What did you do to your Cub today?

[rsshallop]

I've given my 108 new rubber all around (the old tires were the original ones) and replaced the bolts I'm using for wheel studs on the rear hubs with ones I modified by filing down the heads of the new bolts. Radioguy41 kindly pointed out that my first attempt last year left the end of the bolts recessed in the lug nuts. The new tires are all tubed and inflated to 18psi, which I think puts me in the ball park on where they should be.

[jaynjeep]

Originally Posted by rsshallop

I've given my 108 new rubber all around (the old tires were the original ones) and replaced the bolts I'm using for wheel studs on the rear hubs with ones I modified by filing down the heads of the new bolts. Radioguy41 kindly pointed out that my first attempt last year left the end of the bolts recessed in the lug nuts. The new tires are all tubed and inflated to 18psi, which I think puts me in the ball park on where they should be.

Looks great!! let the psi down some they will pull and ride much better.. better yet liquid fill them and run 8 to 10 psi, you won''t believe how much better they ride and pull..

[Radioguy41]

Originally Posted by rsshallop

I've given my 108 new rubber all around (the old tires were the original ones) and replaced the bolts I'm using for wheel studs on the rear hubs with ones I modified by filing down the heads of the new bolts. Radioguy41 kindly pointed out that my first attempt last year left the end of the bolts recessed in the lug nuts. The new tires are all tubed and inflated to 18psi, which I think puts me in the ball park on where they should be.

Looks good!

[rsshallop]

Thanks Jay, I'll drop them down some more to 14psi and keep the liquid fill advise in mind.

Ross

[Jb4249]

I pulled the old Briggs, possibly to rebuild. And pressure washed the 1100

[PBIjim]

I put a pair of Carlstar 6-12 R1 Farm Specialist ag tires on the back of my narrow rim 100 today. I had ordered Carlisle tires, but I guess that Carlisle turned into Carlstar? Regardless, the tires still say made in USA and the quality seems very good.

Despite them saying 6 ply, I was able to mount them with just a single tire lever and it wasn't all that hard. One inflated and set the bead with just a standard tire chuck on the air line. The other needed to have a ratchet strap wrapped around the outside of the tire to squeeze it tight enough for the air to stop leaking enough to get the pressure to build. I removed the Schrader valve & used an air gun on that one. It played ball on the first try with the strap. All in all, things went pretty smoothly.

I was surprised that the V treads aren't more bumpy when driving on hard surfaces, even with 35 pounds of air in them. I guess that this particular V pattern has enough overlap to prevent it. For $80 each delivered, I think that I did well.

One little thing did surprise me. The valve stem hole in the rim was .62" diameter. All the stems I had on hand were too small. I had to go get a #415 stem.

The rims came from P&K. The paint on them is rattle can white Appliance Epoxy

[PBIjim]

Today's little adventure was clutch springs. The old one was in pieces & I'm surprised that I was still able to get the tractor to move at all.

For a new spring, I could have put in a correct original part, but I wanted to experiment a little, so I got a few different die springs. I got some yellow TF extra lite duty ones and some blue TL lite. Both types were 30-60 size, meaning 30mm outside diameter and 60mm long. The wire thickness on the blue was about 20% more than the yellow. The inside diameter was able to slip over a 5/8" shaft. 3 of these springs stacked together made about 7" in length which is close to the 6-3/4 that the stock replacement spring would have been. A set of 6 springs cost me just over $15. The yellows felt a little too soft. The blues felt almost the same as stock. Stronger options are also available, but I stopped looking after I tried the blue ones. Reds would have been the next stronger option and probably would have been a little stiffer than stock. Those would be TM, medium. The wire on the yellow measured .26" wide x .1" thick. The wire on the blue was .26" wide x .12" thick. I didn't get any of the heavier reds, greens nor grays.

If you want to learn more about what other types are available, this is a good source of information - https://www.asraymond.com/globalasse...g-catalog2.pdf. Page 2 gives you the basic breakdown of what the different colors mean in the different systems of standards. Unfortunately, JIS & ISO use the same colors to mean different things. Figuring out what you have can be a bit of a mess sometimes.

