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Woods trail maintenance here with the Charger 12

I pull a utility trailer heavily loaded around property many times and steering loss is always an issue. Had this linoleum roller that I never use with three narrow weights about 50LBS each so I adapted a quick bracket that attaches to the quick attach brackets in front and center of tractor to use them. Works really well and easy to remove and install.

I had ordered a bunch of parts for the 416-8 project and got around to do some work and I noticed that the "brand new in the bag" PTO brake from Toro was miss made. If you look at the picture you will see that the rivet heads are almost even with the top of the brake pad. To say the least I was a little upset at $23 each I have always ordered a new brake for each of the tractors that I have restored and until now had never had a problem. The more I thought about it I wondered if I could rebuild one cheaper and or better so.......... I ordered the non woven brake material and some rivets. Went through a bunch of material trying to get the countersink just right then went though a fair number of rivets trying to get a nice "set" or one that didn't look like a third grader did it. After I got everything corrected I was still not satisfied with the end product. The brake material did not want to stay flush with the bracket. I had another brilliant (debatable) idea. I had put a new brake lining from Bob Maynard on one of the tractors and still had a tube of the cement he recommended (GOOP). Put a nice healthy coat of the stuff on the bracket and the material and clamped it in the vice for 24 hours. The end product looks real good and I have tried to tear it back off without any luck. So now for the end result.....I payed $22 for 4 foot of the material that comes out to 64, 3/4" pieces or roughly $0.35 each and the "left overs" from the big tube of Goop equaling $0.?? at most 5 minutes in the blast cabinet and 24 hours in the vice.......a heck of a lot cheaper that $23

Made a template, and cut me... a transmission tunnel floor mat. Then went around the tractor detailing things... and making me some little improvements too.

Hi all. Seeing as how I have some rotary blades to sharpen I decided to invest in a blade balancing jig. Its a little more fancy than using a nail but it is accurate and works really easy. Mount the blade on it using the centre cone and magnets. Same as using a nail, grind material off the heavy end until it balances. This is a brand new blade but it was out of balance. What caused it? Simply the paint on one end.

Between the rain, was able to make a couple improvements today. Got the finish ceramic coated today. This thing is ssslick like glass now too! Made the switch to LED light as the Mrs Rules was concerned about the high heat generated by them original incandescant 1156's. Were pretty hot, super cool and bright now though. Readjusted the govenor as per the Kohler manual, and running so much better now. Oh! Was able to get my buddy's @squonk concerns addressed today too.

The old Craftsman is looking a bit different now

Goofball, don't be the least bit hesitant to take those things apart. Your biggest issue in disassembly is going to be removing the two HUBS and then the PIN for the trailer hitch. Once those are out it's all easy... nuts and bolts stuff.

Put the P216 on the bench and went to pull the flywheel. Was not a problem the last time - guess the PO never torqued it to spec. The usual Briggs method of a light turn on a puller and light hammer taps to "pop!" didn't work. Applied more, and more, and more. No luck. Whipped out the impact wrench and 120 psi. Broke the puller. Flywheel still staring at me. Out for some better bolts and an easy out. I'll win - I always do. No Onan will make a fool of me. Happy weekend!

Probably about an hour total. Being retired that doesn’t account for much

Funny, as my Mrs was referring to this today...as tractor blood!

On this day we remember all those we lost 19 years ago. We remember how the United States came together and stood tall, despite everything that we had gone through that day. Despite not being able to remember many days of my childhood, I still remember everything about that day. I was in my 7th grade science class, and we were working in the school library. I remember getting a weird feeling, as the school went quite, but didn't know what was going on so I went about my day. At the end of our class the teacher called us together and told us what had happened over an hour earlier, and told us that he would have mentioned something earlier but he wanted us to finish our work first. I remember the fury I felt towards him, how he could keep something like that from us, and for what at the time, and still today I felt was such in inappropriate reason. But like many of us maybe he was still trying to figure out himself what happened, nothing like this had happened since Pearl Harbor, and there was very few people in the school who had been alive during that, so for all of us this was a new experience. I remember just sort of floating through the rest of the day, trying to get on a computer as often as I could to find out more details, to see what was going on. in Western CT we are only 1.5 hours from NYC so there was all the other thoughts that went with that, how close it was to us, is it going to happen here as well. I remember teachers, some trying to still teach, others realizing that no one would be able to focus on the lesson, and our history teacher using that days events and putting it in context for us using historical events. I remember the bus ride home, normally there was about 4 families worth of kids that would get off at the same bus stop and all go our separate ways, but that day we couldn't. We went to the nearest house and turned on the news, the kid who's house we were at both of his parents worked in NYC (thankfully both came home safe). I remember one of the other kids in the group, a borderline bully and someone who I didn't see eye to eye with until years later, ask my brothers and I to lead them all in a prayer as they knew we went to church. Most importantly, I remember how the day brought us all together as Americans. A few years ago I was in New Jersey around this time for a conference across the river from NYC and saw this haunting, but beautiful sight and I want to share it all with you today. If any of you have stories about where you were during this and would like to add them here, please do. Sharing our stories is how we make sure that this day is always remembered.

