My not for export Major

[Aussie Frank]

Hi Pat,

Personally if I were you I would stick to the normal grinder if you are going to weld the pan because the plasma cutter will heat the metal and change the grain structure of the metal around the cut. I can't figure out why you would want to weld it though, it has to be easier to put a hole in the earlier pan, that is provided it fits over the oil pump on your engine.

Regards, Frank

[BearCreek Majors]

Well Frank, now that you mention it I guess I hadn’t really thought about using the other pan very seriously. Drilling the hole is easy enough but getting the timing mark in the correct place was my concern…….but it will be quite easy to throw a dial indicator on #1 piston while the head is off and find TDC, I even have a degree wheel to get it dialed in at exactly 0.
Thanks for making me use my brain, (sometimes rather difficult for us old farts) you just saved me a lot of extra hassle.

Pat

[Kiwi Kev]

the earlier pan, that is provided it fits over the oil pump on your engine.

Regards, Frank

I got caught with the early sump on a late model (1965) Fordson industrial engine that was put into my Fordson, awhile back.
I did'nt do the job, and was'nt aware of this problem, but the early sump and early oil pump was fitted back into the late model engine. I can hear some of you now, and yes, you are correct. No pressure releif valve , hence my comment a few weeks ago about 150 PSI oil pressure.
Anyway, I got around this by making up and fitting my own PRV to the early style of oil pump.
Drilled a hole through the plate and tapped it out to 1/4 BSP. Fitted a 1/4 hex nipple, inserted a ball bearing, a spring and fitted a cap nut. Connected it up to the compressor, and adjusted the spring to get 50 PSI relief blowoff.
Ran like that for about 5 years, before pulling the engine to replace a leaking rear crank seal.
You would not beleive it, but I only replaced the seal and refitted the sump a few weeks ago. I had the oil pump sitting on the bench also, and I did'nt take any photos.
Kiwi Kev

[Dandy Dave]

Dave, I think the guys are insinuating that you’re an old fart!
Pat

Well,.... I'm afraid they would be about right. ... With all my combined knowledge of machines of the past you would think I was at least 100 years old. Dandy Dave!

[BearCreek Majors]

I got the head back yesterday and the crank is on its way to get a regrind. Pulled the front transmission out and was pleasantly surprised to find the mouse house and rust resulted in only minor surface rust on the gears, all the bearings, races, and shafts look good. Although the hand brake has been cooked and the nut retaining the pulley drive gear on the shaft was loose and needs to be replaced, everything else looks usable.
There is no doubt that she had a drop hitch at one time, aside from the chain hold clips on the top bolts of the rear cover to hold the three point arms, I noticed the two longer bolts in the trany/rearend housing that the release pedal was bolted to.

Pat

[Kiwi Kev]

I got the head back yesterday and the crank is on its way to get a regrind. Pulled the front transmission out and was pleasantly surprised to find the mouse house and rust resulted in only minor surface rust on the gears, all the bearings, races, and shafts look good. Although the hand brake has been cooked and the nut retaining the pulley drive gear on the shaft was loose and needs to be replaced, everything else looks usable.
There is no doubt that she had a drop hitch at one time, aside from the chain hold clips on the top bolts of the rear cover to hold the three point arms, I noticed the two longer bolts in the trany/rearend housing that the release pedal was bolted to.

Pat

Pat
Is this release mechanicism for the drop hitch My tractor uses this release mechanicism for the brakes. She dosent have a handbrake lever, only this release ratchet.
Kiwi Kev

[BearCreek Majors]

Hi Kev, This should help explain what I was trying to say. I see in my previous post I referred to it as a "Drop Hitch", I meant to call it a quick hitch, and in the book Ford calls it the "Automatic Pick-Up Hitch", the wife says I should shut my mouth and just post pic's!
Pat

[Nick]

I will be interested to hear how this with timing etc with the old style sump. Nice to see another one coming back from the dead!

[Kiwi Kev]

the wife says I should shut my mouth and just post pic's!
Pat

Your lovely wife would'nt say that but then, we all know a picture paints a thousand words. Your wife is a very clever lady. I mean, she owns a super 4, a super 6, and about 3 majors not mention a pumpkin cannon

I did wonder if you were refering to something off the back of the brake rachet.
Kiwi Kev

[BearCreek Majors]

Kev, the wife may not be as smart as you think, why just the other day I was showing her how much the Countys were bringing at auction and she just got this funny look on her face and walked away mumbling something about life insurance policies, and we weren’t even talking about life insurance! Sometimes I just don’t think she gets it.

