Well, no Pics yet, but I got a little bit done.
First things first, I aired up the tire for the third time in 3 days. 3 are holding, but one of the fronts leaks off overnight.
Fired it up, and pulled it down by the shop, yanked the battery and put it on a 2 amp charger(actually, its a 60 amp charger, on the lowest setting).
Pulled the rear fenders and started cleaning out 40 years of grunge and old straw. Yanked a lot of it out by hand, and then hit it with a blower nozzle and 125 psi air. Got a lot of it off, but there are several hours of cleaning before I'm going to call it done. Soaked everything down with a liberal bath of WD40. Not much works better as a pre soak when cleaning greasy items. Most of the time I can just follow it with the compressor, and then just a soapy bath, but this thing is a mess.
Strangely enough, every bolt or screw I turned was barely hand tight, and some were downright loose. Even missing one of the 12 point aircraft bolts holding the hydrostatic pump together and another was not even finger tight.. Talk about a near miss. Will have to go thru this thing with a socket set, and check every single fastener before I put it into operation.
Drained the oil, but did not refill. Will probably fill it up, and run it for an hour or so, and then change it again.
Gathered up the parts of the muffler, to see if there was enough metal to repair it, and for the most part it is full thickness. It just shook itself to death. I'll repair it and weld another brace to it. Still Have to remove the pipe threads from the exhaust pipe, where it broke off, and come up with that odd shaped pipe coupler. I may just see if I can duplicate it with schedule 40 pipe. Another option is to fab up a bolted flange, since my block is drilled and tapped for it. If I go to all that effort, I'll probably just make a new muffler for it.
Pulled the top cover off the Diff housing to check on things, and for the most part, it looks good. One thing concerns me, but I'm not quite sure how to handle it. The inside of the housing is coated with a thick, paraffin like substance. I am sure it is a deposit from the oil, but I have never seen anything like it in a hydraulic system. It almost looks like the waxy deposits that you found under the rocker covers of an old v8, back when oil wasn't the same quality we have now, but it was much softer. About half way between paraffin and Vaseline in consistency. Guess I'll just clean it up as well as I can and hope for the best. Hate the thought of a big glob of it working its way into the hydrostatic pump, or clogging the filter.
That's pretty much where I stand right now. I know I was all over the place, but my intent was not so much to repair anything at this point, as it was to make a good assessment of what I have and prep it for the work to come.
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