Well I thought I had better keep you to up to date with our efforts so far this month, especially as the powers that be have set a date for the 2023 ( my that’s years away isn’t it?) FARMING LIKE GRANDAD show and now we are working flat out between drinking coffee and nibbling the odd biscuit. I trust that some of you are going to bring a tractor or engine along to the show so we are not there on our own?
At the end of last month we finally finished the old fergie that seems to have been in the workshop for ages, like most of these things it was going to be a quick “let’s get it going and get it out” but someone came up with the idea let’s give it a coat of paint, it will only take a few hours! A month later and its done
Left: before Right: after
While that was going on another helper, Barry was working on a mower we
found amongst our stationary engines, it was completely covered in that
natural reddish colour that is quite rare ..... Ah rust. So he completely
stripped it down and restored it, and another member Stu made some new front
rollers it’s been sprayed but when the picture was taken the masking tape
hadn’t been completely removed.
Whilst this was happening several of us were playing with various other
items, Weil was spending many happy hours cranking an old JAP engine that
like a lot of our old machinery has been somewhat neglected, but despite
cutting the valve seats and lapping in the valves, stripping down the carb
and giving it an overhaul it still wouldn’t go so the only thing left was
the magneto so we got Bill our expert on sparks, and despite his efforts
still nothing so we changed the mag for another that we found around and
got a bang out of the engine, this was last week, so we had a coffee and
next Fri Weil will have another go.
Over the last few weeks I have been working on an old Briggs & Stratton,
from research it looks like it was made in the mid 1930’s back in the day
when Briggs used cast iron and not ally, it looked all there, so after
dismantling and freeing off the odd item the inside looked very good and
it doesn't seem to have had much use, but upon checking the coil in the mag
was u/s so Bill is trying to rewind it, in the meantime I have cleaned the
outside of the engine ready to give it a coat of paint. One day when we
were looking in our collection of bits to restore we found another identical
engine on an old horticultural tractor, but this one was in a very poor state,
so the thought is we will do the tractor up and change engines.
Another job that was going on was making a frame to mount an old
Bamford diesel engine, which Phil has had running and now Stu is
doing the woodwork for the base, and Ash has made a cooling tank and
repaired the fuel tank so when I have machined the wheels for the trolley
we should be able to get it all together.
The next project is the restoration of a 1936 Farmall F12 which has
just been donated to us, it looked in fairly good condition until we
started to strip it down, and found 1 big end U/S, the clutch worn out,
and one of the back wheels has got a bit of a wobble so that's a few
Fridays work in front of us, thinks must go and have another coffee!