Auction 446. The work begins.

[JSinMO]

If you go back to the beginning of this thread you’ll see this tractor came to me with no brakes and who knows how many years it’s been that way. I finally decided to do something about it! A friend of mine happened to have a good brake band and the linkage is hanging on the tractor. I called over to Bob @myerslawnandgarden and he set me up with a new brake lining with an adhesive backing. He also gave me some good advice on how to attach it to the band.


I started by cleaning up the band and then I roughed up the surface with some 80 grit sandpaper so the adhesive had something to bite into.

The adhesive on the lining is activated with heat. My original plan was to mount the lining and band on the brake drum then heat it up. But I realized I didn’t have much room on the tractor to work and I didn’t really like the idea of a torch next to the gas tank!

So I found a big coffee can on the shelf and fit the band around it. Looks like it should work.

Bob had told me to be careful about getting it too hot, so I used a propane torch and tried to apply gentle heat.

I left it in place until it cooled and it worked like a charm. The lining is secure to the band!

I assembled everything on the tractor and now we should have brakes!

I’m hoping to have time to test drive it and do final adjustments this weekend.

I enjoyed talking with you Bob, and thanks for the help!

[Harry]

Jeff thanks for the terrific post. The pics helped tremendously to show what the process was. Thanks for taking the time to create the post. Harry

[JSinMO]

Thank you Harry!

I went up first thing this morning to try it out, and the brake is working fine! It’s hard to show terrain in pictures, but it is idling with the parking brake set on a hill!

Not a big job but still I’m glad to mark it off the list! I feel better about son using the tractor now that it can stop!

[JSinMO]

You might remember I had ignition troubles awhile back and thought I had found and corrected the issue by replacing and rerouting the wire for the headlights. That discussion is over on the messing around in the shop thread, I thought I’d continue it here. That was back in February and I have been running the 446 regularly since with no issues, till today. It will crank fine but not even try to start.

As usual I have 19 irons in the fire so I didn’t have a lot of time to dig into it. I did grab my meter and take a quick look. I’m getting no power to the coil. The wire runs from the regulator to the coil. As a test I pulled it loose and set up a temporary jumper from the battery with an alligator clip. Tractor starts right up. I ran the wires to the dash area so I could power the coil from the drivers seat. Not ideal but at least I can run the tractor as needed till I can sit down and really look at it.

[JSinMO]

I took another look quickly this morning. I thought maybe a neutral safety switch could be the culprit, and I guess it still might be. I didn’t find anything obvious, but poking around I noticed there was a spare slot at the key and I’ll be darned its switched 12 V! That’s were I put my coil wire, at least for now.