Tweaker.
It had to be a Tweaker.
After work I went out and started working on the little John Deere riding lawnmower my buddy gave me last week.
I had already started in on it two nights ago trying to get the seized up steering to start turning.
An hour and a half, two cans of WD-40, some judicius smacking with a ball peen hammer and some persistence later, I does work again, kinda.
There are these things that maybe you have heard of called Grease Zerks?
Yeah, whoever had this thing before my buddy never had.
I got one King Pin to take some, the other one not so much but basically the whole mechanism was rusted up.
I got that broke free though.
So today I started in on the what I had already seen with some messed up battery cables and such.
I knew it was going to be a mess but I wasn’t prepared for what I ran across in the end.
Now let me tell you up front here, none of this is my buddy’s doing. I can absolutely, 100% guarantee that.
His neighbor gave the thing to him when he was moving away, my buddy just parked it and sat on it. He told me up front the thing had issues but he and I both know that I have some small talent for repairing things.
This one however, is one for the story books.
For starters, someone patched in A COUPLE OF FEET OF WELDING CABLE onto the original, dinky,12 inch long battery cables.
I found where they joined up wrapped in two full rolls of electrical tape and started cutting.
When I finally got the first one exposed to light my jaw dropped open.
What, In The Actual…..?
Behold! The Tweaker Special!
Then I got the other one opened up.
Holee What In The Hell Was The Thought Process Here Kind Of Crap Is This?!
You can’t go spend ten freaking dollars on a new pair of battery cables?
By the time whoever did this got done messing around here you could have WALKED to a parts house and back.
Sweet Mother Of God what a disaster.
So I took all that garbage out of there, ran up to the parts house, took that with me to show them because I know that there was no way that I could describe this disaster to them and I also knew they wouldn’t be able to comprehend just how bad it was without having eyes on.
Grabbed a new battery, they didn’t have the correct cables of course, bought a bunch of crap to cut down and crimp new ends on, got some fuel line and a filter and came home and put the damn thing back together.
There are still many wiring issues to deal with and I had to jump the solenoid but I did get the engine to spin over.
I have no idea if there is any spark or compression yet.
I know it isn’t getting any gas because I have the tank off.
But it did spin so At Least I know it isn’t seized.
One nightmare at a time thankyouverymuch.
Stay tuned, this promises to get quite entertaining.
https://www.green-parts-direct.com/
Good site to find what parts are missing and associated part numbers then copy and paste part #’s on fleabay or DDG to find parts cheaper. Good luck on your resto-mod!
Damn, thanks for that link!
Some people have really strange tastes in entertainment. Looking forward to more follow up.
Another site I’ve had good luck finding part numbers and diagrams is
https://www.ereplacementparts.com/ I once needed the small manifold connecting the carb to the intake on a lawnmower engine. The diagram for that model of engine showed two, with a different connecting flange on one end. I just matched the broken one in my hand to the exploded diagram, and it nailed it down.
That soldering job looks like something Igor is capable of, I mean he kept us safe from Russkies and such and was Air Force Engineer…
I’m NASA qualified, smartass. If you EVER catch me doing an absolutely crappy job like that, shoot me immediately and put me out of OUR misery.
Sheesh!
Can’t wait till you work your magic and I see a video of this dragon purring. Slay the beast my good man.
I feel ya brother. I bought a ’95 F150 at auction (it had been stolen) that had battery cables like that in it. Had a drywall screw driven between the clamp and the battery post to make the clamp tight enough to work, the bolt that is supposed to do that was long gone. The splice in the positive wire for the starter solenoid was even worse. They stripped the insulation off the wire, untwisted it enough to jam the other wire into it, then put a big glob of hot-snot on it to hold it together. Hot-snot. No solder, no crimp, no tape. Just hot-snot.
just remember one thing, a long time ago, my buddy told me how old nasty tranny fluid works wonders on rusted parts. we cleaned up a few old lathe with the stuff he got from a tranny repair shop and we just let the parts bath in the nasty smelly crap.
but it did make breaking the rusted parts to move after a couple o day.
I did find the older tractors much easier to get working again than the newer ones.
but that was quite some time ago now. don’t mess with anything like that anymore. and you right about some “repair” jobs I seen as well.
kind of like guys who used old coat hanger as welding rods and then wonder why the weld failed (??) and other projects fixed by boneheads
Hey, lay off the coat hanger welding rod. It pulled my ass out of a jam one time.
Years ago the wife and I plus three little kids were crossing the mountains to visit some friends in a newly acquired dodge caravan. It was early on a Sunday morning and we were in the absolute middle of nowhere when there was a cloud of oil out the back of the rig and the tranny started howling. I pulled off the side of the road on top of that long line of oil we’ve all seen left on the road by other unlucky drivers.
