22 tonnes of a-gravel arrived yesterday morning via a triaxle dump truck; needless to say our boys got really excited, a mound of new material to explore, climb, and dig. The gravel mission is to live under the addition and, if any left, fill up some lower spots in the driveway.
After digging the two stumps out the area was left with two large holes, about 10x4 feet each and various deformed terrain. Then we got quite a bit of rain which made the whole thing unmanageable with the 644. Little by little, in the last few days of dry weather, the dirt got pushed around, still soft in places, but managed not to get stuck like it did on the first day I tried -- had to pull the tractor out with the car.
Early morning yesterday I made a last effort to level the ground and once the gravel arrived I declared the area ready for it. The 644 is no bulldozer that's for sure. I'm not sure if it's easier to level dirt with a blade, but the other tractor that I could put a blade on doesn't have any way of hooking a weight box on the back and has no AG tires, so I did what I could with the 644 bucket.
Carried about 4-5 buckets of gravel, and suddenly a puff of white smoke with smell of burned wire insulation came from under the hood. Turned the tractor off quickly and as fast as I could pulled the wired off the battery. I could see the insulation on one of the wires bubbling.
Two wires coming from the ignition switch were burned, one going to +Battery and the other to the high voltage coil. After a while of doing that, my wife stops me showing me a part that looked like the front axle center pin, she found in the dirt as I was backing up the tractor. Sure enough, it was it. Somehow the retaining bolt was gone, and nowhere to be found. Another snag, but easily fixed. Done that too, cleaned up the pin really well, new old bolt, new grease pumped in, and on to more gravel duty.
As three's a charm, I was waiting for something else to go wrong. Sure enough, after about an hour of work the tractor again stared to lower in RPM, and wanted more and more choke, until eventually it just stopped. Something to do with heat I'm thinking. But that was enough work for the day.
