here is the driveshaft coupler thing I was talking about, notice how badly wallowed out it is on the left.
I got bored last night. Rolled the '78 out and the '76 chassis into the garage. I was tired of looking at the rusty old '76 out in the driveway doing nothing but being ugly so I stripped it down to just about a bare frame.
Pulled the levers, steering and dash as one unit for now to avoid fighting with the steering wheel.
Some moron PO made a huge hole in the cowl/dash of my '76, presumably to reach into it with a tool rather than taking 10 minutes to unbolt something.
As I was tearing it down, it reared up on it's hind legs and wanted to fight.
I threw a mean right hook and knocked the fenders clean off it!
Really what happened was I had to lift it up to get one of the bolts out that held the foot rests and fenders on. Got 7 of the 8 out, and the last one stripped the phillips head on me. It's always that last fastener when I work on something.
Taped off the open lines to the hydro unit. I don't know what was fighting me so much but the hydro spins easily by hand. Tooted some PB blast on the manual release valves to see about getting those free again.
Front axle went bye bye.
There was just a bolt shoved through the pivot point with no nut, and the holes had been repaired before with some welds. Looked pretty shoddy to me. Will have to see what that is supposed to look like and see about some more suitable fix.
Frame is a little banged up, rigged up and filthy from over 30 years of abuse. Nothing that cannot be put right though.
That is where I left off. Took me about 2.5 hours to dismantle it, including packing the parts in a bin neatly and putting the nuts and bolts in a divided container. I don't need to label anything, I have a photographic memory. I've also got a just about identical tractor to compare to if need be.
The hydro fluid in the '76 looked rough compared to the '78.
What am I gonna do with the '76? Stay tuned!