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The weather is going to be great this week so i figured I'd get a jump on spring cleaning and organizing. Now I can get back to my rj 35 resto and finish my daughters engine on her suburban. (Yes there are 2 off brands in the back) 7 are wheel horses.

Decided to take a couple pics of the 1257 on my lunch break of the horse. Idled it for 15 min.

Seems like the warm weather (70 degrees here in PA) has brought out some WH from the sheds. I've been watching a 418-A on CL for about a month now, but the seller was asking way too much. This weekend, I went to see it because the weather was good. I made him a reasonable offer on, much lower than he was asking. He said he'd consider it, then phoned me a few hours after I got home, and accepted my offer. Includes a nice 418-A with 680 hours, a 48" plow, weights & chains, 4 hub caps, a 48" rear-discharge deck, and a Craftsman garden cart for $800. The 418A came with owner's manual, sales brochure, and service records. It only needs some adjustments, no repairs. PO was an elderly gentleman who has his grandson cut his grass for him now (with a newer, yellow mower). I also noticed a rusty old B-100 with four flat tires sitting nearby, and they said I could have it for another $50. It will probably be just a 'parts tractor', but has some parts I need. Seems like people are taking advantage of the good weather to clean out their garages and barns, so there are deals to be found. A friend gave me a 1968 WH snow thrower just to get it out of his shed.

Added another Horse to the stable today. . 312-Hydro, just fresh off the truck, no cleaning or bath yet. The Kohler 12 HP Magnum starts right up.

Mrs K just walked by and saw your shop. Now, thanks to your pictures, I may have to get rid of a 50 year collection of treasures and clean up my shops.

Black Electrical tape over the light

I got my front and rear wheel weights on today and also my front weight mount. Then I decided to put the new stack on.

Found a pair of early narrow rims and tyres in my store and decided to clean them up for my C120 tractor for ploughing hoping they will give me more traction. ive cleaned them with a wire brush on a electric drill, i let the air out and put an old drive belt in the bead to stop getting paint on the tyre and a piece of hose in the other. theyve both had a heavy coat of red oxcide and will be left for a few days before primer and top colour.

In all fairness to our comrades here , let's keep the Google monster out of this . Rules : You must "quote" the question you're answering. The person with the correct answer gets to ask the next question . Questions should be "general" in nature ( sports,geography,music etc...) If you get the chance to post a question , you must be able to check in at least every 24 hours to see if there's an answer posted. If we keep this on a reasonable level , this could be a cool little game . What does NASA stand for ?

I'll be done with my 57 rj 35 this spring and can't decide if I should restore my 56 or keep it original. It's not that bad, but the recoil is a different color and the belt cover is in primer.

With the nice warm temps in upstate NY yesterday my son and I decided to see if the C-120 that was given to me last summer actually ran. After repairing a broken wire from key switch to the solenoid and cleaning and lubing the bendix drive it turned over fine. Checked for spark, that was nice and strong. Fuel took some creativity and we finally settled on a temporary gravity feed to see if the carb was leak free and was in any sort of working order. The throttle cable had been disconnected as the anchor bracket was not attached to the block. So, we just turned up the idle, added some gas and hit the key. Ten seconds of cranking and the slightest breath of starting fluid and it was running. Smiles all around ( 🍻 also). Encouraged by how well the engine ran and sounded we decided to jack up the rear end and see if the hydro worked, on the jacks the wheels had forward and reverse motion, more smiles. Off the jacks, on the ground, butt on the seat, ease the lever forward and away we went. Forward and reverse, smooth and quiet. Anyway, now it will be put back in storage until I come back from FL in April. Just knowing that the major parts are working is encouraging, and we are looking forward to getting into it in depth over the summer. Are rebuild kits available for the fuel pump? Seems as though I saw them somewhere when looking for carb kits for my chainsaws...can't seem to locate them now. Might just go for a new replacement, probably a better use of $ and time. Looks like they can be had for $30-40. Time for research. Will enjoy that while anticipating getting back into the machine when I return. Have to figure out how to post pics. Will keep you posted.

First thing is to make sure that you have good ground connections from the battery to the frame, frame to the engine, and regulator to the frame. Next, use your multi-meter to see what your charging voltage is. Connect your probes to the (+) and (-) of the battery. With the engine OFF, the battery voltage should be around 12VDC. With the engine running, you have have at least 13.5 VDC. If not, check the stator voltage. You should have 38 to 45 volts AC from the stator.

