Rummage Sale Finds - Three Multimeters, Triplett and Fluke

I ran across a church rummage sale a few days ago down in the Portland, OR area and spotted some old multimeters in the sea of stuff. A Triplett and two Flukes. I figured they wouldn't work but decided to get them anyway, just because they looked cool. This first photo is of the Triplett, a model 630-NA Type 4.

Dad's 1940's Stanley Bailey Type 17 No. 5 Hand Plane

I'm working on a slab of Maple for a project and I needed to plane some raised parts down. I grabbed my small Stanley plane that I got at a garage sale eons ago and went to town. Hmm, the cutting blade wouldn't adjust very well and chips weren't coming off nicely, so I took the plane apart and figured I'd put the plane parts together wrong in the distant past. The blade bevel should go down and I'd had it facing up, so I turned it around and put the plane back together. It worked much better now. But then that got me thinking of Dad's plane I inherited from him years ago. I wondered how old it might be, and how it might work on my project. It took me several minutes of hunting in the basement to find it, as I always use the cheapo garage sale plane. I'm not sure why I didn't use Dad's. I do remember using it when I was a kid and didn't own my own plane.

2007 Kubota BX24 Hydrostatic Drive Abrupt Stop in Reverse

Anyone who owns a BX24 (or the "50-series" like BX1850/2350) knows of the issue these tractors had new from the factory regarding the abrupt stop when letting up on the reverse pedal. Mine is no exception. Recently I decided to do more investigating to see if anyone has come up with a solution, as Kubota never did issue a recall. I ran across a guy's posting on the internet that showed that he extended the lever arm that the damping gas strut acts on, which he said did solve the problem. I decided to give it a try. This first photo shows the original arrangement, with the gas strut attaching point being on the rod that runs back to the transmission from the foot pedal.

1950 Briggs and Stratton Model 23 9hp Engine from an AgriCat

I went to a garage sale and saw this engine sitting there with a $25 "as-is" price tag on it. Hmm, I can't pass that up now can I. So home it came. The guy selling it said he had the piece of equipment it came out of, an AgriCat mini dozer (the Briggs being replaced with a modern engine). He said this Briggs probably still ran  Uh-huh, sure. At least the crankshaft turned over and the engine had compression. What I don't understand is why he would sell the original engine out of a 1950 AgriCat. I'm not complaining by any means, it just doesn't make sense to me.