Working on the Power Major Selene

[BearCreek Majors]

I started to strip the Selene down this week to do body work and paint. We have a good 20 to 30 hours on it with no problems and only one oil leak to fix on the steering box.



I spent a few hours working out the dents, but I think I'll just use the top of the cowel on the right as it had been choped up for somthing else and then never used.



This is what she looked like when we brought her home from the junkyard. the motor was tight, injector lines were gone and the pump was full of water. It must have had a loader and backhoe on it as the threepoint arms were gone, no live PTO, the PTO shaft was a virgin and still had the cover on it, hyd pump mounted to the front and pices of iron framework still welded to the front of the frame rails and front casting( and the welds had all busted loose from the cast). All the bolts but one were snaped off and still in the front casting



the housing was split open with the only thing realy holding it is the stearing arm up aganst the wishbone mount, the long axel shaft on the other side was twisted off close to the joint and had been unsucsesfully welded at least once. It took me over six months but I got a good one from a guy in New York that sold milatary parts.





Setting up the ring and pinion, the gears had a lot of pitting but I have gotten buy with worse.




we went through the entire tractor stripping it down to bare castings and replacing all seals and a lot of the bearings, the kid was putting the trans back on here. I picked up a live PTO trany, flywheel, clutch and throwout assembly and still need to split it one more time to swap them out. The motor got a complete rebuild with a fresh crank and new pistions & liners. This is also the motor I had to shim the main bearings as the block had oversize O.D. bearings

[Dandy Dave]

Now that is one cool tractor. Dandy Dave!

[henk]

I'm sure it will end up as a beauty.
Stange setup with the front tires.

[Kiwi Kev]

You sure know how to make a guy envoius
Keep up the photos.
Kiwi Kev

[BearCreek Majors]

I was cutting the two cowlings apart tonight to make one good one and found something I have never seen before, the one I was robbing the top off of had the spotwelded seam leaded up. This had to have been done at the factory as the seam is channeled/countersunk to make room for the lead to lie in. Anyone else ever see this? Maybe a very early unit?

Pat

The holes are from me drilling out the spotwelds.

[Foxen]

That could hold some validity, I cut up and welded together two front cowls for my super major, the upper part came off an old TVO major and the seam you're talking about was leaded/tinned up at the same place...

[Bensdexta]

The housing was split open with the only thing realy holding it is the stearing arm up aganst the wishbone mount, ...

How did you repair that split housing

Great find and great work

All the best,

[BarryM]

Pat,

Very early New Majors did have the seam filled with lead. When painted it gave the appearance of a single piece pressing. That Cowl would also have had Woven Wire Grilles, rather than the later Pressed Mesh.

[BearCreek Majors]

Thanks guys, we still learn something new every day! I have seen the early woven grills as well and I do believe one of the local junk yards still has a set, got me wondering If I should go scarf them up?
And on the subject of grills……..I hate to even open my mouth but if we look closely at my power major cowling you will see that the bottom half was behind something that prevented the numerous paintjobs from panting over the lower half of the grills, and the original color looks to be grey….. and no they couldn’t have been swapped from a super major as there are no headlight holes in them.

Ben, I probably should have took a few more pics but this is the best I can do for ya.

I ground out the majority of the metal at the crack to form a good V grove to set the weld in, but leaving enough that we could pull the housing back together in its original location, also had to keep the majority of the first pass from penetrating through to the point that the seal would no longer set properly inside the housing.
I took two lengths of heavy bar stock and stuck them in the holes on each ball housing , on the long ends of the bar stock pointing up I tied a come along/load binder, put some heat on the back side of the break and started to pull the broken ball housing back together , when in place I tacked it , removed the bars and checked the (ball joint) angle to center on both sides and came up with the same angle. About this time I noticed that the back side of the housing had cracked despite heating it so I tacked the first side real good, ground a good V notch in the back side and ended up making several passes all the way around the housing.

Pat

[Grani]

You can weld reinforsments on the upper and lower part of the welding, because the gasket do not vipe that part of the ball when steering.

[Bensdexta]

Pat,
Many thanks for your explanation.
That looks a very neat repair.
Will it be as strong as the original? Welding castings is tricky
I wonder how it got broken in the first place?
Look forward to hearing more of your project

[BearCreek Majors]

Thanks Ben, I wasn’t real concerned about welding the cast iron together .It looks to be a good nodular (not sure if that is correct) cast iron and was welded into place in the housing with no ill effects. I had looked for replacement parts for several months and finial bit the bullet and fixed what I had, and as Grani pointed out gussets can be installed on the top and bottom.
Not sure how it got broke in the first place, it evidently had a loader, blade, maybe a sweeper or other attachment on the front and was probably abused a little too much.

I haven’t did much with it this week, the weather has been getting nice and I’m trying to get the yard cleaned up from last fall. I buried insulated lines from an out building to the shop and the house, and have a drain oil burning boiler in the out building. I was finishing up in a wet spot (the septic drain tile is in this area) and got the left side of the back hoe dropped down in the muck in the trench. I didn’t want to go backwards and rip up the drain field so I pulled the County on the other side, hooked to the front axle on the side down in the hole. I had the wife on the back hoe, told her to put it in low and when I started to pull let the cultch out. With visions of half the front axel left dangling on the end of the chain I put the county in low and started to pull. The left side of the hoe popped up out of the muck, the front swung over and the whole thing walked out without the County spinning a tire. When I stopped the wife apologized for forgetting to let out the clutch…..I was pretty damned impressed!

Pat

[Dandy Dave]

Tis the spring Muck that gets em Stuck every time. Dandy Dave!