For those of you that opened this wondering what is a McLean, here is a link to some history on the tractor. It is also the most information that I have found on the McLean.http://www.tractorfriends.org/lawngardentractors/mccleangardentractors/mccleangardentractors.html Last year when I bought my Suburban 400 I also saw this strange little tractor sitting off to the side. I had no idea what it was but my interest was peaked. I took a couple pic's then kinda forgot about it for a while. Eventually it came back into my thoughts and I decided to do some research to find out what it was. I posted my pic's on here hoping some one would recognize it but I seemed to have every one stumped. After a few days of searching I finally found a picture of one on the net. Great! I thought, now I can find some info. Well there just isn't a lot of info out there on these thing, unfortunately. I did manage to find the owner of the one in the link that I posted above. He's a great guy, I spent some time on the phone with him and he was willing to send me some pic's to help me out with my project. Below are pics of when I brought my McLean home. Really rough shape, probably not worth fixing but it's a rare tractor so I was willing to give it a shot. A tractor needs an engine so I started there first. The K90 that was in the tractor was locked up of course, but after a month of dumping ATF down the plug hole two times a week it broke free. All of the tins and the bearing plate were junk so I started to look for parts. Then I found a K91 close buy and decided to go with that engine instead. I will tackle the K90 another time. There are many great engine rebuild posts on here so I'm going to keep mine real simple. 1 2 3 Next was the tear down on the rest of the tractor. Most of this went well, a PO had made a lot of changes that I had to cut out. I will share those as I go along on this resto. First thing that I tackled was the front end. The steering shaft had an aluminum pulley on one end and an aluminum steering wheel on the other, both of which were locked on to the shaft. i decided to cut the shaft in half so I could deal with removing the pulley & wheel on the bench. The steering wheel I did not remove because it is wrong anyway, but I needed the pulley. A little wax and some heat helped start to get things moving and then "Sha doobie Shattered Shattered". Well I have no way of casting aluminum but I did find a nice chunk of aluminum stock laying in my garage. It was 3 1/4" dia, I needed 2 1/8" dia. Time to make some shavings. Finished product next to original. A PO also cut part of the steering arms off that will be required for the differential to work. I made new pieces and reinforced the axle where it was worn. Then carefully measured and lined things up so I could weld every thing back together. Removing the old steering arm was great fun! Front end mocked up and looks ready for paint. Next it is on to the transmission. What to do with this mess?!

You do know...this trivia crap is all rigged... but, hopefully somebody learned something here today.

This is a big guess... Abbott and Costello?

Good tip on using a belt or hose! I have used a bunch of index cards overlapping one-another to keep paint off the tires, but this also allows some paint to go inside the lip of the rim.

FYI @stevasaurus with some other members did a nice job documenting the steps needed for working on that 3 piece transmission when you get to that. You came to the right place for everything Wheel Horse.

Give me a minute Digger. I'm cleaning the carburetor on the raffle tractor for the big WHCC show, while writing an example of fielders obstruction for John. Multi-tasking at it's finest. An example of fielders obstruction is this. A batter hits a fair ball grounder to the first baseman. Rather than tag the bag, he runs toward the batter (now runner) who is within the designated lines on the outside of the first base path. However, the fielder runs into the running lane, blocking the runner from advancing. The fielder is allowed to reach into that area to tag, but not block the runner. Batter/Runner takes first.

In most cases they really don't because they are so often changed. WH used calcium chloride to fill the front tires for weight so that rotted the majority of the early tractor rims. The rims are no big deal unless going for that complete factory restore. I just thought since you were down to the details about the tank, might as well put the other stuff out there too. Some people want it 100% exactly perfect, others don't care at all but most people fall somewhere in between those 2 . Even if you don't go to that extreme, it's still nice to have the info. @MikesRJ did a full blown factory correct RJ-58 restore and did a nice write up on many steps he took along the way. Plenty of good documented info for any RJ restore.

Mix up some Rustoleum Regal Red, about 15% Leather Brown, and just a pinch of White. Play with the mix until you get close to the original faded color. You have to let a sample of each trial mix dry completely to see how it will turn out. Good luck, Jim

Here's a shot of mine. The choke is connected with a rod. You pull back on the lever to choke it. That seems somewhat backwards to me but that's how it was done. The throttle cable is looped to come up to the linkage on the governor.

Yep, he's hooked... ...congratulations Grandpa, job well done.

Beautiful restoration right there.

Here's the rear end pic I took at same time had to delete a couple attachments so I had more room.

The first step in curing any electrical problem is to clean and tighten all electrical connections including grounds and the base of the voltage regulator where it is bolted. The magneto has nothing to do with charging, there is a separate set of coils for that. There are a couple of wires coming from the engine to the regulator, you should read about 36 volts AC between the two wires.

Can't get any better than that! You are one lucky Grandpa and he is one lucky Grandson!

Well, after owning and neglecting the tractor for a couple of decades, it looks like I have lost possession of it in a single day! Our 6 year old grandson actually skipped going to The Pizza Ranch so he could come out and clean his new tractor, lol He worked on it for at least 3 or 4 hours this afternoon! Doesnt run, but sure is clean!!!

5xi attachments are out there, especially in the Midwest. Also look for New Holland attachments that fit their GT20-GT22 series as they are a 5xi in blue paint.

One other thing, if you do any sanding or grinding be sure to wear a respirator, not a dust mask. Never heat or weld a galvanized piece without a supplied air respirator.

