The tractor that keeps on giving.... problems...

Okay everyone, I just want to prepare you all for a bit of a long winded post here as I try to catch up on the last few weeks.  Now just to warn you there hasn't been much going on around here at the farm because I haven't been around.  With the cold snap I have been working overtime like crazy.  I ended up on call for one of the negative windy weekends and logged over twenty-seven hours in the two days. The weekend before was not my weekend and I still had fifteen hours.  This cold has put us so far behind schedule at work and put me behind schedule at home working on my equipment. 
       Enough of my rambling about work and on to the fun part.  I finally received the correct one inch lovejoy coupling and was able to mount it onto the motor and mount the motor onto the tractor.  I don't have much for pictures of the process as I was already freezing myself half to death that I did not take any pictures while drilling holes and bolting.  Cutting to the chase here is a video of the Caterpillar running.
                                                         Caterpillar first test drive 
The engine still needs a little tuning up and it will be going to Adam Pike's to be tuned properly.  Now that we have all seen it run, its time for the carnage. After playing around for a bit in the dark I decided to park the tractor for the night and finish some small things up in the morning.  Once I shut the tractor off I did a quick inspection and noticed this nice little pile of metal shavings in front of the motor.

That is also when I noticed that the spider in the lovejoy was missing.  At first I figured no big deal I will have to get a new center and put it back together. The old one must have been dry rotted and should have been replaced, but ohh boy was I wrong. 






















 Just as I thought I was gong to get out of this project with my shirt the new lovejoy ate the teeth off from the old coupling

I was Absolutely amazed that the coupling would just shred like that but the new coupling that was on the motor wasn't damaged at all. In good news the new coupling fit on the engine perfectly and everything lined right up. 













My next problem is the nature of the shredded coupling is very custom.  Somebody took this coupling and cut it down almost half of an inch and then proceeded to drill and tap four holes to hold a pulley onto the back.

This left picture is the lovejoy coupling where you can see that when they cut it down they got into the set screw and had to drill and tap another hole for the set screw.  Then we have the pulley that is another project in itself. the problem I have is trying to make enough room between the motor and the pump to put the full coupling and the pulley and still have it fit.  Hopefully over the weekend I will be able to brainstorm how they are going to fit together with the limited room that I have. 


Other than the tractors trying to destroy themselves around here I also have a van that tries to kill me at work.

This was during the big snowstorm we had about a week and a half ago.  The grade here is steeper than it looks and I was heading to a customers house on his private, very long driveway and as usual with the Transit I lost traction and slid backwards and sunk the rear into the ditch.  Luckily the customer had a skid steer and came to pull me out and get me pointed down the hill headed home.

This last picture I snapped at about one forty-five AM when I was getting home from a call.  You can see Parker was just as impressed as I was to be up at that hour.  Well until next time stay tuned because like the Quadractor, I will eventually have this running correctly and be able to have fun with it.