Almost forgot the pics!

I don't "C" why not.

1 down. Time to move onto part number 2

There should be nothing coming out around the spark plug. Make a mixture of dish soap and water and paint it around the spark plug, then run the starter. Any bubbles will indicate a leak and a poor Heli-Coil job.

tractorchild...measure the diameters of your engine pulley and your transmission in-put pulley...and the distance between the centers of the 2 pulleys. This guard is for my 857. Mine is a short frame tractor. Your tractor frame is going to be about 3" longer, but this will give you the idea of what it looks like. My in-put pulley is 4"...engine pulley is 2 1/2".

Just got my decals today from @Vinylguyand I have to say I am absolutely excited and can't wait to put them on!!Excellent job my friend!

If your helicoil is leaking causing oil on top of the head, you got more problems than a weak spark. Did the oil show up there without the engine even running? If so I bet the plug can't fire with all that oil blowing around. I had an issue with my 1267 shortly after painting the whole tractor. It would run for 10 minutes then quit. Upon pulling the plug it was so fouled with gunk I had to dig it out with a pick. After cleaning it would happen again in 10 minutes. The oil level never changed nor did it smoke, but it just was pumping crap onto the plug. Upon pulling the head lots of gunk and crud everywhere. I just swapped in another engine

The Ghost of Edmund F. Tecumseh traveled down to the transmission!

Parts found and traded for! He needed parts to build his 6hho techumseh and I had what he needed and he had more than I need he has a 656 also and wanted to get a cast iron engine back in it propper!

@jabelmanThe original and correct carb for that model is the Walbro LMG157. The important thing about it, is that it is one of the very few carburetors that has the adjustments on the left side looking at it from the top. The 551 is probably the hardest tractor to work on since it is very tight with all it has under the hood and hood it self does not open. Carburetors with the adjustment on the opposite side like most of them make it virtually impossible to adjust carburetor while tractor is running. Exhaust pipe and other things are on the way. Its extremely frustrating.You can see that on one of your photos. I suggest that if you can try to find a carburetor with the adjustments on that side. The correct one is like finding a hen's tooth but a couple of the ones used on Clinton engines have adjustments on that side. I have two of those tractors and luckily have the original carburetor. Another thing to keep in mind is to make sure that there are no leaks from it since any fuel coming from it winds directly on top of battery.

You're definitely headed the right direction with the removal and cleaning of the connections mentioned above. After that is done you should take your digital meter and carefully check connections as you're turning the key off and on . One of the issues we see occasionally is that the ammeter itself goes bad. you can check that simply by moving one of the wires to the other stud, bypassing the ammeter. Once you get the spark plug tester in your hands and take a look at that you can verify decent spark under compression. If you have decent spark and you feel like it's a fuel related issue maybe you could get a spray bottle and squirt some gas in to the face of the carburetor with no air filter on. Try to start it. See what happens. For the hood wiring you asked about in a previous post. You know how there are flat four connectors for your trailer? There are also flat two post connectors. You could wire one of those in so that you can take the hood off just by unplugging that . Not sure about the muffler causing the issue. I suppose anything's possible with these engines will run without a muffler. .. having one that is clogged. That's very different.

Beijing quality. Yours made in USA. Enough said...

Might try just making a post in the W-H tractors forum titled HELP "308 Owners" Needed, or Wanted...something like that. Grabs their attention, and talk about the problem you're having issues with there. I'm sure someone will eventually come to your aid there.

