[Flatland Fox]

For Christmas, I have removed the main wheels and the rear fenders. It took me a couple of hours, mainly because the right fender has the hand brake blocking system attached. Do not try to remove the brake handle to release the fender. The handle will collide with the axle housing and you will have to assemble the brake again. The only way to go is to remove the two small screws which attach the brake spring bracket to the fender. I had to cut them with the grinder. At the end of the day, the whole shop was a mess, but the squid unit was finally cleared.

Happy Christmas for everybody!

 

[Jim in NC]

Merry Christmas to you! Hopefully it will go back together much easier.

 

[Flatland Fox]

It has taken a good deal of work to remove the paint of the cast aluminum covers, but I am so happy with the results that I am considering to leave them in natural metal finish with a coat of gloss varnish.
I have also painted the block to start assembling all the auxiliary units.

 

[R.J.]

It's looking good

 

[Jim in NC]

Making great progress!

 

[Flatland Fox]

Thank you, RJ and Jim. This tractor was in better shape than the Massey Harris and the standard of finish was also better and that pays when restoring it.

And I am also learning and getting experience with every tractor I restore.

Today I installed the exhaust manifold and the air admission once everything was cleaned and painted. The admission was left in natural aluminium because that is the way it arrived.

The dynamo was also fixed. I had never seen such a complex way to fix it to the block.

And this is the look from behind.

 

[Flatland Fox]

As you can see in the second pic, the injection pump bracket is ready with new gaskets. I intend to install it with the help of my friend Pepe today. It is not going to beeasy. I did it because there was no other way to clean and paint behind, but if I were starting again, I would not remove the bracket.

The starter motor is also clean, oiled and only needs a couple of paint coats to be ready for duty.

The dash is now clean of laquer. I had to use a very toxic paint remover jelly to get rid of the paint remnants. I must study which were the correct gauges and switches. I think I have got all the gauges, but not so sure about the switches. Pics show different configurations.

Overall, , this a great machine and deserves to be preserved.

 

[Flatland Fox]

This the dash cleaned. Some holes should not be there.

 

[Flatland Fox]

And here is the injection pump installed on its bracket. It was a bit difficult to fine tune it, but the service manuals available explain how to do it very clearly. The first piston has to be in full compression as indicated by a mark on the flywheel (SP, spilling point) and then, the pump has to be in full compression for the first piston and engaged properly with the distribution gear flange ( a dash on the gear flange has to be in line with another one on the pump flange).
Seems easy but it was not, and I do not regret having dismantled the pump bracket as this is a full house restoration, but anyone intending to restore another cropmaster diesel should consider not touching the pump and its bracket if it is working properly.

 

[Flatland Fox]

One problem I had detected was that the clutch seemed blocked. When I removed the starter motor I saw a lot of debris coming out of the clutch housing, and when I adjusted the injection pump I saw even more debris coming out from the adjusting hatch placed at the left side of the clutch housing. So, today I decided to remove the aluminum casting covering the clutch housing. This is what I found:

It seems that the housing had been used as a home by some mice for quite a long time. It took me a couple of hours to remove all the dirt from inside the clutch and the housing. The casting is not clean yet.
This is how the clutch looks now. Now it works flawlessly.

 

[Jim in NC]

Good job! Those little critters can make a BIG mess!

 

[Flatland Fox]

The cover casting clean. I think that I cleared something like 2 Kg of dirt out of the clutch housing.

 

[Flatland Fox]

The starter motor restored, painted and installed.

 

[Flatland Fox]

And the fuel tank disassembled from its bracket. Both fuel lines had been cut...

 

[Flatland Fox]

While cleaning the tank, I started working with the dashboard. After removing paint and rust remnants, I started checking pics of other cropmasters diesel in the net. It is obvious that some of the items installed in it are not original. As I intend to restore the tractor to a condition as original as possible, I need to close some of the holes made to install non original lights and switches. The dashboard is made of fine sheet metal, so it did not seem easy to repair it with some sort of weld, so I used the method that I used in other restorations. I cut some pieces of a stout paint can and I glued them with Nural 21, a cold weld.

 

[Flatland Fox]

Once hardened, I filled the holes with more cold weld to avoid the shrinkage that some times happens with normal fillers.

 

[Flatland Fox]

Tomorrow I will sand the patches.

I also disassembled and cleaned the throttle, the fuel tap, the fuse box and the tank bracket and painted some of the parts, replaced a cork washer and left everything ready for a good coat of paint and installation.

 

[Flatland Fox]

I am having some trouble with the paint of the dynamo. I scratched the finish installing back the dynamo on its support. I tried to retouch it with a spray can, but these paints have a lot of solvent that sometimes affects the underlying coat. Retouches must be made with proper, undiluted paint and a brush. Now I will have to remove the whole paintwork of the dynamo and start again from scratch.

 

[Flatland Fox]

Today I have readied the dashboard for the final paint coats. I will use urethan two pack paint for all the assemblies more exposed to scratches including all the sheet metal parts. This is the dash primed and ready for paint.

I have also repaired the oil pan. It had been welded and showed terrible weld scars that I have covered with filler. I expect to finish and prime it tomorrow.

I have also repaired something that was worrying me a lot. The rear wheels are fixed to the axle end plates with six 5/8 BSF studs. The studs had been welded to the inner face of the plate. Two were missing and one was broken with the welded piece stuck in the plate. I removed the visible weld with an angle grinder but the piece of stud remained stuck. Then I drilled it with a high quality 14 mm HSS drill bit. No mean feat as I drilled it holding the drill in my hands, and then I used a 5/8 BSF threading set to recover the thread. I could see pieces of the thread of the broken stud being pushed out by the threading tool. I ordered the threading set from Volkel from Germany as the BSF thread is almost unknown in Spain. Its quality is outstanding. It cut the thread as if it were butter.
I think it is extremely important to use high quality tools. No offense pretended, but when I drilled the stud I started with chinese HSS drill bits and they were no match for the plate steel. I gave up after more than half an hour attempting to make the hole. As soon as I used an european drill bit, I made short work of it. Not even two minutes. It simply ate the steel. And the bit remains as new while the others are dented and burnt. It is true, the european drill bit was twenty times more expensive than the others, but it made its work and the others did not.

 

[Jim in NC]

Great attention to detail and moving right along with it! Nice pics to document your progress too.