Dead Dodges.

So about a week before I had to go back to work, I figured it was time to do something about the old trucks in my neighbors field.

Oddly enough, I teach with his daughter, and am friends with him on Facebook. I'd talked to him on FB a few times about this that and the other, but never in real life even though he only lives 1/2 a mile from me.

Sent him a message asking about the old trucks rotting in his field, and he was very amenable to seeing them go bye-bye.

Went over and checked them out- boy were they rough.







The black one supposedly was running before it got "parked". He took it in payment for some sheep he sold, who knows how long it sat before then. The other is anyones guess. There's no oil on the dipstick, and the cab has been really smushed at some point, but it has a decent bed on the back.

So I hemmed and hawed for a while. His price wasn't sooooper cheap, but it was a pretty good deal. I figured worst case scenario- I can get my money back out of them to someone that wants a rat rod. Better scenario- I get the motor running, and if it turns out to be pretty decent I'll put the motor in the '48 Dodge that I inherited- that my Great Grandpa bought brand new and used on the farm. Best case scenario- I get the truck fired up and drive it home, and with a bit of elbow grease turn it into a daily driver.

Yeah, right.

Went back over the next day and sealed the deal. Took some tools and junk with me and tinkered for a bit.



Hooked a battery up, fiddled with some wires, lubed some linkages, turned the key and stomped the starter button. WOW, it cranks! It even popped a bit on starter fluid.

Had my fill of hornets (carb cleaner is an EXCELLENT wasp killer- drops them pretty much on contact) so I packed it in and went home. 

Went back over there another day and began trying to move things around. The rusty one was turned into a fence post and had 4 flat tires. Took a while to get the tires aired up and all the string and barb wire detached- oh, and kill 4 million more hornets.



We did finally get it loose, started to pull it backwards and noticed this:



Guess that tire ain't going to hold any air!!! Kept pulling, and it BOUNceD over the bump each rotation until it finally popped. Got it moved though. 

With "Rusty" out of the way, I could take the rest of the old fence down to get to "Blacky". Backed up, hooked on, and yanked away.

Huh. Guess that wheel ain't spinnin. Probably 'cause it's flat. Only one tire on this truck would hold air.



Resting spot.



Started changing tires and learned something new! Can you tell?



See the "L" on the nuts? Yeah. The drivers side lug nuts are left hand thread.

Even got a little help with this part.



Some helped more than others... Don't know what he's doin in there.



But in the end, they both helped out a fair bit spinning bolts in for me.



Hey! A truck with 4 tires that hold air!


Time to get Blacky home. Hooked up my super lightweight tow bar and headed out.



Remember that dragging back wheel? Well, it wasn't because the tire was flat...





But we did make it the half mile or so home. It helped a lot too once I straightened the steering wheel out on the truck.








 

Great.  What am I sposed to do with this?!

Back to the Grind...

Well, its official.  Started back to school last Wednesday.  Couple of meetings under the belt already, and 8 mind numbing hours of helping with registration spread over 2 days.  Didn't get anywhere near as much as I'd hoped done in my room but we are making progress.

Now that I'm back "on the job", that means project time has totally dried up.  I've got a few things I want to post about over the next week or two from summer, but in the meantime here's what I've been working on most recently.

The Monday before I was supposed to go back to school, my wife and kids were already in school.  That left me home all alone.  Boooorrrriiiinggg... Time to go for a ride! So I got all loaded up and headed out on this:



To do this:



I was under 700 miles to go for my goal this year, this would have put me within 400 . The last couple of miles was hoping to rack up riding the 7 miles to work and back.




Ride started out great. Roads were clear, found a fun little detour, clearish skys, nice weather. Had a little niggling feeling though that maybe I should head home, get some stuff done, and save this for another day.



Nah, it'll be fine.

15 miles later.



The hole is almost the size of a quarter, and you can see clear into the tire. I hear a *BANG* and felt the bike kind of lurch, but just thought that I ran over something. About a mile later, I decided something was wrong, and started slowing down from about 70. Once I got down to about 45 the back end started to wander ALL over the place. Kinda scary, but I got it stopped and managed to get a ride into Soda Springs and get things figured out.

3 hours later, thanks to some family that lived sorta nearby, we got the beast loaded in the back of his BRAND new pickup, which made it a pain because we had no ramp and he didn't want to scratch his new truck.



Made it home, but I think the bike'll be down for a while... Can't afford a new tire right now.



Only made it about 90 miles into the 300 mile trip.  Bummer. Guess I'll just have to ride 'ole paint.  I wanted to haul things though, so that means I had to camouflage my KTM as a KLR... Think anyone will notice?



That worked great for a couple of days, but really... I can't handle that.  SO... Dug out the set of panneirs and Happy Trails rack I have for the bike that got mangled when I got rear-ended at a stop sign a couple of years ago.

Started with this:



Applied some heat,



Welded up some cracks,



Added some hopefully rear-ender deterrent:



Slapped a coat of paint or 3 on the rack,




And ended up with this:




Turned out pretty nice!  Even got it relatively square.



 




Now I can lug my lunch to school in STYLE!  Hoping to get a new tire for the ST soon, as I still want to hit my goal of 60,000 miles (6,000 of them this year).

I'm getting excited for school- got all kinds of idears tumbling 'round in my head for things to try and change this year. Hoping for a good batch of kids who want to learn, but I have to remember its more MY attitude about that then it is theirs that makes it fun for me.

Could be a pretty rough year though.  I have 17 computers, 22 desks, and TWENTY FIVE students in most of my classes.

Twenty five students? You might say, "thats ALL!?" Yeah.  Try having that many in my classroom with the amount of different things going on and sharp objects / power tools all over the place.  The rest of my beard may actually go white this year.

