Colt Case Ingersoll Garden Tractors

I offered to loan my 600 lb torque wrench to Eugen on Monday. Who would have guessed that even though it hasn't been out of the box for over 6 years, it got used today.last night was a failed search of the net for a 40mm 4 pin wheel nut socket and a failed search at Princes Auto. Today with venier in hand a return trip to PA yielded a 1-7/16 socket to modify. A piece of 1/4 plate became a crows foot.There are no shop manuals for the breakdown of the rollers. One appeared to have a broken shaft. After hitting a hard stop pulling the shaft on it, I moved on to the intact roller.Out came a used slide hammer from the seldom used tool shelf.The intact shaft pulled out with a few good blows of the slide hammer bolted into the shaft centering hole.The drum end is cracked out around the diameter of the bearing.This was once a welded shaft.At the end of a long day tools are put away and roller shafts are ready to take to a machine shop to be welded and machined.

Do I ever like big tools... especially with a cool side story. I can imagine you wrestled with those rollers some good time. I'm curious what you cut the crow foot with? Especially the 1/2 inch square hole for the drive. Or did you just weld a sacrificial socket on it?

It's got to be hard to work on jobs like this when you can never guess what crazy tools you might need. I suppose it's acceptable to come back with tools the next day.

@Eugen The crows foot was cut using a 4-1/2" zip disc and the 1/2 drive sq was made drilling small holes in 4 corners, then a 1/2 hole in the centre, followed by a dremel zip disk and hand filed square. When the rollers get reinstalled the crows foot is short enough to allow perfect level adjustment of the roller. 4 point socket was free hand grinding with a 4-1/2" zip disk.

The socket was a 12 point, chosen because it made finding the centres on 4 quadrants a breeze. By cutting on the major diameter, the minor was about 37 mm and gave a good bite. The final fit on the 4 points was both lucky and a surprise. but done very slowly with constant test fitting on the roller. It would have been easier if an spare nut would have been on hand. I fully expected the points to shear when laying into the long 600 lb wrench. The wheel nuts were self locking, thread locked and dowled. A small torch was used to preheat the nut, melting away the thread locker. The eccentric baking plates are aluminium and the drum ends are aluminium and kevlar. It was still a tough slug breaking the nut loose with out damaging the the drums.

Heat from a small torch is one of those things I always do now on larger nuts. Seems to always help allowing for much lower force to get the nut loose, and compared to bolts it's a much smaller area that needs to be heated.

I very much like posts like this, much to be inspired by skills and experience.

Hope for a non-eventful assembly when the parts are fixed.

@Spike188 Making the tools you need in house is quite impressive! Now the trick is to remember where you put them next time that job comes around! I have a drawer in the bottom of my tool chest I try to keep specialty and one off stuff in. If I don’t put it in there then there’s a good chance I won’t find it!

JSinMO wrote: ↑Wed Aug 02, 2023 10:14 pm @Spike188 Making the tools you need in house is quite impressive! Now the trick is to remember where you put them next time that job comes around! I have a drawer in the bottom of my tool chest I try to keep specialty and one off stuff in. If I don’t put it in there then there’s a good chance I won’t find it!

I was working on the JD300 a couple years ago. I don't remember what the job was other than being in the fuel system, but I knew my folks had done it in the past once, or twice. I also flat out knew they had made/modified a tool to get at some fitting, but I couldn't find it. So I proceeded to make/modify a wrench to do what I needed. Afterwards, I made a tag for it, and walked over to the custom wrench spot to hang it up. Leaned over to hang it up, and an identical wrench was hanging there with a neatly labeled tag from the last time. I swear, those two wrenches were just about identical. Why I didn't find it when I looked is a mystery. Apparently though, my father and I have the same sence of wrench design...

15 or 20 years from now, I'll probably end up with a third...