Pat

[BearCreek Majors]

I got the crank back a few days ago it was .010 under and is now .020. She must have been apart a few times as there was a piece of shim about an inch and a half long under the middle of each bearing…..and it looks like they stayed in place just fine without loctite.
Still need to get the bearings, rings, handbrake parts, and a few more seals. But with Christmas coming and taxes due after the first of the year I may have to wait a while before I can spend any money on the big boy toys. This gives me plenty of time to clean and prep before the engine goes in, and I have two bare heads on the bench that need to get put back together, and I have a Quincy air compressor that needs to go back together, and the wife is getting a new master bathroom this winter, and…..

Been working on the plow truck the last few days as the weather man has been preaching snow, we are saposta get 6” this afternoon and even I won’t complain about having a white Christmas.

Pat

[Dandy Dave]

Yup, The tax man commeth, He shaketh thee upside down and emptyith out thy pockets all thy profit of thy labors. No money left over for much of nothin. We have two tax bills back here. One in September for school, And one in January for thy Land Tax. Goes to Town and County. And then we need to file by the 14th of April for thy income tax from the following year. All tolls up to about $8,000 + US. The old Iron I could fix for that which I have to giveth up to thy gooberment... Dandy Dave!

[BearCreek Majors]

I wanted to get the air compressor done this weekend over “Christmas vacation” but the parts didn’t show up, so I did some prep on the 54.
Got the head back together, split the transmission from the rearend manly to replace the output shaft seal but found the top rear bearing in the transmission bad as well, not as bad as the County 4 was, just some bad rust pitting that would have surely ended in a failure.



Normally I am really anal about keeping the original parts on a tractor but apparently I’m getting old and lazy. The more I dug into the front transmission the worse it got, the threads were gone on the locknut for the flat belt drive gear, a bad bearing in one of the rear gears , and then found the housing split between the two back bearings. I folded and went up in the barn and came out with the transmission from the Selene/Power Major, the leftovers from converting it to live PTO. Installed the pins and shaft for the hand brake and it’s now ready to go in.






Merry Christmas

Pat

[BearCreek Majors]

Been quite busy the last few weeks, told the wife I needed to go spend some time with the girls today and actually got quite a bit done.
Took the brake/clutch pedal shaft out to replace the seals and found the shaft and pedal bushings in bad shape, back to the barn to get some parts off of the organ donor, installed new shaft and seals, still have to install the bushings. Got the rear transmission cleaned up and put some primer in the bottom where the mouse house had trashed the paint. Installed the new upper bearing and output shaft seal, and bolted it back up to the rearend. Also welded up and rebuilt shifter handle assembly, had to install a new pin as the old one was broke and mostly gone. Installed the new hand brake discs, plates, and then a new input shaft seal, then set the whole thing back in the housing.

Pat

[BearCreek Majors]

I have the engine now most of the way back together and started on the oil pan last night.
I ran a bolt in the hole closest to the sight hole, to get a measurement and then off of the back of the pan for the other measurement and scribed a mark with the calipers to get the center of the hole. Just used a hole saw slow and steady and had it in no time. Got the pan on but probably won’t get back at it for a week or two to find TDC and put a mark in the hole.

Pat

[BearCreek Majors]

OK, I had time to finish it up tonight,
Started by adding marks to the flywheel, ten marks were about 1.420”, so I scribed marks every .142" with a calipers.
I wanted to use Robert’s idea with the copper wire in the cylinder rather than using a degree wheel and dial indicator just to show that it can be done cheap and easy, but I couldn’t get the piston to bottom out on the wire so I fashioned a dead stop to go in the injector hole. Just a 3 ½” long 3/8 bolt, a spring to keep it up, and a plate to hold it down. I then added and subtracted a few flat washers on top of the bolt. By gently rotating the crank until it stopped I got the 10° mark in the window, rotated all the way around in the opposite direction until it stopped and the other 10° mark was in the window, put my mark exactly between where both 10° marks were and abara cadabara it was dead center in the middle of my window.
Now that I have seen how close I came I wouldn’t bother going through the effort again, I would just run the bolt in the closest hole, measure down 3/8” and put my mark there, if you have it close it should be within 1° or less.

Pat

[BearCreek Majors]

It Runs!!!
Granny gave me a few days off and the oldest boy is home for the weekend so we busted butt and got it fired up this afternoon, the first time it has ran and moved under its own power in 30 years, maybe more.
I’ll try to post a few more pics tomorrow, it’s getting close to midnight and I started the fire out there at 5:30 this morn, I’m ready for bed!

Pat

[curtsat15]

That's beautiful my friend! Glad to see the updates as you're going along with this project. Keep up the good work!

