Re: Less then restoration?

Posted by ScottyHOMEy on February 27, 2011 at 17:32:35 from (70.105.230.151):

In Reply to: Less then restoration? posted by Plumcrazy on February 27, 2011 at 03:41:27:

I haven't seen the word overhaul in any of the responses up to this point.

That still doesn't quite cover what you have done with your tractor.

Myself, I tracked down a family tractor, a '47 Farmall BN, and found it in awful shape, with a stuck motor half full of water. It took several years (most of that eaten up by delays, not by details), but I got 'er done.

Along the way every exposed/visible surface was taken down to metal and repainted with a paint of better quality and durability than the original stuff. All but one bearing and seal were replaced, and they will be when I one day noodle out why my first three efforts to remove the carrier failed. Some parts were reworked, some were replaced. The coil cap on the magneto was not pitted so badly that a little Armorall couldn't bring it back to life, and the original Delco-Remy cover on the cutout relay cleaned up and took new paint nicely. So up to that point it was technically a restoration.

But in a very few places, the dot head bolts were broken off in removal or looked untrustworthy and new bolts put in their places. And the 113 motor now has 3-1/8" Fire Crater pistons in place of the original step-heads. I grew up on that tractor, learned to drive on it, in fact, and chose to leave the egg in the hole on the drawbar as my own little way of acknowledging how hard and reliably this little tractor worked for a lot of years.

So, to the purist who has $30,000 or more to pay for a "true" restoration, it is just a loving overhaul. But it doesn't bother my conscience at all to call it a "2006 Restoration" on the signs I'm offered to fill out for it at shows.

Yeah, at one show in particular, there's a vanload of guys who show up every year. They all wear tailored khakis and matching polo shirts emblazoned with the logo of their little club, the Lower B*mf*ck Spark and Ladder Co., or somesuch. Looked 'em up online and found them to be from a wicked affluent community in southern Maine, a place where the natives have been driven out and replaced by the filthy rich from elsewhere. I don't doubt that anyone of these guys could sit down and write out a check tomorrow for a $150K restoration of a Studebaker. And they're as annoying as they are well off. They roam the grounds of the antique truck and tractor show, doing nothing but finding fault with everything they look at. Acouple of them stopped by my tractor and had fun tearing my work apart -- mind, talking for me to hear but not acknowledging that I was even there.

Got behind a couple others of them in line at the lunchstand one day. They were going on like the Muppets Statler and Waldorf about two or three machines they'd looked at. I overheard about enough and, like somebody else suggested, stuck my nose in and asked them where their machines were, as I'd like to see how it ought to be done. Whaddaya know! They didn't have anything there. If ya were to ask me, I'd say their talk is about like a bitter spinster callin' somebody's baby homely. Don't let them bother ya.

My BN is my princess. Then there's my SuperC. She ran when I bought her, but she'd been stuck before, and "whoever" freed her up by pullin' her and poppin' the clutch. It broke a couple of the oil rings, so I overhauled the motor myself (except for the head and sending the crank out to be turned down), overhauled the Touch Control, replacing the cluch and throw out bearing and a few odds and ends. Even for being stuck, she'd been shedded for the fifty years under her belt when I got her, and I've left her faded paint and decals just as they were. She runs just as well as, if not better than, the BN. And I make no pretense about her being restored. Very definitely an overhaul, but just as fine a tractor in every way that matters.

It's a matter of degree. Call the process waht you'd like. You've done the work to keep a fatherly machine running for another few decades. Think about it. My BN worked around the farm as the main tractor for cultivating, and the rest of the year as the utility tractor for 40 years. If someone will take care of her after I'm gone, she'll still be running more than a hundred years after she was built.

Be proud of your work and your accomplishment, and enjoy running and showing your tractor.

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