An Auction for the Rest of Us.

I got the time to experiment with the hydraulic pump.  It had obviously been previously installed, but also was obviously not the factory item.  It was sitting loose on the back of the frame when the tractor was bought.

The plumbing attached to it has a relief valve on the pressure side and a Y on the supply side, giving two supply connections and two pressure connections.  The tractor only appears to have one supply and one pressure connection.  For now, I just put plugs in the extra connections on the pump.

Even though it appeared that the pump had been removed as found, I could find no way to fish it into the place where it needed to be, so I removed the sheave and bracket, then reinstalled in the tractor.  Here are some photos.

With that pump hooked up and plumbed in, I filled the reservoir.  No leaks, so I'm almost ready for a test drive.

First, I removed the foot valve for the air brakes.  It was frozen up and I'll probably have to get a new one, this piston looks grown together with the aluminum housing.

Oh well, I have the big brake out front, so time to give all the systems a test.  Here's a short video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Urn7Sn5Yu4&feature=youtu.be

Overall, it looks like everything works as it should.  I still need to get the one fuel injector pulled and cleaned to eliminate the miss, the divider plunger to change from blade slope to blade tilt is still frozen and I need to fix that brake air valve.  Then, of course, the entire electrical system.

At least I'm at the point that I can play a bit.

Pete.

This weekend I got some more work done.   Still haven't been able to get the bad injector pulled.  I'm afraid to put too much "pry" on those hold down ears for fear of breaking one.  I did run it around for an hour or two with the hold down nuts loose.  I'm hoping that the heat and cool cycles and combustion pressure cycles might help loosen that injector if I just leave it uncontained for a while.  If it doesn't work loose soon, I'm considering using a jaw type bearing puller with a spanner bar to maybe put more gentle lifting pressure on those hold down ears.

I did get the frozen air brake valve removed from under the floor, disassembled and freed up.  Here's a couple pictures of it in situ:

Removing it was another "Stand on your Head" job.

Once it was out, my first thought was to go to Chester Avenue Brake, who have been in town for over 100 years, and see about cheap replacement, rebuild kits or if they could free this valve up.  I walked in the door and Phil, the counterman (and one of the sons who now owns the joint) just looked at me, looked at what I had in my hand and began shaking his head.

He let me walk up to the counter while, still shaking his head, he asked "Don't you people own ANYTHING that was made after 1954?"

He went on to say "Let me tell you how bad this is:  See this part here (indicating the body of the valve)?  This part is at least a standard Bendix part, it is just one that has been out of production for at least thirty years."

We went on to say "See this plate and the plunger which the pedal attaches too?  That is no doubt a specific part manufactured by whoever made your machine.  That is most likely unobtainable."

Then he turned it around a time or two and said "Oh, let me tell you, it's worse than that.  This isn't even a Bendix valve body.  This is Wagner, which predates Bendix.  You'd be lucky if you could find anything related to that anywhere."

After giving me all the good news, he did describe what was likely inside, gave me lots of good advice about how to get it apart, freed up and rebuild or repair as necessary.

On the way to his shop, I had just thrown the valve in the bed of the pickup.  After hearing all this good information, I very carefully wrapped it in a towel and put it on the floor of the back seat.

I returned home after buying a new, superstrong, giant flat blade screwdriver in hopes of unscrewing the three flat head machine screws retaining the plate to the valve body.

Two miraculously came right out.  I didn't even have to torque on the screwdriver too much.  The third, not so much.

I clamped the body in a vice and used all the twist I could muster, but couldn't break it loose.  I tried the small crescent wrench on the screwdriver shaft trick.  That stripped part of the shoulder on one side of the screw.  I used my die grinder and deepened and sharpened the slot a bit.  Tried again, to no avail.  I cut a new slot crossways, still no dice.  Finally, I ended up just grinding down the screw head a bit until I could work the plate off over what was left of the screw, but I got it apart.

The inside of the valve looked really great.  Springs were nice and clean, O-rings looked nice and fat and flexible.  The only real problem was the pedal plunger seized in that unobtainable flat adapter plate.  Luckily it was seized in the applied position, meaning I could press the valve from the inside out.  Here is the assembly in the press with a couple of large sockets for use as pressing tools.

I was really worried about breaking that unobtainable plate, so I was very tentative and gentle pumping on that press.  I gradually pressed until I had the big spring compressed, then gave it very short strokes, followed by some hammer taps to the side of the plate after each short pump.  It still took a fair bit of pressure but after one tap SNAP! and the piston was flush with the plate.  No harm done!  Phew!

Now that the piston was out, a bit of polish with the wire brush in the die grinder, shoot some blaster and it was soon moving in and out smooth as silk.

I'm ready to reassemble the valve and reinstall it now.  That should put the braking system back to 100%.

Now to just fix that pesky injector, then tackle the electrical system!

Pete.

We spent Saturday loading the DW-21 at Arlie's house and hauling it home.  Other than a detour in the rain because Highway 58 was closed at Tehachapi when we got there, that was a fun day.  That left Sunday for a little work on the wheel dozer.

I attacked the broken injector hold down stud.  The stud that didn't break was also very necked down by rust and had bent a bit in all my prying around.  I had also managed to mess up the threads a bit, so the nut went on really hard.  I expected it to break off as I was tightening down the injector last weekend.  I double lucked out because no only did it not break off, but when I unscrewed it the threads bound enough that the stud screwed out and miraculously didn't break.

I got the injector out of the way and cleaned up the area as best I could.

I used a wire cup brush in a die grinder to polish up the sides of the protruding part of the stud, then covered everything with rags so I could try welding a nut on.

Even with my welding skills, there was enough of the stud protruding that it wasn't too hard to get the nut on there.

I was a little tentative and afraid of sticking the stud to the head, so the first couple of tries didn't quite stick.  The third time was the charm though.

A quick trip to Lamont General Store and I installed a couple nice, shiny new studs.

Blew everything out nice and clean and remounted the injector.

It sealed up nice, no compression leaks.  I didn't try any leakdown tests and for now, am a little leery about disturbing any of the other injectors to swap them around.  I did run it around loaded pretty good for a while, got the engine right up into the temperature operating range.  The miss stayed pretty consistent and I don't think I really saw consistent puffs of blue smoke as I would expect if that injector was working in a dead cylinder.

Another tell tale I've noticed is that while running the engine with the return line off the injectors, the other two in this head don't really return any fuel, their ports accumulated just a bit, but didn't really flow any fuel.  This injector flowed fuel from the return line port consistently.

Now that I have this injector easy to install and remove, I'll try the air pressure tests to look for leaks from this cylinder and consider swapping this injector with another to see if the miss follows.  I may also give another shot a disassembly of the bottom end of this injector.  The nut on the valve end requires a special splined wrench which I don't have and I'm afraid to clamp on it too much with pliers for fear of distorting it.

I guess that work will have to wait until the next available weekend.

Pete.