Last weekend we took the Selene and the County to the Symco Thresheree, we live maybe five miles away, it was a beautiful day so one of the kids and I hopped on the tractors and took off down the road for a nice little ride. As we pulled up to the grounds I slowed down to turn down the road to the display area and I thought I heard a bearing start to squeal, things started to jump and bind, I pushed in the clutch and everything came to a sudden stop, almost in the middle of the intersection. I tried reverse, it popped loose with a grinding crunch, into first, eased out the clutch and it moved a foot or so and bound up again. Back into reverse for maybe ten feet and tried to go forward again. She went but not without complaining. We idled along in low gear a few hundred feet up into the field and parked her in a row of tractors, all the while trying to convince God that I really was a good person and I would never cheat on my taxes again!
It was a long weekend waiting to pick her up with the truck and trailer Sunday afternoon. For some reason I didn’t sleep very good all weekend.
Got her home and jacked up one side, I could turn the back tire by hand, turning the drive shaft and the front tire, and get it to lock up. While holding the back tire locked I was still able to move the front tire back and forth taking up the slack in the gears and joints. This was very good as nothing was bad in the front (County) gears, trying to find these parts in my part of the country would most likely be a waste of time. Next I took the side cover off the pinion shaft gearbox, slid the gear out and found that I could still lock up the rear ax while not driving any of the County parts. This meant the problem was in the Fordson part of the drive train and regardless of how sever it was, the parts could be gotten from a scrap yard. I called it a day and slept much better that night.
Tonight I went back out to the shop, took the lid off the rear and started turning on the axel until it locked up and found the pinion shaft to the rear went tight, this was drastically narrowing down the possibilities. I took the shifter cover off the side of the trany and eventually spotted the top shaft rear bearing seemed to have no cage around the rollers, and finally noticed one roller was spun around sideways. I’ll have to split the girl and pull the trany but I’ll still sleep a lot better tonight.
Pat
GOOD
GOOD
GOOD
GOOD
BAD
county parts are hard to find and expensive in north america 
. I have a 954 and the local heroes want me to tractor pull at our local threshermans days. I told them I would if they payed the thousands it would cost to fix it if anything happened to it. They have not said much about it since. 
. I guess you had a lucky escape with the repair and it will be nice to see her up and running again. 
