Jeremy's 753

The more I take apart and the more I clean the more I find, I think I've said that a few thousand times before... 

Let's start with the rearend.  The cracks were a lot worse once it was cleaned up to weld so I'm gonna have to plate it, 1/4" should make it last longer than the tractor...  I grabbed an NOS frame to use for the pattern, and also made a pattern to keep with other patterns while I was at it, been meaning to do that for a long time.  The shifter adjustment is also a bolt instead of what belongs there, no biggie there, I have plenty of the correct set screws in stock.  

 

Now on to the fuel tank.  Someone in their wisdom drilled out the flat spots that hold the choke and throttle cables in place to tighten them.  There's also some kind of stuff around the mounting nuts, haven't cleaned that up yet to see what's going on under there. 

 

Tires are off and wheels are ready for blasing.  No bad surprises here other than something I've never seen before.  All 4 tires and all 4 tubes are original.  First time I've seen all the original tubes that are 60 years old and look pretty good. 

 

Rearend is cleaned up minus getting out a smaller knotted wheel to do the nooks and crannies.  All the shafts are cleaned up, polished and ready for the new seals, front axles are also cleaned up and polished.  

The battery box and steering fan have been brass braised.  Looks like something happened so someone braised brackets on the battery box.  No issue there except some grinding on the frame to smooth out where the original welds were. 

The other hood screw got redone today along with a lot of other blasting.  Now it's finally suppertime. 

It was past bedtime when I got outta here last night so here is yesterdays update.   The fuel tank bottom is good, the goo in there was just holding the nuts in. 

Peeps are always asking how I blast wheels and keep media out of the wheel centers so I'll put it in here as I do every now and then.  I use a small wire brush on a right angle air grinder on the ends to clean them up, then us a few of my wheel caps to seal up the centers.  I also discovered the front wheels are original General Tire rims that matched the tires and tubes, pretty cool. 

There was a lot of water in the rearend so it got propped up and drained for awhile then the plug sealed.


 

Next up was fixing and blasting the tower.  I grabbed the tower by the rear tool box mount and it came off in my hand.  Looks like there wasn't much of anything holding it in place, it was cracked on both sides near the weld.  The poor tower will need some work especially the cut and curled up shift boot hole, but I have some tricks to make it to look new again. 

 

Today went well and didn't find anything else broken or new to do, yet...  

Started out today with fixing up the tower.  Everyone asks me when they see it what are you doing with a piece of cut off train rail.  Around here it a good 50lb dolly with a lot of different angles and a nice large flat spot.    It works good for projects like this.  The shift hole got fixed up and the rear tool box brace is set and welded back on.

 

Next up was cleaning up the fuel tank and replacing the gasket.  Like I've said before, tooth picks have lots of uses and are easy to move around, I use them to hold the gasket while putting adhesive on 1 side and can move them around when they get in the way.     

The bolts are just snugged for 3 hours until the adhesive sets.  It's been that long so now I can tighten it up. and it will be done.

 

The rear hubs got turned today to get rid of the ridge where they hit the rearend, and some other small parts got cleaned up and blasted. 

 

Some of the motor parts were disassembled this morning and everything is blasted and ready for paint.  The second pic shows the choke cable bracket, it's bent over and on backwards.  It's already fixed and blasted.  The main part of the engine is on the big welding table and I forgot to get a pic of it, oops.    Will do that with the next update.