Confessions of a 1450 upgrade.

[cavmedic]

Tonight I arrive home to a package from UPS. Inside is a upgraded engine cradle, new iso mounts and cast iron oil pan from Patton Acres. I'm all happy, the dog is happy to see me. I take about 15 minutes to throw the Frisbee with him and get him some exercise.

I go to the car, grab the 2 gallons of Hy-tran for my hydro change and head up to the garage. I already have the 1450 up on jack stands minus front wheels , as I dropped them off at the shop this morning to have new tires, wheel bearings , tubes and fluid installed. I start organizing my parts as I am about to do a front hydo output upgrade while the engine is off the frame.

Everything is going ok , I get the fuel tank and that separator thing off, get the hood and front cowling off, start removing wires that need to be removed and run into the first snag. When I bought the tractor last week , it had a few small issues with wiring. There was lots of wire nuts, spliced solid conductor wire on misc parts. So, I went through and redid all the splices and soldered them. Ok , so I now have to cut some of these wires. No big dea , I'll just re-splice , solder and shrink. Not a big deal.

Now I'm to the point where I need to take out the motor. I start fighting with the ISO mounts , trying to reach the nuts under odd parts of the motor , contorting , hanging upside down and twisting every which way . I was getting a little frustrated, so I stepped away. I went in the house to talk to the wife as she just got home from work,. About 15 minutes and 3 Alieve later , I go back to the garage , think for a few minutes about what engineer came up with this stupid A$$ design when I realize that I didnt have to go through all that when there was 3 bolts in the oil pan that would release the motor from this contraption. Now I can't say for sure if that is the right amount or not, but that is what was there.

So after that, I'm able to lift the engine out and set it on the floor out of the way and proceed. Mind you this was a dead lift. I KNOW I am going to feel this tomorrow especially after a 3 level cervical fusion and a artificial disc in L5 within the last 5 years.

So after I get the new cradle and iso mounts in , i move to the hydro portion of this upgrade. I get the old spool valve out , the old lines disconnected , mount the mounting plate on the steering column , start lining up lines to see how they route to the pump and which end goes where , all is going fairly well up to this point in the evening.

I remember saying to my self that this is going pretty easy for one of my projects. Something ALWAYS turns to crap somewhere along the line. So I continue to study some stuff here and there , reach up and look for the pin on the lever arm to release the arm and pull it out of the tower to install new parts and there it was. There was no roll pin , it was a cotter pin. I thought wow , for a cotter pin, there was no play in this what so ever. Well, when the linkage wouldn't slide off I grabbed the flashlight and found out why. Someone welded the linkage to the lift handle .. WTF over ! . Seriously , instead of replacing the roll pin that obviously fell out at sometime , they went up in there with a stick welder and went crazy. It's not even decent, its like the worst blob solder job I ever saw. GRRRRRRR . So I decided it was a good place to pack it in for the evening and get cleaned up, curse a bit more and grab some chow. I have to figure out if I'm either going to get up in there with a right angle grinder and cut the old handle or if I'm gonna need the sawzall.



I really hope the cradle and iso mounts get bolted to the frame first , then the motor gets lined up and can be bolted to the oil pan last.....