An update since the last time I checked in about this tractor… I'm still trying to get the engine to start and run, with not much success. Here's what I've tried in the last couple of weeks, roughly in order: Tried another new plug, no change. Disconnected the condenser, no change. Installed a new clean set of points, and made and installed a new points wire, no change. Cleaned and tightened connections and the mounting plate at the solenoid, and the connection at the starter, and installed my freshly charged battery. At this point, the engine responded a little better than before, and even started and "ran" very briefly, but it was very rough and uneven, stumbled and coughed, and wouldn't keep running. I also noticed a wet area on top of the head at the base of the plug, never seen that before. Later, I added a ground wire from the battery negative terminal to the engine lifting tab, no change. I also switched the coil with the one on my 310-8, no change, and the coil from the C-105 works fine on the other tractor. I bought a spark plug tester (a handy little tool), and I seem to get what I think is a weak spark, and sometimes none at all, while I'm cranking. I took the points cover off so I could see them in action, and that spark looks weak to me too, although I'm no expert here. The fuel pump seems to be working well, plenty of strong spurts while cranking. I checked the carb again, float seems to be operating smoothly, nothing unusual that I could see. I forgot to mention earlier, I added bushings to the throttle shaft area, that's operating much smoother and with less play than before. The wet area on the head puzzled me, so I took it off and brought it back to my local machine shop. They had just installed a heli-coil for the plug a few days earlier, and I asked them to take another look. They didn't see anything wrong with the head or the new heli-coil, and suggested that I might have worn rings, high crankcase pressure and low compression. Worn rings wouldn't surprise me at all, this engine has a lot of hours and burns a lot of oil. I haven't tested compression yet, or done a leakdown test. I take that back, I did a poor man's compression test by placing my thumb on top of the spark plug hole while my daughter cranked the engine, it pushed my thumb out of the hole fairly strongly. Strong enough? I don't know. Based on the little bit of improvement I saw after cleaning and tightening some of the connections, I think my next step is to continue with connections at the ignition switch, ammeter, voltage regulator, starter mounting bolts, anywhere else I can think of. The ignition switch itself is well worn, I'll check it thoroughly while I have it out. I have the battery out for charging, I'll do a load test on it before I put it back on the tractor. There's one other thing that might be worth mentioning… The muffler on this thing rattles a good bit, it's been going on for quite a while, and I even have one of @jay bee's excellent quality mufflers sitting in a box waiting to be installed. Is it possible a worn-out muffler would cause the issues I'm having getting this engine started? I'm running out of ideas, any thoughts are welcome.

I tried using the search bar to find members with 308s but I dont think its that easy. I found some cool files on wiring and what not. 🙂

I was working at the local farm that morning with plans to go boating in the afternoon with a co-worker because it was his birthday. I’ll never forget another friend/co-worker on the farm running up the hill yelling to us that the Trade Center had been hit. We ran back to the farmhouse and watched on a small television in disbelief, and then watched as the second plan hit. Anyone who saw that live or worse in person knows that horrible feeling we all got. I live about 1-1/2 to 2 hours from Manhattan and as a volunteer firefighter knew I must get to the firehouse to see what we could do to help. By the time I got to the firehouse they had a crew assembled and ready to go. We sent our rescue truck in that afternoon. Although I didn’t get to go in, I remember how everyone, everywhere wanted to help. As a firefighter I cannot imagine what those guys were feeling heading into the towers that day. Let us never forget those who lost their lives and those 343 firemen who gave their lives to try to help save fellow Americans. As a side note I used to snowplow Peter Jennings driveway for many years, he was a nice man.

Finally passed on from the transmission to the power plant .This 30 over 16 needs to be born one bolt at a time.Got the PTO cleaned up and painted.

I learned a long time ago to leave her alone and let her figure things out. She don't get mad or any kind of negative but she really enjoys the great satisfaction of completing her task.

As we sit with sad hearts on this 9/11 day, I have hauled 9.8 tons of gravel in to my new driveway in preparation for this wedding tomorrow. My wife’s cousin will be marrying a new good friend and Navy Veteran. Neither could have picked a better mate than each other. The flag on the top of the loader looks tiny, but it is because 1/4 the bucket was about 6000 lbs. I’m so excited to see this go down! I have been asked to be the honorary lighter of the bonfire with a flaming arrow!

Hello, here I finished the scuff & spray. The Brownells was all, so I used Krylon Bed Liner. Excellent finish obtained by short passing strokes. Now this is really what I wanted, very durable!

Appears... like they will fit the spindles too!

Well in the theater business over the years it was always said that there's always time for an encore!! U Da king !! i'm sitting here cooking my hamburgers cause I got tired of looking at the grill every time I went around with the tractor!! mmmm! Yall have a safe weekend.

