With the 1958 Ferguson TO-35 back together, running, and moved out of the garage, there was a big hole just waiting to be filled, so I pulled the TO-20 lawn ornament in to begin the task of getting it running after who-knows-how-many-years of sitting neglectedly (is that a word?). Well actually I didn't pull the tractor in, my wife and I pushed it into the garage, as, you know, it doesn't run.
The first order of business was to check and see if the engine was either free or stuck. It was stuck. Bummer. Not to worry though, as I now know the bolt on the front end of the crankshaft is 1-3/8" (from working on the TO-35, and I presume they're the same between the two tractors) and my trusty 3/4-drive socket wrench should make light work of a stuck engine. Not so fast though. There's something in front of the bolt. Hmm, looks like a hydraulic pump drive flange. That has to come off before I can get a socket on the bolt.
I had to try and spin the engine over though, so I got a pry bar and pried up on both sides of the pump flange bolts. Nada. So.....
Off came the hood...
I should mention, the previous owner told me he had put oil in the cylinders at some point in the three years he's owned the property and tractor. I'm guessing that oil did the job and it just needed a little bit of extra coaxing to break things free.
The next order of business was to see if the starter worked. In order to do that, I figured I'd try getting the original starter switch operational. It is a funky switch. It's activated by moving the gear shift lever sideways to a "start" position, then push the shift lever forward to engage the starter switch. Problem is, the shift lever wouldn't go into that position. To find out what's wrong, I had to remove the shift lever cover. Come to find out, there isn't much wrong other than the shift rail notch block for the "start/reverse" rail is raised slightly higher than the 1-2 and 3-4 shift rail notch blocks, and the shift lever was hitting the raised notch.
At this point I went in and read a PDF copy of the owner's manual I'd found online and read that in order to start the tractor, you need to lift up on the shifter to get it over to the start (and reverse) position. Hmm. Once all that was figured out, I found out both the starter switch and the starter didn't work.
So, out came the starter.
I found the culprit. Two copper conductor bars (circled in red below) that were supposed to be soldered to the through-bolt terminal had broken solder joints.
Annnnnd, it's back together...
... and reinstalled.
I used a 260 watt soldering gun to heat the parts sufficiently to get solder to flow nicely. Once that was done, I noticed there was no insulating washer under the bolt head, so I cut a couple layers of cardboard and slid under the bolt head (the white stuff in the below photo). I have no idea how long that cardboard will last. Hopefully a lot longer than I own this tractor.
When I was disassembling the starter, I noticed the starter drive gear (also called a Bendix drive) would not retract the length of the spiral grooves, and the gear would stay in contact with the flywheel ring gear constantly. Normally the starter drive gear is disengaged from the ring gear until the starter is energized, then the dead mass of the starter gear acts on the spiral grooves and the gear twists out and into engagement with the ring gear. Well apparently I'm not familiar with this type of Bendix drive, and it stays in contact with the ring gear until the engine starts, then some spring-loaded buttons inside the Bendix fly out and the drive gear retracts on the spiral grooves. I only found out how the thing works after I disassembled it. Getting the Bendix pieces back together was a real chore. The next several photos show the Bendix drive.
Since the armature was out of the motor, I turned down the commutator. I first filed it clean, then used 600 grit emery cloth to make it smooth.
With the starter reassembled and working, I turned to the distributor. It was a mess. For whatever reason, the previous owner left the distributor cap and dust cover off the thing and it filled with water.
Yummm.
Double-yummm
After much scrubbing, scraping and sanding, the distributor is cleaned up, oiled, and back together.
This next photo below shows the distributor back in the engine. I also bought a new starter switch that mounts in the top of the bell housing, and which is activated by the shift lever. The lever needs to be pulled up before it can get to the start position (or reverse). How it works is, with the shifter in neutral you lift up the shift lever and move it to the right, then push forward to engage the starter switch. It's pretty ingenious, although it does seem a little complicated. It is to make it so you can't start the engine with the transmission in gear. The TO-35 has a similar neutral start switch but it is activated by putting the auxiliary transmission in neutral.
I didn't have any luck getting the engine to pop off once the distributor was in and timed, so I decided to pull off the carburetor. Yeah, it needs some work also. Those look like either Mason bees or Mud Dauber wasps. I think they're wasps.
It is nasty inside the carburetor. Rust everywhere, and it looks like the bowl has been full of water.
The parts will need a bit of scrubbing to get them operational again.
The spark plug wires had seen better days so I sprung for a new cap, rotor, points and plug wires.
The new plug wires aren't any too long.
After a bunch of fiddling, the tractor did light off for maybe 5 seconds at a time but it would then just quit, like it was running out of gas. I pulled the carburetor back off and took it apart. Again. Upon further investigation, I found the inlet elbow screen was clogged on the inside. The outside of the screen looked very clean.
Once that screen was cleaned up and reinstalled, the tractor lit off and ran very well. There was practically no smoke coming out of the exhaust. The only issue I noticed was that the generator bearings seemed to be very noisy. Here's a short video of the tractor starting and running for the first time for more than 10 seconds (after I figured out the inlet screen clog).
And for the more adventurous folk out there, here is a 30 minute YouTube video showing the process of getting the tractor running from start to finish.
Update after a week: The radiator is clogged such that water will not flow from the top tank to the bottom tank (i.e., through the cooling tubes). There isn't a way to get a brush into the neck or the bottom outlet so I don't know quite how to go about fixing it. I know I can take the radiator to a shop but I'd really rather not.
Also, the engine started running quite rough, nearly dying. And this is after it was running so well. I removed the carb yet again and cleaned it out yet again. That didn't help, so I figured it had to be ignition. I took the cap and rotor off, and was testing the spark at the points when I noticed on occasion a spark would travel from the points "hinge" point over to the central cam. Hmm, that can't be good, so I put in the new points, condenser, and rotor that I'd recently bought for the tractor. The engine again runs like a sewing machine. So nice.
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