Whelp, I've already got a decent layer of big oak leaves on the lawn. Last year I waited too long to fire up the leaf vacuum, so I decided to get the jump on it.
So I removed the grapple from the loader bucket. I'll have to circle back next week to get its hoses all routed and hooked up. I still need to weld in a few gussets and paint it, but other than that it's all finished. It's going to be handy.
Then I used the loader to move my big leaf dumping/compost pile back into the corner of the yard so I have a fresh place to dump leaves. While I was at it, I picked up 3 or 4 buckets full of nice soil to dump in a few ruts that I have in the yard. I found a 4" diameter stump down under the leaf pile, and with 3 or 4 repeated rammings it dug out for me. That was satisfying.
Then I headed to the big steel sawhorse and removed the loader.
Pull the tractor in under sawhorse until it is directly above the loader's rear crossbar, and turn the engine off.
Remove the two big pins from the left and right loader towers/shackles.
Use the two hydraulic QD's to take the loader valve out of the hydraulic flow stream.
Attach the winch hook to the crossbar and crank it up to lift the rear end of the loader up a couple inches.
Start the tractor and back up, leaving the loader behind.
I'm impressed with my own engineering every time I do it!
Then I dropped the concrete counterweight off of the 3pt hitch, and installed the 3pt. ball hitch adapter. This one has an extra ball that's offset about 8 inches to the right. Since the deck discharges out to the right side and the leaf vacuum sucks in from the right side, having the vacuum trailer offset to the right side means that the vacuum hose doesn't have to make such sharp bends, especially when turning.
Then I attached the vacuum chute/housing to the mower deck. I went ahead and cleaned up a longstanding issue on it: It slips pretty tightly onto the deck discharge area, but it's actually locked in place with a screw. For the last two years, that screw was just a large-ish drill tip sheet metal screw. This year I went ahead and drilled out that hole and installed a 5/16" rivet nut, and installed a 5/16" bolt. Much more official, and won't wallow out the hole like a sheet metal screw does.
Now I have two final hurdles before I'm ready to suck leaves: When I put away the leaf vacuum last year, I accidentally drove over the big 10" vaccum hose, which ripped it off of the leaf vacuum intake housing. The spiral hose ended up unwinding by 2 or 3 inches. So I need to re-attach it, and I don't think it has a lot of excess slack. So I may have to break out some duct tape or similar to make it workable. The hose cost me almost $100, so I'm loathe to replace it unless I have to.
And of course the 8 hp Briggs commercial engine on the vacuum itself won't start. I shot it a bit of starter fluid and it coughed to life, but then it died and wouldn't restart. And then a stream of gas started piddling from the carburetor. I presume the float or needle valve is stuck or whatever. I turned off the tank shutoff, and I need to pull the carb and give it a bit of attention. If I can I'll order a kit for it, or even a replacement carb if they're cheap and available. But I have to get the carb off to see. It was stubborn on last year's first start, so no surpise that it requires some intervention this year.
I was quite pleased with myself for all that I did get accomplished, but the
was just disappointed for the fact that no leaves got sucked.
You can't win them all..
Bob