MG Data

Phelan, CA

It snowed April 21, 2010 around 11pm.

About 1 inch… most of all season at my location.

After a tuneup including plugs, wires, cap, condenser, rotor, gaskets,  points, fan belt, fuel line from tank to solid line including inline fuel filter and shutoff valve, radiator hoses, fresh coolant, oil/filter change (Rotella T 15w40), new oil drain plug/gasket, top off transmission fluid, new shifter boot, new oil pressure guage, the ford 9n / 2n still needs starting fluid to get started (warm or cold, 90% of the time). It will not fire without the starting fluid (ether) sprayed into the air intake of the carb.

Next is to check that the choke is working properly. The pull lever pulls in and out on the dash just fine, it rotates the other end just fine, but… ah ha… the nut is not tight at the other end. Tighten the nut and the level won’t pull out at the dash. The carb choke flapper must be stuck. Try to move the flap by hand and it is stuck good. Remove the carb from the tractor and work on it with WD40 and a small ball peen hammer for about a half hour and it moves easily. Put the carb back on the tractor, pull the choke, and it fires within 2 seconds of cranking. No more starting fluid!

Btw…. carb is a Bendix Zenith model

Here’s what I had to deal with.

Very little experience.

Ford 9N, 2N tractor. Likely a 44-47 2N (oval front radius rod) but not too sure as there is no serial number on the engine.

Dearborn 19-61 loader.

Front mounted distributor.

The belt: 5/8″ x 46 1/8″ part # 9N8620B3 which I ordered online at Yesterday’s Tractors, cost was about $9 + shipping.

Day 1: I got the tractor started and pulled it into the garage with rafters and parked it.

Day 2: I took 4 slotted-head bolts out of the hood by the steering wheel and 2 larger hex head bolts out of the front bottom of the hood, 1 on each side. I disconnected the gas line at the easiest spot close to the gas tank (gas line has been modified, no sediment bulb, just and inline fuel filter and shutoff).

I slipped my 1-ton chain hoist on a 25lb barbell bar and put it up in the rafters above the hood. I took some 700lb nylon strap and attached the hood to the hoist. One strap was toward the front of the hood wrapped around where the bend is and the other strap was at the steering wheel end. I attached both straps to the hook of the hoist so both were taught. The hoist itself was above the front end of the hood. It took some manuevering to get the hood off  with one person hoisting and the other on the tractor seat trying to get the hood to clear the steering wheel/dash and a rigid hydraulic pipe. After a bit of struggling and a few tries the hood was up off the tractor.

Next I see that the drive shaft of the loader needs to be out of the way in order to get the old fan belt off the crank pully (and new belt on). The new belt, by the way, was significantly thicker than the old belt which was so rotted and frayed and > 25 years old, I do not know how it hadn’t broke yet.

The front hydraulic pump which powers the Dearborn 19-61 loader is driven by the crankshaft pully on the engine.  There is a drive shaft from the loader. At the engine end of the loader drive shaft is a hub with 4 pins on the engine side of the hub. These 4 pins engage the crankshaft pully on the engine and power the loader pump. If this hub/drive shaft assembly for the loader was not in the way, changing the belt would now be easy as there is enough clearance to easily do so. Because the hub has these 4 pins, there is not enough room to get the old belt out, much less the new belt in.

Day 3: I removed the Vickers vane front pump from the tractor by removing the 2 bolts holding it and also the 2 smaller bolts at the flange on the back of the pump to the coupler. I then removed the coupler from the shaft by removing the remaining 2 bolts. Now I have the front pump hanging off the front of the tractor held on by a hydraulic hose on each side which I did not touch. I have the coupler off the tractor. The mounting bracket for the front pump is still on the tractor, it is connected by 2 bolts and a large pin thru the main loader frame tube which holds the front end of the loader to the front axle/ engine body.  I had mistakenly removed the 2 bolts holding the  front pump mounting bracket on Day 2 and was attemping to remove the pin before I realized I was going in the wrong direction. Luckily I didn’t get the pin out and just pounded it back in place. The bolts for some reason were very tough to take off because as I discoverd after I got them off, the threads on the nuts were being shredded as I was removing them. The bolt threads were fine except the ends.  New nuts would not go on the bolts so I corrected the threads with a 1/2″ x 13 die. I cleaned up a bunch of grease/oil/dirt on the tractor and put those bolts back in place with new nuts.  Somewhere around this time I jacked up the front end with a floor jack and put a jack stand under the engine block toward the front so that the front tires were now 2-3″ off the ground.

