The Home Machinist!

I usually just cut a lump of rod to an interference fit.
It works if you don't take deep or hard cuts, and if the work doesn't heat up enough to expand and get loose.

Believe me, everyone knows when the tractor is running! Friend of mine in Amsterdam had a little canal tug that blew great big smoke rings. We all loved that, but he had to repower it with a stronger motor so that was the end of the rings. It was quite interesting, you could see the way the ring rol...

Went out for some nice tractoring today; it sure is nice not to get poisoned by clouds of smoke while working! I pushed a small (5 inch pine) dead tree down and hauled it out of the ground with a chain. Cut down a larger (14") tall pine and hauled it out of my forest too. The bugs that kill the...

I once mounted a propeller shaft that way, and cut a keyway into the tapered end. I supported the weight with a bungie cord at the other end. Setup took hours, but it worked well. Now that I have a milling machine... actually, I would still have a lot of trouble mounting that shaft if I had to do it...

The block has a straight 12x1.5 thread. The new switch is 1/8" tapered pipe. The adaptor female is 1/8" straight pipe thread. I ordered the 1/8" pipe switch because I have the 1/8" tap. I actually thought I could just drill and tap a 12mm bolt, but the resulting wall was too thin...

I actually thought you were just going along with it; but you know how things run away on the board sometimes.

Note the last post! "The last line on the previous post was a joke by the way." The new pistons came with wrist pins and circlips. I once assembled and installed an engine that was delivered as a short block, pistons and crank installed by a specialist shop. It turned out that someone had ...

The last line on the previous post was a joke by the way.

I don't know what a person without a lathe would do to solve the problem that an oil pressure switch with the correct thread is not available. The adaptor took less time to make than I spent looking for one that would have screwed into the block. oil pressure switch adaptor.jpg I wished I'd known th...

Very diesel; gasoline tractors are pretty much unknown here. I sent the injectors out for testing, one needed repair. I'll push some fuel through the pump and blow out the lines before reassembling the fuel system. I got sidetracked by some errands and the need to make an oil pressure switch adaptor...

Lots of signs of bad work on the tractor; not to mention the terrible wear on all the linkages and steering parts due to a lack of simple lubrication. I had to replace every joint and bushing on the tractor, and there are a lot of them. Something obvious after the mistake has been made; to get the h...

I haven't read the entire repair manual, but I didn't see anything about stud length; I torqued them all to spec successfully though. Providing they were not stretched beyond the yield point, they should be the same length as the day they were made; however, if one does break it will be visible. I d...