More work on the tractor. The pump rebuild kit has arrived. Though it’s for a different pump, lots of bits are the same. This justified buying it I thought. The glass was full of crud and everything needs a good tidy up. Then I started playing on it, and it was really going well until a huge plume of white smoke came out the exhaust... maybe needs new rings or head gasket? I got the track all tightened again, bought all these 3/4 drive bits the other week for $200 and they’ve come in super handy. I don’t have any whitworth but the conversion chart gets close enough.
I absolutely love Ransomes, my partner and I placed a bid on one a couple months back. Didn’t win but in the end we just fixed up some of of his David Brown crawlers and a Fordson major. Crawlers are so much fun.
They really are eh? It’s mesmerising to watch them lay down their track and terrific fun to just mow down obstacles that would get all tangled up in a normal tractor, like branches. I’ve had both my sister and my mum have a go on it, they both enjoyed it! My sisters boyfriend was less enthusiastic to begin with but after seeing me mucking about doing skid steering, had a go, loved it, now wants one too!
the lots of oil smoke could just be a bit too much oil in the sump then with all the skidding about caused oil problem
Oh absolutely, something so neat about driving them. We have been fixing up his dozer David brown mainly which is nearly mechanically done, we’re hoping to take it somewhere and start making a mess
I cleaned all the petrol crud out. It was really horrible, sludge and a glaze over everything. The castings for the housing came up quite well with a scrub of carby cleaner. The lower half is now reassembled and I need to make up the diaphragm bits and buy some gasket paper. I opted to lose the patina and scrub everything shiny and clean.
I love the simplistic design of the older machines, amazing how many had that same glass fuel bowl. We did it on a YouTube series on his channel. I’ve not seen one like that before, is that a priming lever. Side note, I looked at the earlier picture and made more sense of it.
