Haven't been real active on the forum for the past year. Been busy getting the main house ready to sell (downsizing to a smaller house here in the Richmond area in anticipation of retirement) and have been busy building and setting up my dream workshop down at the river house, where we will eventually live full time when we retire. 11 months and counting... You can use your imagination about what can accumulate in a 24x24 workshop, a 30x22 two story garage and a 10x44 foot stable in 35 years. I filled two roll-offs in the process. The moving company I hired to help move my tools was not pleased when they saw the 800 lb planer. At least they heeded my request for a liftgate on their truck. 8^)
And, I'm happy to report, we had our first grandchild a year ago, a beautiful little girl. So many distractions...
Anyway, the 1650 has been on grass killing duty at a third house we've been trying to sell for 4 years. I have only a small shed there, and go over there (11 miles away) and cut the grass every other week and keep an eye on the place. I'm hoping it will sell this year (now at 30% less than we paid for it in 2006) As I have limited tools there, I've had to deal with issues in a non-conventional manner.
After losing the PTO switch, I substituted the light switch to keep the mower working, then losing that I hot wired the PTO directly to the battery in order to finish one grass cutting session. I've also been dealing with it burning/losing oil at a furious clip, so I decided it was time to bring the ole' girl back to the shop and deal with the issues in proper fashion. The Trusty 108 (12hp) went over there to take up the slack.
I got the 1650 back to the new shop and began to take it apart. It was worse than I had realized, so it's a good thing it I took it out of service.
Here's the shop, so you can see why I've been so busy the past year.
It was clear that the muffler housing was coming apart, and the aluminum portion had a good crack in it.
The muffler is shot. It cracked at the inlet.
The head gasket is leaking
Overall, it's a nice tractor, so it's worth some work to get it back in action.
Found another use for the orange tractor loader...
On the bench ready to be torn down.
The plan is a complete overhaul. With all the stuff going on these days, this is going to take a while. It will be two weeks before I get back to the engine.