Tractor Progress

 

This one struck a chord with me, since in one of the last classes I taught at the community college, 4 out of 10 students couldn't tell time. As my dear old Pappy used to say: "Couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel."

The valve cover looks pretty good with a fresh coat of paint and the new chrome breather. 

I welded up the radiator shell yesterday and I remembered I had a quart of Allis orange I bought years ago to paint the fenders after repairing them. I opened it up and it looks good, surprisingly enough, so I'll paint the shell and the hood before it goes back together.

I dug the radiator pressure testing kit out yesterday and checked to see if I had the proper size plugs to pressure test the radiator. The kit was designed to test a radiator while installed in a vehicle, but mine has some homemade gizmos using rubber balls that are inserted into the inlet and outlets and then seal the openings by squeezing the rubber balls using the big wing nut. In the photo, I stuck one of the plugs in the lower hose. The rubber plug wouldn't fit in the top but there was a Rube Goldberg fitting that was in the box that worked just fine. I'll see about filling the radiator with water today and pumping up some pressure and see what's leaking. The tractor parts are due to arrive today, so as long as I can fix the radiator, I'll be set with my end of the repair, after I paint, that is.

I replaced a deck board yesterday, so I loaded up the necessary tools in my old carpenter toolbox to take to the job. I got to thinking about the box when I was putting the tools away, trying to remember when I made it. I'm not exactly sure, but if memory serves me correctly, I was working as a maintenance man at MarBel Corporation some 50 years ago. When I made it the Missus and I were newlyweds living in an apartment and I kept all of my woodworking tools in the box. The box was kept in my little closet workshop until we got our first house and I had a garage for my tools.