Here's Molly with her lamb born last weekend.And here's me trying to get that old tiller sorted.
I was able to get the new tire and a tube to match, and the other tires or wheels I was looking for on my expedition this morning.
I resorted to the chainsaw (one of the older saws with a trash blade) to get the old tire off. I was then forced to grind a whole bunch of nasty crumbly rust off the rim, rust that might have punctured the tube. I used an old tube for a liner, holding it on tight with lots of tape.
The new tire went on easy and inflated just fine. Starting the tiller up went just fine. The problem occurred after I tilled a couple rows. That old green Tecumseh engine seized solid.
I tore it down to see whether it was crank bearings or piston and cylinder. It was the crank. Not much point in rebuilding it right away, I thought, seeing as how I had a whole other engine.
But then I realized that my spare engine, the red one in these photos, had a slightly different drive shaft, too big for the tiller's main pulley.
What to do?
Luckily the shaft was too big, not too small, so I assembled the fuel tank and carb to it, got it started nicely, and then ground down the shaft with the angle grinder while the engine was running.
This rather ad-hoc lathe worked fine and I finished up with the correct taper on the shaft, if a little off-round. I decided that it would hold fine, and put the whole thing back together and tilled the pea patch as planned, only a few hours late. All worked just fine. I think the tiller looks pretty spiff with its new red engine.
I then fitted all the other wheels to all the other equipment.
I now have good tires on all our equipment.
That would have been plenty excitement for me for one day, but then our friends and occasional farm-helpers Anders and Alysa came by, so we had drinks and let our dogs play on the lawn with their mutt, Gusto.
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Welcome to our Farm Blog.
The purpose of this blog is for Aimee and I to communicate with friends and family, with those of our students, and other folks in general who are interested in homesteading and farming activities.
The earliest posts, at the very end of the blog, tell the story of the Great Farm, our purchase of a fragment of that farm, the renovation of the homestead and its populating with people and animals. Go all the way to the last post in the archive and read backwards from there to get it in chronological order.
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