Josh from CA

The engine is coming along very well. I believe the two hardest parts was had buying a "new" crank for it and dealing with the bearing sizes (and prices). Luckily it came together. The second hardest (more stressful) part in my opinion was installing the cam bearings by ourselves. it was challenging but again it came out nicely. A more interesting activity was home polishing the "new" crankshaft. We bought 600-1000 grit emery cloth, wrapped it around each journal, used some kroil as lubricant, and spun the emery cloth with a belt. It worked pretty good. A couple of deeper scratches were still visible but were only tenths of thousands. (No feeling of a step). Dont forget its a tractor with a maximum rpm of around 1800 ( i think). Its not a racing engine.

The "cowl" (correct me if I'm using the wrong terminology) was too far gone to be saved and was being held together by a peice of aluminum sheet metal. I decided it would be best to cut out a new one. I will not be drilling the holes for a number of reasons.

The fenders, hood, and engine covers after being sand blasted.

I have fallen way behind on my post on here. Although it has been a long time and a lot has happened, hopefully I can update you with some pictures. Josh Patchwork of the fenders.

I believe thats going to be the plan. Its so original. It still has the original water temp block off plate and the orchard style in cab fuel shut off. Josh

This is the O4 i just got.

I have found some major issues inside the motor of this thing. It looked pretty clean when i pulled the oil pan off and i think i spoke to soon when i said it looks good. As i was removing the number 1 rod bearing cap (which was saftey wired with bailing wire) 2 small pieces of spun bearing fell out. All 4 rod bearings were spun which leads me to believe that it got rebuilt with the wrong size bearings. It pretty much almost destroyed both the rods and the crank so those will have to go to a machine shop to be ground. Good news though. I found a O4 with really straight skins and a rebuilt motor for a good price. 😀

My mom has a really cool 2018 chevy cruze diesel that has a manual transmission. Not the fastest way of getting around but fun and really efficient. It gets 35-40 mpg in town. It will also pull any gear you put it in.

Preparation for TIG brazing.

I have made a ton of progress in the past couple of days. I am ready to pull the engine and start rebuilding it. I have been slowly working on the other small parts that need repairs or rebuilding. One of the small parts i started working on is the exhaust manifold elbow. It is cracked and missing a pretty good size chunck on the bottom of it. I plan to TIG braze it back together. When i was pulling all radiator and water pump i relized that it has a brand new radiator and a brand new water pump. Once we got the head off i saw almost every water port plugged solid. Im almost sure that overheating was one of the reasons it was retired. When i first got it running it knocked real bad. It turns out that pistons 1, 2, and 4 have really worn wristpins. It will be interesting what the inside looks like. Thanks to everyone who has been helping me with my fender situation. Josh

Tony, i am doing this project with the restoration program but not with my school. It will be just me working on the tractor. The tractor restoration program is pretty good and i am glad to be a part of it. BTW this one is going to be way better than mel's

I knew the rear wheel weights were sorta rare but i didn't expect that. The tractor is being restored in a antique tractor restoration competition and we have a time constraint so i have to get some fenders soon... although i will continue to search for the original style. Thanks for the info.