Busy week so far. Started out the week working on the tractor and the truck. I had repaired my truck at the latter part of last week and finished on Saturday. However, after a test drive I had an extremely loud whistling sound coming from the turbo region of the engine. As I previously posted, I was repairing the exhaust pipe from the manifolds to the turbo. I originally thought the sound was the alternator bearings going out but, after installing a new one, found that wasn't the case. Next time I will simply undo the belt to check for noises instead of replacing parts....DUH!! Hind sight is always 20/20! Anyway, got a piece of tubing and using it as a stethoscope I touched it to different parts of the engine to find where the noise was actually coming from. It was coming from the pipe I had just worked on. So I tore the entire thing down again thinking it was a bad weld. What I found was surprising. The two piece steel gasket that came with the replacement pipe was apparently a very cheap and flimsy one. I had exhaust gas leaking out through this gasket. The sound was identical to taking a large blade of grass, folding it in half, putting it between your thumbs, and blowing air through it.
Good news is it is fixed and passed the test drive. On a side note I am getting very quick at removing the turbo and exhaust from for 6.0L diesel engines, even though I did not want to become proficient at this task!
Some more tractor upgrades. I installed a ball to the top of my trailer hitch for the tractor.
Why would I do this you may ask? Trailers don't hook that high....or do they?
Yes they do! I needed a way to move my gooseneck around without having to use the truck or the bucket on my tractor. This makes it very easy to move in and out of storage or place it for loading without needing to mess around with the truck! I would never tow it or try to move it when full as that is way to much weight for the hitch or the tractor but I can move it around empty which is a huge plus!
When I traded in my old M6800 I kept the weight rack off the front of it with the intention of bolting it onto the new tractor. However, after the trade I found they changed the front grill guard design on the new model and I would have to find a different way of mounting.
If you look at the side plates of the weight rack you will notice that there are holes where it used to bolt to the side bars on the grill guard. The new guard is much wider and I had to manufacture a plate to weld to the weight rack then drill the holes in it to bolt it onto the tractor with the grill guard. I also had to get new bolts as the originals were just long enough to hole the guard on. Having the weights on the front helps a lot when mowing with the 3-point hitch mower that I have. It keeps positive contact with front wheels to the ground so they don't slide when turning.
The weather has been phenomenal last week and the first half of this week. This gave us some much needed outside cooking time on the fire pit. My wive made potatoes and BBQ chicken for supper Monday night! It was great.
Unfortunately it looks like the weather is gonna go back to below normal for a couple weeks so it was great while it lasted but at least we know that spring is hear and trying to break through the gloom of winter!
Hope everyone is having a great week!
Kenny
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