After hours work!

I am setting here waiting for the fiberglass on a fuel tank to set up and cure. I started this last Thursday night and I got a bad kit and the fiberglass set and started to jell in about 30 seconds. I have done a couple of hundred fuel tanks in 30 years and this was the first bad kit I have had.
Tonight, I had to remove the little bit of fiberglass I put on Thursday night before I could start tonight. Some of it came right off with acetone and some had to be chipped off to get back to a good surface. It should be ready in about a hour. I have just got the fiberglass off me and the tools cleaned up.
This was a gas tank for a JD 4020. They will hold water in the bottom of the tank and rust out around the drain plug. It should be ready for another 45 years.

Eric Benton, Southeast Tractor Parts, Fixing them one at a time!!!!!

Finishing Up!

I finished installing the other rear tire on Linda's tractor last night and I also got all the bolts tightened properly. I could not get the alternator to kick in and charge so I decided to drive it around and let the engine run and warm up. After about 30 minutes of driving the alternator went to working like it is supposed to.

I just finished rebuilding a Farmall M carb for a customer. It had set up for a while and the gas was starting to change and it left a coating on the inside of the carb that had to be scraped out. The fuel passage behind the main jet was clogged with trash and bad fuel. I cleaned the passages and replaced a bad float and now it should run a little better. Good thing I had all of this in stock!!

Eric Benton, Southeast Tractor Parts, Rebuilding carbs one float at the time!!!

Cold Weather

Monday morning it was 21 degrees, Tuesday morning it was 16 degrees, Wednesday morning is was 16 degrees, Thursday morning it was 21 degrees, Today it was 24 degrees! A regular heat wave!!! Monday morning the pond did not have ice on it. Every other morning including this morning the pond has been covered in ice. Since we have had few days this week that the temperature got over 32 degrees the ground is frozen which probably is why the pond was frozen over at 24 degrees.
Last night I went and looked at a JD 3020 that a friend of mine is repairing. The owners son was pulling stumps with the chain hooked to the lift arms. He would back up to the stump, put it in a high gear and pop the clutch and let it run to the end of the chain. When it reached the end of the chain it would yank (and yank is the proper word) the front end of the tractor 6 to 7 feet off the ground. I think he is lucky to still be among the living. The lift stopped working somewhere in this assault. I looked at the control valve for the lift and pressure checked the lift piston and it worked. I pressure checked the control valve and could not get anything to work. It had a pressure valve that I could not open with 175 pounds of air pressure. It normally requires about 1700 pounds of pressure to open the valve for oil to go to the lift control valve. I then back pressured the valve and with the lift lever in the down position I could blow air through the return side of the hydraulic system all the way to the oil cooler in front of the radiator. I could hear it bubble in the cooler! I moved the lever to the up position which should have closed the down/return valve in the control valve. It didn't, I could still hear it bubble through the return side in the oil cooler. We pulled the control valve off and all the valve looked OK. We installed a used control valve I had on a tractor and everything went back to work. The only thing I could think that had happened is the wall between the high pressure incoming oil and the return oil had been cracked by the shock wave created when he hit the end of the chain. The repeated yanking on the lift had evidently beat a large passage out between the two oil passages.
The used control valve fixed the problem and made it an expensive stump pulling!!!

Eric Benton ,Southeast Tractor Parts, Used parts not availible at JD anymore!

Home work!!

My wife and I spent the weekend putting new underpinning on the front of the house. The old underpinning was over 20 years old and had seen better days. We had to tear out all the old and install a new frame and siding. all I have left to do is build an access door. All the sore muscles are worth it to have it done in 1 weekend. Now I can go tractor pulling and not have to worry about working on the house!

Eric Benton, Southeast Tractor Parts, House fixer!!

JD 3010 rebuild #6 The Balancer

I started working on the balancer that bolts to the bottom of the engine inside of the oil pan. The gears had more play than I like to see so I disassembled it a replace the bushings and shafts. The picture has 1 new shaft(the shiny one) and 1 used shaft(the other one) and you can seethe new bushings in the balancer housing. The picture also has 1 of my hammers and a socket with an extension. Yes, the socket is on the extension backwards. I have broken the head of the extension trying to loosen a bolt that did not want to be loosened so now I used it as a drift. I put it in the socket backwards to make a bushing driver to install the 4 bushings in the balancer. It worked real good. And again this is my handfull of tools and a hammer!!

Eric Benton, Southeast Tractor Parts, Fixin things

Last Saturday I went to the Edmund Antique Tractor pull in Lexington SC . I got two 2nd place finishes and 1 first place finish. The first place finish was a pretty easy win(seeing that I was the only one in the class). There were about 40-45 tractor there for the pull. I had a good friend there pulling his IH tractor for the 3rd time since building a new engine for it. I built the carb and the governor for it.The IH tractor ran real well and he had good power in each class he pulled. In the 7500 lb class he ran out of traction and the motor did not die any at all. In the 8500 lb class he needed more weight on the front to hold it down. If he had put 200 more pounds on the front I believe he would have had a 1st or 2nd place finish.
Yesterday, I had a customer that broke both of the front spindles on his 1086 tractor at the same time. I have never seen both spindles break at the same time. I had 1 new spindle on the shelf as well as the bearings for the hub. However, I had to pull a hub and a spindle to get him going and I like to have never got the steering arm off the spindle. It was all I could do hitting it with a 10 pound sledge hammer to drive the spindle out of the steering arm. Today, my shoulders are paying the price for swing that 10 lb sledge!!!
I have started back on the JD 3010 engine. I finally found the right camshaft with the right gear on it to mesh with the oil pump gear. I will post more as I go on the engine.

Eric Benton, Southeast Tractor Parts, working and playing as I get the time!!!!!

JD 1020 Fuel Tank

Last night I worked on a JD 1020 fuel tank that leaks fuel out of the bottom of the tank. The tank had rusted out from collecting water in the tank. The water collects in the bottom of the tank and starts to rust the steel tank. My customer had taken this tank to a welder to have the tank welded up but the more he welded the more holes he created in the tank. I have been fiberglassing fuel tanks for 29 years and have probably done 200 or more. Some of the tanks had holes in them as big as my fist and the fiberglass sealed them up . The first picture is where I have cleaned the parts of the tank I am going to fiberglass and the other 2 pictures are where I have put the fiberglass on the tank and am waiting for it to cure. The 2nd picture shows the hole in the bottom of the tank where the fuel comes out and goes to the transfer pump. This tank costs about $1100 at John Deere. I have fiberglassed diesel fuel tanks, gas tanks, plastic spray tanks and plastic fuel tanks. I fiberglassed the inside of a AC WD fuel tank that had more holes in it than I could count because it was the original fuel tank for the tractor and the customer was restoring the tractor. I also have a couple of JD dealers who send me tanks and customers when a tank has gone obselete and cannot be found used.

Eric Benton, Southeast Tractor Parts,Fuel costs to much to leak it on the ground!!!