Radiator hoses showed up at my door so I spent the morning finishing up the radiator mounts for the new aluminum radiator.
After all that work of cleaning the starter switch up, I bit the bullet and bought a new switch. The innards of the old one were quite thin in spots so it was only a matter of time before the thing gave me problems.
The new switch didn't help the starting situation any but I did notice the battery's woven ground cable was getting warm over its entire length. You know what that means. I need a new ground cable. And I just happened to have bought an industrial strength hydraulic wire terminal crimper for this very purpose. They are relatively inexpensive online ($35 delivered).
I installed the new ground cable and that made a world of difference in the cranking speed of the engine with the 6 volt battery. As most old tractor people know, a 6 volt battery never cranks an engine very fast, which is why so many people change over to a 12 volt system. I prefer to leave things the way mother nature (and the tractor manufacturer) intended and stay with 6 volts. Oh, positive ground too, can't forget that. Here's a short video highlighting the new cable difference.
Things are coming together. Now to see if I can get the generator to work. I found a voltage regulator in the parts bin, so I quickly threw some wires on it and the generator. The tractor is supposed to have just a cut-out relay instead of a full-blown voltage regulator but this is what I had and it'll stay on the tractor for the foreseeable future. After this photo I did run the wiring better.
Wiring up a tractor generator used to send me to the internet for a wiring diagram but after working on so many tractors and the 1943 Dodge Weapon Carrier (all of which use a generator), I've gotten to the point that I don't need to find a wiring diagram anymore. And I also remembered to "flash" the generator so it is correctly polarized to the battery polarity. In this case, the 6-volt battery is positive ground.
The ammeter shows a charge also. Yay! It may not be evident in the photo below but the dash light (above the ammeter) is also on. I connected it to the ignition switch so it is always on when the switch is on. The bulb is probably 12 volts so that's probably why it is dim.
It's a day later and I made some brackets to mount the coil and regulator more permanently. It still isn't pretty but it's better than it was.
Next I worked on getting the tachometer unstuck. It took probably an hour but I finally got it working without having to take it apart. That would have been a major task. The below photo shows the tach before I got it loosened up. The thing in the right foreground is what looks like an oil wick. Also, I ground a small hex wrench square on one end so I could put some torsional load on the stuck drive socket.
The Ferguson TO-35 generator has a tach drive on the back. When I had two TO-35's, I had ordered a new tach drive cable but ended up not using it. Sure came in handy here.
There is a hole in the dash that I presume is for a light switch. The tractor's lights are long gone so I decided to drill out the hole big enough to allow the tach drive cable threaded nut (and cable) to pass through so I could mount the tach to the steering column. The hole was maybe 1/16" too small so I used a step drill bit and enlarged the hole one step size, and it was just enough to let the nut through. The zip ties leave a little to be desired but it's what I had on hand to get the job done. I'll probably get a super long hose clamp at some point and lose the zip ties.
I cut the flange off using the band saw.
I got new louvered side panels from Lynch Farms Tractor Parts. I had bought the panels from Steiner Tractor but they came from India and were less than stellar (very poor quality control, seven or eight discrepancies), so I returned them and bought these for $200 more than the Steiner panels. They came in a nice box with a wood perimeter but one of the panels got bent on one corner, probably from FedEx dropping the box on its end. The damage is minimal and I can just bend it back to normal.




































 
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