Samantha has known my desire to buy and rebuild an old Ford for quite some time. I believed that I would make an offer on my grandfathers and finish the job my dad started thirty years ago. Although we're still a little confused as to whether grandpa's is a 9N, 2N or possibly an 8N, there is no doubt that the one I purchased a couple weeks ago is an 8N. The serial numbers place the tractor as being produced in 1948.
She's definitely going to take some work, but, good things take time! This will take lots of time!The tractor does run, although with some issues. We know it's been abused somewhat, but there are a few replacements that have been made. There are also a few items missing on the tractor. I knew in advance that there are a lot of sites selling these parts as replacements. I'll be taking advantage of these sites.
We are currently storing the tractor where dad works. The plan for now is to do little, unfortunately. I have a few items that I want to settle before really attacking some of the big ticket items... like the motor.
We did change the last weekend. Discovered it's been a while, a long while. The filter canister was half full of gunk. It was removed and cleaned out completely. A new filter was installed and the canister was reinstalled on the left side of the engine block.
After the oil was drained from the engine, the drain cap was reinstalled with a new gasket. At that pointed we noticed the officially the leaking fuel. The shut off was indeed off, the fuel was dripping from the carburetor.
We decided the next step would be to remove the carb and rebuild it. The shut-off is not original. It to will be removed and replace by a replica instead of rebuilding the existing shut-off. There is also a steel fuel line that runs from the shot off to the carburetor it doesn't exist and is instead transporting fuel through a black hose.
We tore apart the carb during a few minutes the last few nights. It's currently soaking in a cleaning solution and hopefully will look great by the weekend. The complete rebuild kit, steel rod and new shut off were ordered from Just8ns.com, I was pleased with the price for these items.
Sometime next weekend the carburetor will be rebuilt and we'll install all items. Next we're going to do a compression test on all four cylinders. We're expecting a few issues here, after all its 63 years old.
There are a few issues with the governor, that will be next on my list of priorities. It's making a pretty good whining noise, I imagine the bearings are shot. The rebuild kit runs about $55. Pretty simple fix. Looking forward to the process!