[BearCreek Majors]

I actually set the engine in it Thursday night, I gave up on the original clutch as well and again went up in the barn and grabbed the leftovers from the Selene/Power Major, it was like new anyway.
One frame rail is quite bad, it has holes cut in it from a torch but I’ll replace or weld and repair it later, and as usual the tombstone had several broken bolts and striped holes that had to be helicoiled. Got the new bushings in the brake/clutch pedals, reamed them to size and got them installed. Started to install the running boards and found them to be quite cracked and busted up, back to the barn….it now has good ones installed. Got the lower PTO gearbox back together with new seals and after a little swearing it was bolted back to the bottom of the transmission.
I borrowed my buddy’s injector tester again to check the injectors…….. Luckily I had a spare set of new nozzles, set them all at 2750 psi and installed them. The injector pump was an e-bay special so its condition is a roll of the dice, surprisingly it ran fairly good but missed when cracking the throttle, this may clear up after a while but I’m assuming I will have to go through it. We then primed the oil system, I use a soda bottle with a squirt nozzle on it and force a bottle or two of oil into the engine through the port for the pressure gauge, this fills some of the oil ports and the filter housing before we start cranking it over, (at least that’s my theory), after several attempts of priming, installing a gauge, cranking the engine, and repeating this procedure, we were still unable to get any oil pressure. Eventually I noticed every time I removed the pressure gauge I had oil running out, I then took the air hose to the gauge and found that the needle didn’t move at all. With a NEW oil pressure gauge it had 40 psi while cranking with the starter.
It was quite time consuming to find all the bolts and miscellaneous parts to put it back together as it has been apart for so long, and it took some time to clean the mud dobber nests out of the fuel and governor lines, but we eventually got enough parts on it that we could start it. We cranked it over for a while till I had fuel squirting out the injector lines, tightened them up and a few minutes later it was running. I had dumped oil in the transmission and didn’t have any in the rearend yet, but I just had to hop on it and drive it back and forth a little, after thirty plus years it deserved to be able to move under its own power even if it was only a few feet.

Pat

[Nick]

Hi pat, tractor is looking good! glad it runs ok, i managed to guess my timing good enough for it to run well! ive just painted my first tractor this weekend, i will post some pictures if i remember how! are you going to paint this one eventually? what colour are you doingt your grills?? cant believe ive brought that up again! i think im doing mine blue.......................

[Dandy Dave]

Hi pat, tractor is looking good! glad it runs ok, i managed to guess my timing good enough for it to run well! ive just painted my first tractor this weekend, i will post some pictures if i remember how! are you going to paint this one eventually? what colour are you doingt your grills?? cant believe ive brought that up again! i think im doing mine blue.......................

Nooooooo. They should be Silver... ... ....

Yeah, Pat's Major is looking very good considering what he had to start with. Dandy Dave!

[BearCreek Majors]

Got a little time to work on her again this weekend, the weather suddenly turned beautiful overnight, from snow to 70 and sunshine, so I opened up the shop Friday night and spent most of the weekend out there.
Went through the front spindles and installed new bushings, bearings and seals, installed the steering box and fuel tank, although the rocker shaft needs to come back out of the box to replace the seal. Cleaned up a bunch of piddley stuff like turning the right rear tire around, only to find the rim was real bad so I had to break down another one from the Super Six to steal the rim from, getting the correct bolts in the manifolds, cleaning and installing an air filter, fuel lines, etc.
Finally got it together enough that we could take it for a spin around the yard, and as usual Willow had to come along.
I noticed the three point won’t move up or down and I know it’s not the filter/screen as I cleaned it before I dumped oil in the rearend. I’ll have to see if it will be a quick easy fix as spring plow day at Uncle Vic’s is only a few weeks away and I want to run her out there to get the rings seated in. If all else fails Uncle Vic has several trailer plows for anyone to use and I can hook one of these to the hitch.
And I’m thinking about painting these grills grey, I kinda like the look on the blue/orange tractors, even more so with the “live drive” badge on them.

Pat

[AdrianNPMajor]

Hi Pat

Fantastic work and a great set of descriptions and photos to explain what you did. I've learned a lot. Many thanks.



Best

Adrian

[BearCreek Majors]

I think I found why the hydraulics won’t work, the gear wasn’t even on it. I’ll have to check the relief valve setting right away before I split the new pump open.
Seeing this knocked a few cobwebs loose in the back of my head, I believe when I was in high school one of the older boys of the previous owner brought this housing to the high school shop and welded it back together, it was one of the few places that anyone had access to a high freq aluminum welder at the time.It would be interesting to know if and how long it worked after they welded it up.


Pat

[Dandy Dave]

Ouch! Yes, leave no part unchecked. Dandy Dave!