The first step was to get the old spring off. Fortunately, I had already made a disassembly tool out of some 1/2" hot-roll steel flat bar and a couple of pieces of 1/2-13 all thread. That worked well, and it leaves enough clearance to get a 4" angle grinder in there if you need to grind off the top of the old spiral pin.

Putting it back together, I used a different tool. I got a few 5/8" 2-piece shaft collars, which cost about $5 each. I drilled & tapped 10-24 holes in the sidewalls of one so that I could use it for a pusher by inserting an inch long machine screw into each of the two tapped holes. The collar was about 1/2" wide. I happened to have 1" screws on hand, which is why I used that length. If I was going to buy screws for this job, I would have gotten 1.5" full thread Allen screws. I chose #10 screws because the head diameter on a #10 Allen is about 5/16" diameter (.312") and the sidewall on the collars was about .34". When they made the collars, they they were kind enough to put a little score mark half way up the sidewall on one side. That made locating the tapped holes in the center of the sidewall easier.

One of the big advantages of using shaft collars rather than a spiral pin to retain the end of the spring is that it allows me to adjust the spring preload while the clutch and driveshaft assembly are still in the tractor. I can make the clutch stronger or softer by changing the position of the retaining collar. More preload will make the clutch grab stronger. Less will give a softer pedal feel. All I have to do to tighten up the preload a little is put the tapped collar just behind the retaining collar that holds the spring, then loosen the retaining collar that holds the spring, then turn in the 10-24 adjustment screws to push the holding collar forward on the shaft a little more, then tighten the holding collar. Using this system also means that if I need to replace the drive shaft someday, I can have one less hole in the middle of the new shaft and keep it a little stronger than the original was.

The shaft collar, with the sidewall screws in it, is probably about the cheapest way there is to make a spring compressor. Unfortunately, with the limited amount of travel due to using the short little 1-inch long screws, I had to move the pusher several times to get the inch and a half of preload that I wanted to start with. It was a little cumbersome. The big tool would have done it faster and easier in a single shot, but I wanted to test the little collar based pusher to see if it would work or not. Now I know that I can make adjustments with the clutch still in the tractor and that means 5 minutes work rather than 2 hours, and it also means that I will not need to break my back lifting the engine out of the tractor just to make that silly little adjustment.

I'm not so sure that the collar would have worked well for disassembly and getting the original spring retaining spiral pin out. If I was going to do the disassembly without the bigger tool, I probably would have used the method that is shown in the repair manual, using a bench vice to hold the shaft while you knock out the old spiral pin.

All in all, I was pretty happy with the results. The clutch pedal feels normal again and the clutch grabs much better than it did a day ago.

Quite frankly, if I had wanted to do the repair on the cheap, I could probably have just gotten rid of the little pieces that broke off the one end of the old spring, then put the rest of the old spring back in the tractor with the good end towards the throw out bearing and added a spacer to get the total length back to 6-3/4". I could also have used my adjustable collar system rather than a spacer to get the spring back under preload. It would have worked, probably for a couple of years, maybe longer. A shorter spring with a spacer would undergo a greater percentage of deflection each time you step on the pedal and that would make the spring wear out faster, plus the rest of the spring is not new. It's already fatigued, so I would not have expected it to last like a new one. That would have been a temporary repair if I needed to buy time to find a new spring or something like that. The broken pieces of spring needed to get removed immediately because they were jamming between the shaft & the rest of the spring. They were binding up the works and preventing free motion of the pressure plate.

This little tractor is already more than 60 years old. The new parts should probably be good for another 60. At the very least they should outlive me.

Edit:
After driving the tractor around a bit, I would characterize this as a soft & gentle spring for this application. Taking off in third gear with high throttle, I can pop the clutch and get a smooth start. That means that there is a little slippage. After doing that 3 times in a row, the clutch plates were still cool to the touch, so it seems that there was no constant slippage. I may tighten up the spring preload a bit & see how much things change.

[Billy-O]

I thought this may be worth checking out these springs: https://performancemad.com/product-c...-parts/page/4/

Look at the other parts of this website where you can have a clutch cater your needs.

[PBIjim]

Originally Posted by Billy-O

I thought this may be worth checking out these springs: https://performancemad.com/product-c...-parts/page/4/

Look at the other parts of this website where you can have a clutch cater your needs.

That's a nice resource.
Thank you

It seems that I was starting to reinvent the wheel