A got down to see what had happened and some time in the past, to drain the oil is what I guessed, someone had punched a hole in the bottom of the transmission pan. For a plug they used a plastic thread protector like you see on the end of a hydraulic hose shoved into the hole. I know that’s what it was because it was sill hanging off the edge of the hole by a thin ribbon of plastic.
I always travel with a pretty good kit of get my ass out of hell when ever I go anywhere and so I happened to have 2 qts of tranny fluid with me. I found a chunk of limb on the side of the road, whittled out a plug, pounded it in with a hammer, poured in the tranny fluid and at about twelve miles an hour limped the rest of the way to our friends home.
Once there we couldn’t find anyone that was open where I procure welding rod. He finally found a buddy that had an oxy set we could use so I set about jacking up the van and pulling the pan off.
Naturally he didn’t have an anvil so I mostly pounded the edges of the hole down flush over a big rock in his yard and then welded the hole shut with yes, a coat hanger. A local gas mart type of station had enough of the correct tranny fluid to bring it up to spec and a tube of silicone sealant I could use to seal the pan back in place.
It held until we got home and I could source another pan from a local wrecking yard. One that’s not too far from where Phil now lives.
Unfortunately the damage I did driving over the mountains low on fluid necessitated the replacement of the trans about eight months later.
Wes
wtdb
I use ATF poured in the cylinder to seep past the rings on seized engines. My papa taught me that trick. I usually let it soak for two-three weeks, but if you don’t have the time you can heat everything up…
I’ve used a tranny fluid/acetone mix, about 75% trans fluid to clean rusty parts over the years. One time I used that mix on an old Dexter meat cleaver I got from an antique store for $12 because it had a lot of rust. Cleaned it up after letting the blade sit in the bath for a few days. Cleaned up nicely. I put the edge back on it and it works like a champ.
Jeffersonian
plus half of a 5-lb roll of solder for good measure !
Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, Brother Maynard; i haven’t seen a ‘soldering’ job like that since HS Shop class !
Phil, your old pal Bubba really does get around! Does that mower share any Bronco DNA?
I bought a CM272 New Holland from the son in law of a local machinery dealer. The oil filter had a ten year old date on it, the oil drained like tar, the hydraulic oil cooler was completely covered with oil and dirt, the radiator was in similar shape, the voltage regulator and other relays next to the engine were completely covered with oily dirt—well you get the picture. I’ve never seen something so neglected in all my born days. A complete disassembly found a bearing out on the PTO idler and other disasters and problems. After an injection of a lot of work and not a few dollars, I have a great mower with a 60″ deck and a front mount blade for far less than half of the value of the machine. Oh, on the 3 cylinder diesel, the injection pump was leaking fuel all over the place. How someone can own a piece of equipment and not care for it is beyond me.
When you get to the deck there are some gotcha’s. JD put chineasium spindles on some of the models that had Zerk fittings. They don’t do anything but fill an empty chamber. The bearings in the spindles are sealed bearings. If you can get the bearing out without destroying it, the seal can be removed and it can be repacked. If you do destroy the bearings it was about $20 a set at my ACE hardware store to replace them.
Use only JD belts. The aftermarket belts will stretch and become useless not lasting a full season.
Another thing I have found is the starter motor, solenoid, and main switch all seam to go out within months of each other. BTW: I have a 17 year old 111 and I keep my neighbors 30 year old mower serviced and running since her husband passed 10 years back. I also use a trickle charger that I keep hooked up between cuttings. I average a 5 year battery life.
Re: The “substituted” battery cables:
Who the hell abandons that much copper these days?
Probably had that crap lying around…
I bought a house that was full of wiring light that. Ancient 1942 tarred cloth covered two-conductor wire with one wall-mounted light/switch combo and two outlets per room. Had two 15 amp fuses in the fuse box.
Over the intervening years, handy homeowners had added a breaker box (miswired), and hundreds of feet of additional wiring, mostly Wal-Mart zip cord, patched into the original wiring by scraping insulation off, wrapping the zip cord around the solid wire and then “insulating” it with scotch tape. And there was worse…
City code prohibits owner wiring, so I had to hire an electrician to replace it all. He wanted to just ignore it and run new wiring; I had him physically remove every inch of the old wiring first. It gave me the heebies even if it was going to be disconnected…
The last time I did an oil change on my own car, I found that some thoughtful soul had rounded off the corners on the drain plug putting it back on. !@#$%^&*.
Oh, well… leverage and friction are my buddies. I clamped a vise grip on it and slid a pipe onto the handle. Remembering that Murphy never sleeps, I verrry carefully rocked the plug enough to get it off by hand ’cause it’d be just my luck that the thing was also put on cross threaded. It wasn’t, praise be. I walked it over to the parts store to get a new one. “Nah, we don’t have nothin’ like that”. Went home and filed two new flats on the plug. It went on just right and I got a replacement plug before the next oil change. Been twitchy about local garages ever since.
Stay safe