Here is what my father taught me over 50 years ago. He used to work with galvanized steel in the boiler trades. Galvanization is the process of coating metal with zinc, either hot dip or cold dip. If galvanized steel is just dirty, clean it as you would anything else. However, if it is has red oxide (rust) the zinc coating has been breached and it must be treated as any rusted steel by removing the rust, priming and painting. If it only has small white deposits, that is zinc oxide and it can be cleaned with acetic acid. If a significant portion of the item is covered with white deposits, it may not be possible to thoroughly clean it. After cleaning with acetic acid, thoroughly rinse with clean water and dry. If you are going to paint it, an etching primer must be used on the zinc before applying your regular primer and paint.

The only "googly" going on was research on "Who on first?", but only after I had posted my answer. All knowledge comes from my head. You got to get up pretty early to beat me. As far as not being quick enough, you have to graduate to something faster than a dial-up modem. By the way. the raffle tractor runs great. And John, we've got to get a life... Michigan is correct.

I'd keep it original, those are getting very hard to find with their original work clothes that decal on the front of the hood looks very original also, i wonder what the story of that is. Its patina perfectly matches the others.

I HAVE USED 2 OF THERE DIESELS AND NEVER HAD TROUBLE. VERY GOOS SERVICE. RUSS

Wanted to clean her up today , but I have been busy converting an old boat trailer into a utility trailer. Going through the owners manual and receipts found out the tractor was purchased "new" on 6/6/1990 .

The same thing happened to my D200. It was the pinion bolt (s) in the rear end had worked loose and started contacting the dipstick and twisted it into a pretzel. The rear end had to come out and be split open to repair it. I think this was a common problem with the early D series.

@Cglisson01, Here's the write-up: http://www.mywheelhorse.com/modules.php?name=Docs2&do=show_doc&id=2 And a few pics to get your juices flowing:

That's what i was kinda thinking or paint the parts and age them

I have SOME Sundstrand parts .... when you get it torn down send me a 'shopping list'. My direct email is: daveoman@windstream.net Here is a pic of the internals. IMPORTANT..... keep your area CLEAN and be certain to CLEAN all parts thoroughly on re-assembly. These units are ultra-sensitive to debris of any kind.

Not much sweeter than a flathead ford with a Kardashian butt. Welcome, from a fellow Floridian.

WOW Guys... You never cease to amaze me with the knowledge you all have. Great band of Wheel Horse enthusiasts you all are. I will take all under advisement.

the factory recommends 10w30 in engine and trans on the 520-H, a lot of guys are using full synthetic oil in trans like mobile 1. I have used Mobile 1 in 1 or 2 trans so far, but it is not totally necessary. eric j

I purchased a C-81 last summer and it would not charge, tested everything AC voltage, fuses etc. etc. as per the good folks on this site.... everything chk's out good finally took the regulator off the machine took a flap sander and cleaned the mounting surface on the tractor..... simply held the rectifier to the new surface and started her UP... I couldn't believe it the charging volt meter showed charge and it has worked perfectly ever since. I have since talked to the PO and he stated that that the tractor had not charged correctly in close to ten years.... of course he didn't mention that when I purchased from him DUH!

By Richard's diagram a good place to start is there 12V to the regulator. Power has to come from the switch to the regulator and the charging voltage has to go through that same contact to get to the battery. We see many bad connections at that switch and a lot of bad switches due to high current going through it because of said bad connections.

I don't have any pictures of the gas tank, I can try and get some here soon. But here is a picture of my tractor.

Amen to that "strange world" comment!!! Yes - Snow skiing...This is my 50th year of skiing, 25 of those years as a National Ski Patroller... That's my concern as well...This is nuts!

For the longest time I worried about getting a decent tractor with readily available parts and all its attachments. Now I focus on buying functional attachments, in other words a working tractor with some attachment, rather than A tractor and EVERY attachment EVER made for it. Oh I'd like to have several "xi"s each with its own attachment but I'm happy to fill in with other fine WHs with other attachments until I do. Point is an "xi" with just one attachment is one fine tool whether you find another attachment for it or not! Use it as is, enjoy it and keep an eye out while you're smiling! One tractor with many attachments just doesn't work for me. I need both blade & blower in the winter & I can't be changing them every snow storm. I need a blade for more than snow so I can't be changing deck and blade all the rest of the year. Or tiller & deck, or this and that. Sturdy 50 year old Wheel Horses at bargain prices has made it possible to afford more than one tractor as well as more than one attachment. Good lord back in the 1970s & 80s I never thought I would have even 1 Wheel Horse much less a dozen with attachments. Ain't America great! Bless the "Ponds"!

I like the idea, but the "Honor System" may be a bit of a challenge around here. What the heck; give it a go!

If you do any cutting or welding on galvanized metal and start to feel ill drink plenty of white milk it seems to offset the effects.