D10 Series III coming along

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I've been restoring (cosmetically) Kim's D10 SIII. Just got the wheels back on today which is always my milestone. I'm not doing near as much with this one just because it was in pretty good mechanical shape, just the steering gear, rewiring, tires, oil lines and filter mount, manifold, carb rebuild, some hydraulics, fluids, carb rebuild, steering wheel refurb, electronic ignition and new gauges (and of course all the small stuff like hoses, clamps, knobs, and many fasteners). Most of the work has been cleaning and painting, but it's on the downhill slide now. I have a journal running on it, but I thought I'd post my milestone since it's rolling again. Hopefully by the end of July, I'll post the after photos so Kim can get on with her bush hogging and scratch it all up.

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The series three had a lot of improvements that make it a nice little tractor, range transmission and sufficient front weight make it a more capable little machine. This is a 64. You can't see it in the photo, but it has a skookum front weight that replaced the sheet steel radiator support, and then another heavy weight that bolts outboard of the grill/radiator shroud (that's what the oblong holes in the shroud are for). My 61 D12 tends to be very light in the front and they solved that with the Series III. The rear deck area is different on these too, has a more finished appearance using the full sized fenders. The Series III uses an identical fender to the D14 only with a section cut out at the rear bottom to make room for the cross beam of the factory 3 point.

I found another one available, but have spent my tractor budget for this year, and have too many others awaiting restoration.
 
Your starting to get good at this restore bit! No telling what you'll be up to next. :)^D

Here, it's if you can do that, why can't you build me a -- whatever
 
That is, going to be,one nice looking tractor. Always liked that Model/Series of Allis Chalmers. I have a Model C, which is the first tractor I
restored, so it still means a lot to me. You can tell you take pride in your work, take care.
 
I restored a C in the 90s, beautiful tractor and I still have the narrow front sitting in the rear reaches of the shop since I upgraded it to wide front. A guy saw it and fell in love with it and at the time, we had 21 tractors with too many sitting out in the elements so I sold it to him. Sweet little tractor. Someday I'll pick up another, and leave it narrow front this time. I have a restored B I did back then, but I like the steering gear on the C and the wide track.
 
It only seems like I'm getting good at it because you can't look close, and I make sure to take my photos with that in mind ;-).

The only things really interesting on this were the grill, Tool box, and various fasteners I made. The grill was "missing teeth" as Kim put it and that gave me a chance to practice my novice TIG work. It's amazing with 22 gauge sheet metal, how you can strike the tiniest arc and build a small pool that will let you weld in those delicate missing strips into that perforated sheet metal. I made the two left mounts and put in 3 custom strips to fill the missing steel. Took some grinding to make it look good, but it's passable, and I'm feeling bolder with the TIG now.

The tool box was shot and I tossed in the scrap bin, but she wanted to keep as many of the original pieces as possible, so I welded in half the bottom, back and end, fortunately none of the parts that you can see when it's installed.

Lastly I bored out carriage bolts on the lathe for the fender lights, hard to find items and it didn't take long. Only fun thing left is to make the rear work light mount, I have the pattern but while it's easy to cast, it's hard to shape from steel. Going to try and make a reasonable facsimile. If that fails, I'll have my son 3D print one and we just won't tell anyone it's plastic ;-).

Grill Before:
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Grill After:
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Tool Box Before:
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Tool Box in process (the final repair is obvious when you open it, I'll be gluing rubber sheets in the bottom, back and sides, don't want stuff clattering in the tool box anyway, right ;-)), I didn't shoot an after picture:
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I tried like heck to find those light bolts in a larger size, because the base of her light shells had expanded over the years. So I had to dust off the lathe (after 20 years inactivity). No precision here, just a drill bit, but it worked fine:

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The big boys in the auto store just need a vin number, a welder, grinder, a hammer and some sheet metal. Maybe a bit more but you done good!
 
That's the fun part. In fact, cleaning and painting can be pretty frustrating (until you're done anyway ;-)). I envy people who can paint well.
 
That looks great. As soon as it is finished, put it to work. That is what they were built for.
Richard in NW SC
 
That's what's going to happen, Kim picked up another bush hog just for it. It should be better than my D14 for pto work. She didn't even really want it restored, but fixing the first few electrical problems proved it had to have the rust eliminated. It also had other mechanical issues that required a lot of disassembly, so it made no sense to clean and paint parts of it without doing the whole thing, would have looked silly. Now that I've had it all torn down, it really needed it. There was clay an inch thick in spots on it, couldn't have worked on it the way it was. But it's totally a working tractor.
 
looking good, i have 3 of these and they are my favorite tractors, keep up the good work , can't wait to see it finished
 
Three? That's great. I have a chance to get another SIII D10 with cultivators. I'm really tempted but I have too many machines waiting in line already. It does seem like an excellent machine to have. With weights and filled tires, it would be more competent than my D14 since it makes the same torque. The range transmission and more modern PTO allows it to handle a lot of jobs better. AC had a great machine in these, but in the opinion of one of the authors of AC books, it was a great machine slightly out of it's time since the import boom began at the same time as the SIII. The first Kubota's to come here weren't near as competent (I believe over 10HP below the D10/12), but I imagine it was the price point that AC apparently couldn't match. If they would have, we'd see a lot more of these in existence still.

If you have a Series III, do you have the cover that goes over the governor control. It's a triangular sheet metal cover. I'd like to build one for Kim's so it would be complete. Don't have the measurements.
 

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