Now back to the fan belt. Now that I have the pump and coupler off the front, I have enough room to move the driveshaft to its maximum forward position where it is stopped by the hub with the 4 pins hitting the front axle/radiator support. There is still not enough room to even get the old belt off.

Next I removed the radiator so that I could access everything better. It was a great improvement with the radiator out of the way and much easier to see how much room I had to play with and get my hands in to the crankshaft pully. I wish I had done this sooner.  With this out of the way I could see there was enough room to remove the old belt, 1 pin at a time as I turned the shaft/hub clockwise to force the pin over the belt (a tight fit) one at a time. Now with the old belt off, I tried to put the new belt on. There is not enough room for this to happen. Now I look to gain more room to allow this to happen. The top right pin (when standing at the front pump looking at the engine, i.e. facing the back of the tractor) seemed to allow the most room.

There are 6 bolts that hold the front of the engine body to front axle/radiator support. If I can move this forward, I will increase the amount of room between the pins on the crankshaft hub and the crankshaft pully. The large pin that I mentioned earlier holds the pump mounting bracket to the main loader tubing, but the bracket is on both sides of the tubing connection plate and this will prevent the front axle support from moving very far foward regardless of the 6 bolts on the front axle support. There appears however to be enough play in the pump mounting bracket over tubing mounting plate that it might allow enough of a gap to take care of the fan belt issue.  

So I loosened all 6 of these bolts (engine crankcase to front axle support) and the front axle moved foward on it’s own as I did so. I loosened the 6 heavily grease covered bolts but did not come close to removing any of them.  Remember I had the engine block on a jack stand to support the rest of the tractor. Now I looked at the gap between the pins on the hub and the crankshaft pully and it had opened up probably 1/8″ wider. I put the new fan belt over the fan blades and in place and then tried to get it on, 1 pin at a time. I twisted the belt good so that the pin would try to slide inbetween the ridges on the belt. After some struggling, I got the belt past 1 pin. Now there were 3 more pins to get it over before it would be on the pully. The 2nd pin was like the first. The 3rd pin was harder as I had to twist much harder on the belt to get the pin in the groove of the belt so it could go past. With some serious effort I got it past the 3rd pin. The 4th pin was like the 3rd pin with some serious tweaking and counterclockwise twisting of the crankshaft with my other hand and eventually pushing past the pin with a strong wooden dowel and a lot of twisting of both the belt and the crankshaft in the opposite direction, it finally went through the gap.

That finally did it, the new belt was on. Now I just tightened up the 6 bolts and put the coupler and pump back on to the shaft and tractor and engaged the 4 pins into the same cranshaft pully holes that they came out of. Everything was back except the new belt was in place!

Now that I have the hood up and radiator off, I am going to do a minor tune up while it is so convenient and hope the tractor will still start and work when I’m done with it.

Below is a picture of the front pump removed, working on removing the coupler from the flange of the drive shaft.

Below is a picture of the 4 pins, gap, and crankshaft pully (before the old belt was removed).

By the way, I think after doing more research that the tractor is a 2N btw 1944-1947 but I could be wrong. I haven’t yet located the seriel number on the engine (I don’t see one where it should be). Well this weekend I will take it apart some and do a little tuning up.

Is it an 8N or a 9N? Who cares… won’t start. I haven’t run it in 2 years. I did all the usual stuff:

1-charge battery (6 volt)

2- drain old gas (none)

3-clean spark plugs with wire brush

4-add new gas

5-make sure gas is flowing down to carburetor

-try to start it. No luck.

Checked the plugs and they are dry.

New day with a fresh charge on battery, here’s what I did: drain leftover new gas into gas can. Remove elbow from carburetor, it is clean, put it back on (didn’t need to do this). Unscrew hose clamp holding air tube to carburetor. Unbolt carburetor (two top nuts). Quickly look it over (still connected to the tractor throttle and choke). Carb looks okay, no obvious problem, put it back on. Reattach fuel line from gas tank, add gas into tank, unscrew fuel line at carb again to make sure gas is flowing down good. Once it’s coming down full flow, reattach it to carb. Leave air hose off. Spray starting fluid into carb thru air inlet, try to start, nothing. Do it again, nothing. Do it again, nothing. Spray starting fluid, into air tube from the carb end toward the air filter end, put it on loosly as some starting fluid is dripping out. Set the throttle to about 3/4 full gas, full choke, try to start, and it fires right up and stays running fine for 10 minutes until I shut it off. Start it again a few minutes later with no choke and 1/4 on the gas throttle and it fires right up.

