What's everybody doing?

My neighbor spent all day steam cleaning and I spent all day with peeps and on the phone minus getting the 48" deck from 2 posts ago done late this afternoon.  

1st call was from NY at 8:30AM and they just kept coming.  I had a customer from Southern Michigan that was supposed to pick up an ignition switch today for a 71 Raider 10 with a Tecumseh on it (old 70 amp high power switch) that was already here in town at 10:30 this morning.  He drove 7 hours here for it but they pretty much don't exist NOS and I still have 3 left.  This was the busiest Monday ever for calls for Wheel Horse parts from all over the US. I am worn out from talking, I'd much rather be working...  

 

Doing what I like best, saving more good parts then blasting + organizing them.  I need to get the big bench cleared so I can start on another project I've been wanting to do for a long time, more on that later...  

The latest parting got 14 more steering supports to redo.  After they're done there will be 32 rebuilt ones in stock and ready to go.  They were all steam cleaned yesterday so they had all of the bottom bearings and grease fittings removed today and got blasted.  Tomorrow they will all get put on the mill and be fitted with the new fancy German bushings.

Another new tool came in today and this thing really does what they say they will do.  It's an induction type heater.  Just slide it over what you want to heat up and in 30 to 60 seconds it is cherry red.  It's a lot bigger than I thought it would be as you can see in the 4th pic below.   I fought the last automatic assy all I could then waited for this to come in today.  It was apart in about a minute with this new tool.  Well worth what it saved in time + saving parts.  The cost is also way cheaper than acetylene or filling torch tanks in general so it's a win win.  

 

I can't say enough good things about this heater.  It works as miraculously as everyone says.  

It breaks a rod adjustment trunnion loose in a few minutes, 2 65 year old steering wheels came off easy, 5 minutes each and by hand.  A tower lift handle was off the rod and out in 15 minutes.  8-10 minutes got the entire bottom of the handle over 500 degrees and it spun right off.  I usually dread taking some of this stuff apart but not anymore...   

Finished up 14 more steering support rebuilds today.  Now there are over 30 of them blasted, rebuilt and ready to go, and a lot of them have been sold or used on tractor work in the shop already.  

My neighbor pulled some more engines off of some short frames and a 654 that someone had cut up the hoods really bad.  The 654 had some other nice parts on it that were pulled off so they won't be outside for the Winter.  The engines junked were all Briggs engines that were never put on Wheel Horses anyway.  If it doesn't go on a Wheel Horse it doesn't need to be around here...  

After that he started back on the 520's in the lot.  There are 6 more of them still out there to check out.  The first one was locked up so it was torn down for the good parts and the rest put in his truck for junk.  You can see from the pics it was really bad. 

The last pic is the one that my neighbor will do Monday morning.  My job Monday morning other than returning phone calls will be to put up all of the latest blasted parts like all of the automatic shift parts, steering supports, and other things so there's room to put more parts from the Onans and other tractors coming apart...