I don't know man. Nothing wrong with making them look really really nice when they're first put back together. Also nothing wrong in my eyes of going ahead out and working them. I asked Trina how she felt about that one day and she says: I know where to buy more paint

Mrs Rules was actually just laughing and said she thinks I've gone and made me a tractor-trailer queen.

@WHX24, Jim, I think this is the one that will fit. Need to pull that out and measure and take pictures... Thanks Mate.

'bout right...

Always liked the mouse trap on the farm I knew, a 5 gal bucket with 2 ramps a dowel through a piece of pipe over the bucket, the pipe was covered with peanut butter, the bucket had anti freeze, the pipe spun the mouse dropped in

My shop is climate controlled, whatever the climate is sort of controles what it is like inside. I keep track of mice with glue traps and only keep fuel in the I am likely to use. All others are drained of fuel and run until they run out. Every drop of gas is non-ethanol treated with SeaFoam and I don't store more than five gallons of gas so it is fresh when used.

I bought this sovereign off one of my buddies the other day. It was in rough shape but I'm gonna get it running right to mow my lawn. Oh and a possible restoration this winter? We will see. It sat in his yard for about 8 months with no front wheels. On top of that he claims it sat in the 1st owner's yard for 10 years. It runs but not well. I ordered a new carburetor for it. Hopefuly that sorts out the pops and bangs. But it has the electric lift which I am very excited about! (It had a huge mouse nest with 4 mice in it.)

I take it that you have not really had a chance to look at the M series cover.If you did you would notice that the from the bottom front you can see the entire length of the air filter..It has a very large opening at the top, bottom and lower front.It would provide less protection from blowing snow than what you have now.

Thanks Gary. I did see that but the belt goes around some pulleys and outside of others. I was hoping for something more detailed. Thanks for your reply though.

I have a 702 Wheel Horse with a rebuilt 7HP Kohler motor that I have had a Shusher muffler on for several years. I was asked to test the sound of both by a Red Square member which I have done on some videos. I did not test sound levels with equipment but you can hear both of them in lower level throttle vs higher throttle for yourself. These shorter mufflers have exhaust ports on both ends and they each have an internal baffle. Similar in size. So see what you think about them. The Shusher is in the second video and the Nelson in the third and fourth video. IMG_7345.MOV IMG_7346.MOV IMG_7349.MOV IMG_7350.MOV

have sort of the same deal my 856 was sitting outside for yrs and shifter boot was bad when i went to ck fluid found it was filled to top with water, and little oil, all gears are working and no noise but hesatent to pull apart. ? 's the best thing to clean it out with it ? can i use brakefluid to break up any sludge or surface rust left inside ? really dont want to take apart.

My belt is not fabric wrapped! I will have to get one thanks

It was a crazy day in nj that day. I remember the weather that day, driving into work thinking how the weather finally broke no humidity super clear, perfect 70 temp. I was out of college working for a large financial company in nj, they still got us out in hurry. Nobody grasped what really happened til much later. Time flies 19 years ago

Thanks for showing this formariz, I have absolutely to impatience and not experienced for that things to be honest. A Colleague of mine is blacksmith and he is also an awesome artist on build and sharpening damask knives and even Swords and even resharpening all the things for cutting needs. i like it to have sharp tools, but i be myself much to impatience to really resharpen things compared to this. I only use a bench grinder for resharpening that’s it, but a wet stone is not my Friend at all. He sharpened once my „allday‘s working knife“ with a wet stone what was 2 months ago. That is brutforce Sharp after and i be honest envious to guy‘s who have that patience and experience. I have deepest respect, for well experienced and patience for guy‘s they do it that Way. thanks for showing us.

Well, she's gonna take some goin' through. We went to pick it up this morning, and the starter would not turn, You get used to stuff like that. owners might trade a battery out of another mower for show day. I was going to chuck the battery but danged iffn it tested 12.6 volts. I did a run around the solenoid and she had plenty of crank---all from a battery with a build date of 4/13. I took it out to mow and it did fine for about ten minutes and then lost power Had to give her the push of shame to get it back to the barn.. Definitely a problem with the key switch as it turns over when hot but not when cold. It has the obligatory touch up spray bomb paint with overspray on the seat. All in all it is straight metal , but we need to change out the transmission gear oil and trace down the hard start problem whether it is fuel or electrical related. Or both. But for $220 and good rubber, nice deck, and a battery that works, no complaints here

Nice score !! Love the headlights on it. Mine sat in a garage unused for decades. Rebuilt the carb, flushed and repaired the gas tank, new solenoid and it runs like a swiss watch.