I figured this could happen to someone else, but not me right? Wrong…
Being very fussy about, and concerning routine maintenance, fluid checks, and general attention to my tractors and implements I nearly blew it big time. Maybe even dodging a very big bullet that could have snapped my tractor in half.
I bought this property a few years ago, and in this area everything is in the 100 year flood plane…which means when it rains (hard) your land retains a lot of standing water. So to combat this I keep buying 7 yard dumps of clean fill and some top soil….20 truck loads so far, which equates to lots of seat time for this old geezer. And while doing so I fell into that repetitious complacency where the tasks just seem to be automatic. I did not sense, hear or see anything out of the ordinary, but just happened to look down while grabbing another full bucket load, and watch my hood move (from the cowl) nearly a ¼”. Immediately dumping the load, I saw the hood travel back to it’s original position. Oh No, too late I’m thinking…and crawled back to my shop expecting to find some form of disastrous rip, tear or broken structural part somewhere.
This is the kind of thing that shakes your confidence as I built the FEL (mostly) from scratch. I checked every square inch and find nothing wrong. Nope…nada, no cracks, flex, nothing broken even while rolling around with my trusty drop light and creeper……and then I checked the bolts at the sub frame. Holy cow! Every single bolt had backed out and were loose at the engine, frame rail, and transmission mounting points (14 total). Even though I cleaned all of the thread bosses with lacquer thinner, blew them out and re-cleaned with denatured alcohol, used Lock-Tite thread sealant and torque’d them at 80#’s they managed to come loose within 6 months. I just couldn’t believe that the sealant failed…I was just dumb lucky. Needles to say I will be checking these bolts every time I fuel up…or have it in my shop for any other reason.
Don’t know if this confession of ignorance will help anyone….but I just thought I’d toss it out there LOL.
Mark
Being very fussy about, and concerning routine maintenance, fluid checks, and general attention to my tractors and implements I nearly blew it big time. Maybe even dodging a very big bullet that could have snapped my tractor in half.
I bought this property a few years ago, and in this area everything is in the 100 year flood plane…which means when it rains (hard) your land retains a lot of standing water. So to combat this I keep buying 7 yard dumps of clean fill and some top soil….20 truck loads so far, which equates to lots of seat time for this old geezer. And while doing so I fell into that repetitious complacency where the tasks just seem to be automatic. I did not sense, hear or see anything out of the ordinary, but just happened to look down while grabbing another full bucket load, and watch my hood move (from the cowl) nearly a ¼”. Immediately dumping the load, I saw the hood travel back to it’s original position. Oh No, too late I’m thinking…and crawled back to my shop expecting to find some form of disastrous rip, tear or broken structural part somewhere.
This is the kind of thing that shakes your confidence as I built the FEL (mostly) from scratch. I checked every square inch and find nothing wrong. Nope…nada, no cracks, flex, nothing broken even while rolling around with my trusty drop light and creeper……and then I checked the bolts at the sub frame. Holy cow! Every single bolt had backed out and were loose at the engine, frame rail, and transmission mounting points (14 total). Even though I cleaned all of the thread bosses with lacquer thinner, blew them out and re-cleaned with denatured alcohol, used Lock-Tite thread sealant and torque’d them at 80#’s they managed to come loose within 6 months. I just couldn’t believe that the sealant failed…I was just dumb lucky. Needles to say I will be checking these bolts every time I fuel up…or have it in my shop for any other reason.
Don’t know if this confession of ignorance will help anyone….but I just thought I’d toss it out there LOL.
Mark