Next time, step 6 will be, disconnect air tube from carb, spray starting fluid into air tube toward air filter, reattach loosly, set throttle at 3/4 and full choke and try to start.

It sure does sound good to hear it running.

I had wanted to build some cabinets in my garage. The garage is about 1000 square feet and attached to the house. I intended to build some cabinets and put them up along the south wall of the garage between two windows. This is about 16 foot long area. I didn’t want anything fancy but just some extra storage. Anyhow, as way leads to way, the weekend came along and I somehow picked up a computer virus _ex-08.exe and monnid32.exe. Figuring this out and cleaning up my system took most of Saturday so the prospect of getting these cabinets built did not look good. (Btw…. for the virus issue, just incase someone stumbles on this page with the same problem, I used Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and it did a great job at cleaning the system). Now, short on time, as this was a weekend project, I remembered a friend of mine, William, had told me weeks earlier when I was talking about the cabinets that he just simplified it and lined the wall of his garage with ordinary gym style lockers. I looked more into it late on that Saturday and decided to give myself a break and put the lockers in instead. Well I went shopping for the best price (actually I had only my budget for the cabinet materials to spend). I didn’t realize the selection I’d have but I ordered ones like this locker. I got 4 of these for a total of 36 compartments. Since my budget allowed it I went and upgraded to assembled. They arrived about 2 weeks later on a freight truck and after unpacking, I put them into place, screwed them into the wall, and viola, 36 cabinets. For the situation at hand, it can’t be beat. No time wasted, computer is clean and the cabinets are in and I’m back to work… oh yeah. Bye!

US Beacon has recently updated thier dataset to include 2005 demographic data. I found it interesting to look at my hometown of Hesperia, CA to compare the 2000 and 2005 datasets.

The data indicates the population in 2000 was 62,582 and in 2005 the population had increased to 79,714. This represents an increase of about 25%. Interestingly the actual number of white people in Hesperia has gone down by 78 people while the number of hispanic or latino’s has gone up by 14,823 (from 29.40% of the population in 2000 to 41.68% of the population in 2005).

See the full report of Hesperia’s population and demographic data

Coulter Pine Trees (Pinus coulteri)

5 Gallon size Coulter Pine trees for sale.  19 available. $40/ea or make offer for all 19. Moving, must sell, grown from seed, in pots, ready to go. They are are from 1997-99. Excellent health.

Coulter Pines are almost impossible to find at any nursery, they are native to the lower portions of the San Bernardino and San Gabriel (local) mountains. Very nice looking tree at all ages. They produce large heavy cones that are a tan-yellow color with edible seeds. They have needles that are up to 14″ long for adult trees and have a deep green to greenish-blue color. Adult trees have long, sometimes swooping, robust branches. They do well in the high desert, just add water. They are slower growing than most of the common nursery pines, but they are the closest thing we have to a native pine tree here in the high desert. They exhibit a very nice classic pine tree shape with a broad spread.

See some pictures here:
http://www.desertmud.com/trees/
Pictures taken on April 20, 2004. Trees have grown some since the pictures were taken.

Pictures at bottom of the page show full grown Coulter Pines.

Also available:
9 x 1 gallon size Ponderosa Pines – Small cone Southern California Variety ($10/ea)
1 x 1 gal Jeffery Pine ($10)
3 x 2 gal Coulter Pine ($15/ea)
1 x 5 gal Italian Stone Pine ($20)

Recently our main office needed some employee lockers. We looked at the internet and found a great company called Lockers Depot. They are based out of Southern California so we were able to pick up the lockers ourselves to save on the shipping costs which for lockers are quite hefty. We placed our order and were able to pick up the lockers 3 days later. Assembly of the lockers was easy thanks to the instructions provided and now we are set with 42 bright new locker units.

That’s me.

Hesperia, CA

Grand Junction, CO

Contact me thru this website: http://www.desertmud.com/contact.php sends mail directly to me.

Any mountain, anywhere, anytime.