As I’ve read quite a lot of the tech info on here, I thought I’d tell my story so far.
Father in law was a farmer since birth I guess, 72 now so pottering more than out else now. He happened across a Dexta in a shed and bought them both. We dragged said machine back to the farm and made a start on trying to get her going. It’s been laid up for 10-15 years at least.
This is 7 months or so ago and we were living much further away, so my involvement from then on was nil.
We’ve recently bought something much closer to both sets of parents as we wanted our little one to be able to see them more often. Anyway as the Dexta has now been sitting for another 3 or 4 months unchanged I offer to buy it. Offer accepted! Oh bu££er! I will mention that I knew a guy in my mid teens that bought and sold a lot of these era machines and I have some fond memories, as for farming my days knocking about on the farm meant a JD 2650.
So the work starts (bear in mind I have jobs for this) and the old fuel is drained, new filter added and after a bit of persuasion it bursts back into life. Good, check coolant, add, puddle appears, new radiator please. Also at that time found the water pump bearings were shot, new pump, thermostat and hoses.
So we now have an engine that won’t cook in a couple of mins, time for a little run. Hop on, push clutch, select gears....or try. Clutch seized to flywheel. We’ve tried pretty much every trick in the book to free this but nothing worked. My next step to avoid splitting it was to get something PTO powered and give it some graft to do to try and free up the clutch. We had an old post auger lying about so thought that might be the ticket.
Next problem, no hydraulics! Ok so looking at the near side wheel bearing seal has failed, maybe it’s low on oil so I’ll change that and top it up. So I strip it, bearing and seals ordered, stuff arrives, wrong bearings, order some more, right bearings. Follow a YouTube vid on getting the shrink collar off, lots of nackered drill bits and bashed fingers but collar won’t break. Warm it up with the gas, fell right off. Bearing not playing, cut through the cage, knocked the rollers out, separated the shaft from the bearing housing and knocked the shells out. New bearings and seals fitted and time to refit. Started doing up the nuts for the bearing assembly to the trumpet housing and seared 3 studs off (with a 5” spanner, not a breaker bar and 6ft of pole). Could not get the remaining bit of studs out whatever I tried, despite ordering all available studs from CNH
. Saw some complete assemblies on eBay, bought, fitted, job done. Drained and filled rear end with new oil but no lift.Time to get serious. I order all the clutch components (single on mine), split it, change all of it and put it back together, wasn’t all that bad, wouldn’t want to do it every month but nothing was seized solid, it just took some time (entire weekend).
So now I now something that I can drive about, change gear and bring to a halt if I want, happy days!
Next, hydraulics (this weekend)
After determining that the pump was running the next step was to pull the top off and go through it. Top comes off ok but in an awkward position means I can’t lid it off on my own. Linkages etc look pretty good, doesn’t appear to be the drill bit fix issue present here. Unloading valve is the primary check, plug come out very easily and that’s initially a concern, valve seems a bit gummed up, removed and cleaned, a lot better now and O ring dunped. Rightly or wrongly I’m not so concerned about the plug, it should be a tight fit but can’t move forward due to the forward bushing and can’t move back due to the plate, so can’t block the oil that runs around it’s groove. Given that its supposed to run at around 11psi and you can’t get a replacement anyway, it’ll either work or not.
So whilst in there I’ve decided to change the exhaust filter and clean the inlet filter, but I can’t find the latter initially. I do find it laying on its side a bit mangled up. So much so there’s a hole ground into it from other moving parts that gone through the outer casing to the gauze filter. I decide to clean up, weld a patch on, put a new o ring on and find that there’s no way it’ll go into the inlet of the pump with the pump in situ. So all of the oil has to come out again and the pump removed to refit. As I’ve spotted a complete inlet filter about, I’ll purchase and that’s a job for next weekend.
Sorry for the long post, that’s where I am as of today.