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combinekid
02-17-2008 19:02:12
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After reading the responses to my post "The LA lives again" It sounds like some of you are interested in the progress of my LA restoration. I would first have to say it has been very slow. Not for lack of intrest but simply for lack of time. My Dad and I have a custom grain harvesting and custom soil fumigation business so this keeps me very busy in the early spring, summers, and fall"s. This leaves me only the winter time to work on the project and really only evenings and weekends at that. And many times I have other stuff to do so I can"t devote much time to it Also as many of you I"m sure well know everything takes longer then you think it will. I never thought that this project would take this long. I also like things to be correct so I have taken extra time to clean all the origional bolts and nuts and make sure it is mostly back to origional. For a little recap I started on the tractor in November of 2004. It had been sitting accross the road from our farm with three of its tires off, hood fuel tank, seat, and rear deck removed and piled near by. It had been painted Cat yellow. Someone had removed all these parts to rob the pto shaft out off the tractor leaving the rest to rot. I got the tractor from my neighbor for free just to haul it away. He does not know its history as it was there when he bought his place from the origional owner who is dead. All I know is that it had been sitting in the same location for at least 25 or so years. From a very nice guy, D.C. Tom, on this site. I found out by the serial # that it is a 1948 model was sold new at a dealer in Twin Falls ID. Its options were hycap raidator, hyd brakes, and low low gear. All of these options are still on the tractor! In the winter of 05 after dragging it home I found that the engine was full of mouse nests, water, and rust. Although the tractor looked compleate It was missing many parts. I needed a magneto, generator, hand crank, pto shaft, belt pully, grill, fuel tank, e-brake wheel and more. I disasembed the engine and determined that I would need new sleeves, exhaust manifold rebuilt head etc. I took all the engine parts including the block to the local machine shop to be cleaned and inspected and the head redone. They determined that the babbit rod bearings, and main bearings were still ok and that the crank only needed polishing. I would need new sleeves and rings but the pistons, wrist pins, and con rods were ok. I located a parts tractor in Walla Walla WA which I did some trading for but It was the spring of 2005 until I could get it home.This provided me with many of the missing parts including a pto good rear rims, but no manifold, hand crank, and a few other things. By this time I was to busy with farm work to work on the tractor. The winter of 2006 I had some other more pressing matters that reqired my extra funds so I did not do any work on the tractor. During all this time I watched ebay listings and was able to get a hand crank, exhaust manifold, four good used sleeves, magneto, and all the manuels. In the winter of 2007 I finally had all the parts to put the engine together. By spring I had it all together except the radiator. This fall I had the radiator tanks sand blasted and about a week ago I brazed up a crack in the lower tank and reasembled the radiator. Now the only thing left to start it was adding oil, water, and timeing the mag. I was pretty nervous upon starting it because when a project takes this long you kinda wonder what you forgot. Much to my releaf after very little cranking it fired and died but afer a few ajustements ran pretty good. Now that it runs I need to put the tranny back together. The sliding gear shaft sticks out the right side of the case and has an e-brake wheel on the end needs repleaced. Apperently at some point this wheel had come loose wallered out the keyway and the end of the shaft and then fell off. The wheel has a flange on it that runs through a seal so now that it was off oil would run out of the case. Some farmer in an attemt to keep the tractor running had welded to the right side bearing cap, a piece of pipe with a cap to cover the shaft and keep the oil in. This welding had warped the bearing cap that holds the right side timkin bearing so that the bearing cup was spinning in the casting. I knew that I would need a new shaft, bearings and right side casting. I robbed the casting off my parts tractor but could not use the shaft out of the parts tractor as it is an eariler model and is diffrent. Just about two weeks ago I saw a listing from an individial on ebay that was selling LA parts and said to e-mail him if you need anything as he had several parts tractors. I asked him if he had a good shaft. He did and he just got it pulled and is sending it to me, so as soon as I get It I will put my tranny back together and take the tractor on a little test drive. I also need to fix the hydrolic brakes and this sounds like from reading other posts that it will be a chore. Once it is back to running and driving I plan to focus on the body work getting rid off all the nasty yellow paint and priming and painting. Last spring I was in at our Local John Deere dealer getting combine parts and the store manager told me that he was cleaning up his tire pile. It just so happened that they had a set of decent matched contintal tires (that I belive were steering tires of a late model front wheel assist tractor) that our the correct size for my LA. He told me I could have the free if I hauled the away right then. I wasted no time getting them hauled away as. I was dreading buying two new rear tires! I"m really looking forward to the project being done so I can use it for odd jobs around the farm, pulling hay wagons for church youth group hayrides, etc. Also It will be nice to have it out of the back corner of the shop as we need the space! Throughout this project I have really come to like this tractor. It is so big and heavy and cool looking yet so simple! I have also learned to have lots of patience in locating parts but over time I have found almost everything I need feel confident that it will eventually be finished! Also if someone could refresh my memory as to how to post pics on this sight I could put some pics up if anyone is interested. Well hope I did not bore you all to death with this as it seems like it takes a long time to type out what you could say in just a few minutes. Thanks again for all the help and advice everybody!
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