Wish me luck!

Going Green. JOHN DEERE green!

I am soooo slow at getting my own projects done.  Last year, a lady approached me about her dead lawn tractors.  She was in need of a riding mower, and wondered if I would be willing to fix one, taking the other as payment.  Only one of them was even close to having all of the parts, and even then it was pretty rough.  This post starts waaaayyy back then when I picked up her mower.  I won't dwell on the assembly of the 110.  I started working on the 314 last week, so these pics came from about a 3 day period.

Here's the 110 I put together for her.  Before:

  
 And AFTER.  Looks purty good, eh?





And this is what I took in payment.

Yeah I know.




Seems to be in decent shape, other than the busted steering wheel, ignition switch that got cut out, and missing seat foam. Front tires have some slow leaks. I have the rest of the sheet metal for it. Currently trying to figure out the no-spark issue but I'm fairly certain its got a bad coil.

The biggest issue is that the tractor is all I have- no deck, tiller, blower, blade, nuthin.
Spent some time puttering on the 314, and even got it running!

Thought I had a bad coil- tested a bit off. Borrowed a coil from my '48 Dodge, and it tested sorta okay but I still couldn't get spark. Got to monkeyin around with the points and it seems that they had some sort of film on them- while I was probing with the test light I got a big ZAP all of the sudden at the points, and viola- spark! Hooked the original coil back up, shot some gas in the carb and it fired.

Next step was the fuel system- unhooked the fuel line in a couple of places, ran some fresh gas through the tank and let it drain, then began hooking the lines back up with a new fuel filter until I got fresh gas to the fuel pump. Pulled the carb bowl off and gave it a redneck cleaning, got gas to the carb, put it all together and away she went!

TEST DRIVE!

Huh. It don't move.



Got to looking and discovered this...





The pin from the drive shaft to the transmission was snapped and had been for a long, long time.

Time for a temporary fix so I can see if the trans is okay. If it is, I might be willing to spend some time / money on this thing.

Drilled out the remains of the busted pin, found a bolt, made some bushings out of a roll pin, and cobbled it back together.







Set the seat pan back on, fired it up, and took it for a spin. Note the awesome steering wheel...



Seems to run and drive great. It's a little worn, but I can fix that. If only I could come up with a deck, blower, tiller, blade, etc. etc.

Followed up a couple of leads on attachements, hoping to score a deck, blower, tiller, and maybe a blade and some other small parts from the same guy my brother bought his entire bucket or three of bolts from.

Spent some more time on it this evening and got a few small odds and ends sorted out. Motor is pretty much buttoned up- still need to pick up and air filter and low speed screw for the carb and fix the points wire but other than those things and an oil change in the near future I think it's good to go.

Next step- prettify. Labor is cheap, parts are not. Might have to wait a while on the big parts purchases so for now I'm going to focus on scrubbing it up and getting some fresh John Deere Green paint on 'er.

After her bath.



Cleaned up nice. I'll let it dry overnight and hit it with the wire wheel tomorrow. Hopin to get a little paint on it tomorrow as well. Time will tell.....



Popped the hood off, scuffed it up, wiped it down with acetone, and masked off the decal.



First coat of paint:



After another coat and some drying time.



And a little comparison of the fresh paint vs. the old faded crap.



Lots better, but not perfect. I'm not spending a ton of time on this, I plan on USING the tractor so it's not going to be a garage queen. Just freshening it up. 


Fenders off, bits removed.



Spent about 45 minutes with the wire wheel knocking off loose paint,



Then a quick once over with the sander to smooth things out a bit.



Taped and wiped, ready for paint.



One coat in.



All done!





I worked on a bunch of other things while it was drying, but I'll include this part now. I bought some trailer clearance lights for tail lights- BUT... Anyone see a difference here?



The light on the right has 2 bulbs, the left only has one. They came off the same shelf, were the same price, and the boxes had the same numbers on them Oh well, one side will be brighter than the other.
Installed and wired.












Cleaning up the control tower...



And some paint.


Wire wheeled and painted most of the frame. Kinda pointless, because most of this is hidden underneath the fenders or side covers, but it makes me feel better knowing the rust has been slowed down a little...



Set the fenders back in place...


Fixed the missing ground wire for the headlights, and put the hood back on.






 Grill before:



After:



Installed.



Spent the afternoon wiring up a new ignition switch. Took some figuring but I got most of the cut wires from the old and missing switch figured out. There are 2 left that don't seem to be hooked up to anything, and the tractor will start / run and the electric PTO works fine without 'em so I guess I'll just cap them off for now.



Biggest problem was all of the universal ignition switches I found were too big to fit in the original hole because of the steering column, so I had to find a new spot to mount it. At the same time, I cleaned up the dash a bit and put some new paint on it.

Dash before:



Dash after.



Still have a little cleanup to do on the silver paint. When it's dried for a couple of days I'll hit the plastic with some cleaner and maybe some clear coat. Might even try polishing up the knobs, but thats getting a little too detailed for a beater I plan on using. We'll see.

Slapped a coat or two of paint on the air filter cover...


Side cover before:


Wire wheeled:



Sanded:



Paint.



Installed.



And the other side.



More pics from yesterday.

Ran wires to the light switch, capped the two extra wires, and tidied everything up with zip ties.



Lights!



The middle headlight is burnt out but that's an easy fix.



Two more pics from yesterday. I set the seat pan back on, and found the old foam. It's falling to pieces but you get the idea.





All dressed up with nowhere to go!

This project is probably coming to a close as it is for a while. Other than painting the wheels, the rest of the parts are going to cost $$$, which I don't have at the moment.

On the plus side, I still have a week before school starts up again, and I have a '39 Dodge 1/2 ton that needs some elbow grease.