Progress report, and lots more questions... (long, no pictures :-)

Yesterday I discovered that despite my earlier conviction that the cooling system was empty, it has in fact been full of anti-freeze the whole time. I squeezed the lower radiator hose, and green stuff became visible in the filler neck. The time had obviously come for a proper run of the engine, so, forgetting Brian's advice about disengaging the PTO (no oil showing on back axle dipstick), I started it up. As the electrics are basically non-existant I have developed a procedure whereby I attach a jump lead from my car's battery to the tractor frame, raise the decompression lever, press the starter lever, then connect the other jump lead to the terminal on the back of the starter. The engine then starts to crank over. With my cheek pressed against the exhaust stack, I can then make a lunge across the front of the engine with my left hand, and lower the compression lever. The engine starts, and I let go of the starter lever, and disconnect the jump leads from the starter. Not exactly how Mr Ford planned it but anyway it works. If I don't use the decompression lever, my jump leads start to fume.

After ensuring that there were no obvious problems, I let the thing tick over happily while I set to work chipping the wheels out of the ice. That took I suppose about half an hour, then after jacking the front wheels up out of the depressions thay had made, and filling in underneath with sand... I drove the tractor forward, and turned it around so that I would have better access to the rear axle. After generally admiring it for another ten minutes or so it suddenly hit me that I had left the pto/hydraulic pump engaged, and I had assumed that the rear axle had no oil in it at all! There seemed to be nothing to do, except try that little handle to the right of the seat. I lifted it... and... the arms raised, thereby proving both the existance of oil in the axle, and the existance of God.

This leads me on to this weeks quiz:
1. The arms raised and stayed up, but the drag link arms spring up and down if I jump on them. Is this normal? (15 points)

2. What size /thread bolt to I need to secure the little plate that covers the hole in the bellhousing where you can inspect the timing marks on the flywheel? (20 points)

3. Where the steering radius arms meet, they are attached to the tractor by a bolt rather than a pin as shown in the manual. Is this.. A. a variant, or B. a 'field repair'? If A, what size nut should it be (it's missing). (5 points, 15 if thread size known)

3b. (For extra credit) What size / thread are the sump bolts? This is not so important as I can take one of the remaining ones to a shop for comparison. (5 points)

4. The front axle seems very 'floppy' to me - it wobbled a lot when moving the machine for the first time. Is this a worry? (10 points)

5. On the right hand side of the rear axle, the grease fitting that is used to lubricate the outer bearing is missing, and the hole is full of gritty, oily mud. Any suggestions as to how to deal with this? (50 points, unless answer involves removing bearing, then 1 point)

6. Underneath the rear axle in the middle is a drain plug, fitted to a removable plate which is in turn fitted to a larger removable plate. I noticed in a post of Brian's that there is a filter hiding behind here somewhere. Is it just the inner plate (held on by four bolts) that I remove?
(5 points)

6b. When I remove the final bolt holding on the plate in 6. above, will I be surprised and / or squashed by something really heavy that I didn't intend to remove?
(5 points)

6c. What is the filter like?
(10 points)

7. Again looking under the rear of the tractor, about a foot in front of where the oil drain is, is a place on the casting where it looks like something has been or could be bolted. What is this? Should there be something here? Is this something to worry about?
(10 points)

8. Do I worry too much?
(1 point)

9. Exactly what colour orange should the wheels be? (ONLY KIDDING!)

Thanks, and regards to you all,