Messing around in the shop

[Spike188]

@DavidBarkey I whole heartedly agree with you about atrophy at our age. Many years ago a renter abandoned a unit and left this behind.

It was a big part of my daily routine during periods of light physical work. A few months before covide became the buzz word, complete bed rest was advised, which ran into weeks, followed by years of minimal activity. The weight machine sat idle during that time. A year ago, with medication and diet changes, energy levels began to improve. Skip forward to last month, knowing strength loss and stamina were becoming a huge issue.

5 years ago the program routines were at respectable resistance setting, but not now. All of the programed settings of 3 reps / 12 sets / resistance and 3 minute rests between sets. All of the old programs had to be wipped and changed to beginner format. A month ago there were several upper body lifts that were not possible, even at the lowest settings. I have been pleasantly surprised at how fast recovery has been, without neglecting the need to rebuild slowly. @Harry mentioned being surprised watching me lift a CCK engine into our van last week. We had a 2 hour drive back from Harry's last week. Shortly after returning home the van power steering pump failed.

The pump does fit through there in places fingers cannotreach.

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5 hours of laying on a creeper, spread over 2 days and all is good.

With diet change and exercise meds are no longer needed. Blood pressure is consistently 124/72. It has been a long haul.

[Eugen]

The weather has been really dry and hot for awhile now. We finally got some rain overnight. I wanted to get rid of more of my brush pile but I think I’d just be making a muddy mess with the bigger tractors today. However I’m suffering from cabin fever so let’s go up to shop and see what kind of trouble we can get into!

Let’s bring the 648 around and check fluids and grease it up.
Everything looks good. You know, it would be a dang shame just to park a tractor that all ready to go. And I do have that tree and a stump to dig out….

I dug around the base of the tree and cut the roots all the way around.
Didn’t take long and it was done. Tree? What tree? There’s no tree here.

That was fun, let’s move on to that stump
This one came out pretty fast, I didn’t even have time to take a picture while digging!
I’d like to continue on at some point and clear the rest of this out.
Hard to believe but the boom and swing controls on the backhoe gave my left arm and hand quite a workout. I guess that enough for today. It still feels good to get something accomplished!

Oh that's some really cool backhoe action Jeff, and I'm so glad to see you're able to get some things done again!

[DavidBarkey]

I did not like doing those pumps on a hoist .Can't imagine doing it on the ground . Does not look like any fun at all .

[JSinMO]

@DavidBarkey @Spike188 You guys make some good points. Even over this relatively short time I can tell my stamina is down. I have been doing isometric exercises, which are low impact, to try to keep strength up. I really need to start more cardio at least until I can get back at it full time. If I get full use of my hand back I’ll still have to work on strengthening my left side again.

Glad you got your pump fixed. It’s kind of funny, I have no problem and I’m perfectly happy getting filthy dirty working on old junk, but that job doesn’t look like fun at all!

[Harry]

I’ve done many hard jobs for employers and myself at home. Now in life work on vehicles is going to be done by someone else. The amount of pain I would experience later is not worth it to me. The other day I did some light sanding and painting of some GT parts and the next day my wrists were in pain. I’ve had a few health challenges lately but I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet. Harry

[JSinMO]

Got to spend some time today continuing to clean up my mess. I hauled a couple of loads of brush off then shoved what was left into a pile and luckily got it up on the wagon with the 830. I had forgotten just how many stumps I dug out with the 648!

I think that’s about all I can load and still make it across the creek!

I still have a little clean up to do but it’s looking much better with the majority of the brush gone.

Son was watching me work with the tractors and I could see he wanted to give it a try, so time for a driving lesson!
After some instruction and answering his questions he was off!

He was smooth on the clutch and drove around the field for awhile. To be fair he has been around this stuff since he could walk and he has been driving the 446 and 648, but this is still a departure to move from hydraulic drive to using a clutch on a bigger machine.

I pretty proud of him. Although the thought has crossed my mind that I might be fighting for seat time in the future!

[DavidBarkey]

quote .
I pretty proud of him. Although the thought has crossed my mind that I might be fighting for seat time in the future!
It's better to fight over the seat than social media . When in doubt , just buy another tractor and everyone is happy . Well except maybe the .

[JSinMO]

It’s a really nice day here, I decided to spend some time up at the shop doing some clean up. I’ve got a mess inside and out so let’s do a little of both. You might remember my poor old hay rake went to pieces this past spring. It’s been sitting next to the shop all this time. Just to catch you up one bar broke off and one wheel clutch fell off. Luckily son found all the parts to the clutch out in the back field at the time. It’s been sitting on the workbench patiently waiting.

I threw everything into a bucket with some diesel fuel and gave the parts a scrub. It all cleaned up good enough for what it is and who it’s for! Check out the wear on the clutch pawls, this old rake has made many, many windrows in its life.

With that done I reassembled the clutch and added plenty of grease!

I went out and pulled the rake up to the front of the shop and had a look at the wheel hub. It’s filthy dirty but not damaged. But I realized that with out the clutch in place the wheel just about walked off the axle!

I just need to jack it up and slid the wheel back into place. Luckily I have just the tool for that!

The 648 picked it up no problem and I slid the wheel back on the axle. Then the clutch went into place. This rake was made in an era when engineers designed things to be worked on by someone with minimal tools. This entire machine is held together with carriage bolts, square nuts and pins. If a guy had an adjustable wrench, pliers, and a screw driver he could pretty well do whatever he needed. To that end, the only thing that holds the clutch and wheel on the axle is a pin that runs through the whole thing! After 90 or so years it finally failed and that’s what caused it to come apart.

I put a new pin in, and by that I mean the wrong size bolt the was long enough to go through!
Then i brought the broken bar into the shop. It’s all bent up and is as crooked as a dogs back leg! I decided to disassemble it and save the hardware and tines. Who knows what the next bit of rusty gold will be that wonders in here and can use them!

A little mixing of old and new, it happens that a 19mm socket is the perfect size for these old square nuts.

The parts went into a bucket for now and the bar went onto the junk pile, or rather my place for spare pieces to be used on some other project down the road!

I noticed some water leaking from the gear box so I thought I should have a look. Sure enough it had quite a bit of water inside. I normally keep that area covered but that didn’t happen this time.

I drained the water out and regreased the gears, they are in remarkable condition for there age and use. Even though this thing is in bad shape I still wouldn’t want that water to freeze this winter and crack the case.
With all that done I gave it a quick test run and it has a bad skip to it. Very possible there is a sheared key somewhere on the drive shaft. I realize I slapped it back together and I could have done much more, but the rake is unfortunately just about completely wore out. So I cover the gear box and parked it back it the “row” till I decided what to do with it.

Since I had the 648 out I went ahead and cleaned up the pallets I had on the ground to store hay on. Just so you know the bucket can carry 3 of them at a time!

A couple of trips back and forth and that job was done.

Then I decided to hitch the Super H to that old David Bradly mower that has been sitting in the way since early spring! This is another piece that I just can’t decide what to do with. I spent some time looking it over and making some adjustments. I did take it out and run it for a bit. I was able to cut some short grass with it but I don’t think it’s ready to handle tall stuff with out some more work. So it got covered up and parked in the row for now as well.
After that I am done. Pretty good workout trying to get going again! Time to head for the recliner and relax for awhile!
Thanks for coming along!

[JSinMO]