off in the dooryard - quite early in the morning in Allyssia's opinion. Well that pile has been reduced to a pile of saw chips and small sticks.  I made it my personal goal to have the whole pile at least sawed up by the end of the weekend and I did with the exception of one ten foot log. 

That is the aftermath of the log pile.  What's left there is the big chunks of firewood that I didn't want to pick up into the bongo truck.  Now just because the pile is not there doesn't mean that my firewood is done for the year. No I like to handle my wood multiple times, and I have an electric splitter so it has to be near an outlet so we moved what was left after filling under the porch, next to the garage door. 

Between these three piles and the real big stuff that I didn't want to move and the four and a quarter cord's of wood under the porch I should have enough for the winter. 

Last year I figure I only had three cord under the porch here but this year I extended my pile to make the area larger, so that this year we wont run out of wood and have to be scrambling mid winter to find more.  Throughout the five and a half cord of wood I have split so far this summer I still am yet to find a log that my little electric super split wont take care of.  I did have to rewire the plug this last week because the frame was shocking me and the power supply wire had chafed so bad that there were only a few strands left holding.  Other than the wire and the occasional lubrication the splitter has been very problem free.  This winter though I plan on servicing it and putting an actual handle on it rather than the vice grips that I have on it now. 

As far as firewood hauling goes I used the bongo truck a lot but Jacob helped quite a bit and I would like to give a lot of credit to this little tractor that hauled quite a charge of wood with my ten dollar silent auction trailer.  This tractor and trailer are next on the list so soon you will all see the newest additions and modifications.