Final Assembly of the IH #9 Mower

Last night as I was working the girls, I saw the big brown UPS truck.  I got really excited because I am waiting on the last few parts for the mower.  Sure enough, there was a package to me from Macknair & Sons in PA.  I was as excited as a little kid the night before christmas.

I contained my excitement to eat a meal as a family, but once that meal was over, outside I went, with box in hand.

The first thing I did, was put a coat of paint on the fender rod.  It came red, and I wanted it blue.  After I did that, I went out and completely torqued down the sickle guards, and then used my new bolts to attach the sickle bar to the mower.  I then just kept going, and after an hour or two, the entire mower was together.  So awesome!

One word of warning.  That lift spring is DANGEROUS!  I had the mower down on the ground, and was making some adjustments to the gag lever.  Well, I had let go of the lift lever and was using two hands to line up the gag lever, when SNAP, the lift lever snapped back to the fully upright position.  This smashed my thumb horribly.  I only have all my thumb thanks to my thumbnail.  Without it, it may have removed the end of my thumb.  So ... when working with the gag lever and such items, take it from me, and disconnect the lift spring!!!

I'll show some pictures now, and then I'll talk a little bit about what I have yet to do.

Here she is!  Blade down, Ready to go.

A view from the right.  Sickle bar down.

From the front.  Yoke and Tree's installed, ready for horses.

Bar line

Mower with bar in the upright position

Bar in upright position.  I'm lucky that this mower came with the rod and the nut to hold the bar up.

The sickle bar in upright position

A close-up of the pitman assembly

A close-up of the yoke with bar in upright position

The Draft Bracket with double tree installed.

To install the draft bracket on the pole I had, I used washers on the inside  to take up the gap.

I put an eye bolt 3 inches down from the end of the pole to hold the yoke.

I'm having a hard time putting into words how happy I am.  To see what was once a giant rust bucket take shape like this has been awesome!  I did try to pull the mower with everything installed.  It has a lot of drag on the blade.  So even though it's assembled, I still have work to do to get it useable for hay.  Here's the list of things I have left to do.

1. Install the new fender rod once the paint dries.  I currently just have a bolt holding the front of the inner shoe's sole on.  The fender rod will go in that location.  
2. Get the timing bar unstuck.  The timing bar (bar that bolts on right in front of the pitman) is supposed to be adjustable.  Mine is seized up.  I tried and tried to get it unstuck, but after talking with Norman Macknair, my last option is to put the flanged side in a forge, and try to get it to release that way.  If this doesn't work, then I'll just have to buy a new one from Macknair & Son for $65.  Repaint it when it's done.
3. Do some touch-up painting - there's a few parts that got scuffed while installing.  I'd like to touch them up so they look pretty.
4. Adjust the bar lead.  I know this involves twisting the yoke around the push bar.  I need to measure and make sure I have enough lead.
5. Adjust the timing of the sickle bar.  One the lead is good, then I can adjust the timing so the bar cuts appropriately and won't get jammed as easy.
6. Adjust the wear guards and other sickle blade items.  I'm still not sure how to adjust these, so I'm going to do my best.

 Once all of this is done, I'll be ready to cut hay with my machine.  YAY!  It's so great to see this all coming together.  I'm grinning ear to ear.

IH #9 Mower Page

Sled Work

Yesterday after work I got home with a few hours of daylight left, so I decided to work the girls to make sure they're ready for this Saturday at Equifest.  They did great.  I am completely spoiled with my horses.  To hitch up to the sled, they have to stand facing away from the fence, and they have to stay still while I do the hitching without anyone holding their heads.  They both did so great for me.  Ask for a step over, they give it, ask for a step back, they give it, all while not pacing to get going.  I LOVE this team!  Enjoy the pics.

My view.  For sled work I don't use the spreaders, I just use a small  hame ring extension.

Standing for a break

Stepping off and working well.

From the front.  2 pretty ladies and a happy teamster

Rachael and Pam taking a break.  It was very windy.

Another view of Rachael and Pam

Great way to spend the hours after work.  The girls did great and we're ready for Equifest.  While working, the UPS man pulled up, and I got my last parts for the mower.  I'll talk about that in a separate post.

Grass Board for the IH #9

I'm still slowly wrapping things up on the mower.  One thing I did the past few days was to replace the grass board.

My sickle bar came with the bolt and the metal flange that screws to the wood.  I had planned on just buying a wood grassboard with the wood pole thing and get it back the way it used to be.

I was talking with Norman Macnair about this, and found that he had the parts, but that it was 75 plus 13 in shipping.  He offered me a different solution.  He told me to check with a local tractor house for a metal replacement grassboard.  He said it would cost around 45 bucks, and that they are universal and fit old mowers fine.

Kosch Grassboard.  The bars extend further than the picture shows. 

With help from my friend Pat, we found one at Nortex tractor house in Sulphur Springs TX.  It is a black metal grassboard made by Kosch.  It is supposed to fit all old makes of sickle mower.  The price tag was around $35.00.  I decided that I could handle using this instead of the old wooden style.

They only had one in stock, and it looked like it rattled around the delivery truck a good bit.  Lots of paint had been rubbed off and it was scuffed up.  This was no matter to me, and I bought it and brought it home.

I did a fit check on the sickle blade, and I didn't like the fit.  It would only go up 2-3 inches before the top of the grassboard was hitting the top of the outter shoe.  This seemed to be a problem.  I did a comparison to the original wood plate and found that this grassboard had more metal than I needed.  I took a grinder to it, and cut it off so it was the same dimension as the wooden grass board plate.

See that black corner sticking out in the upper left of the picture?  That needed to go bye bye.

I just took an angle grinder too it and smoothed it all out.  Then I decided to put a fresh coat of black paint on it to cover the freshly ground area, and all the scuffs and scratches it came with.

Hard to see the new part in this picture, but you can see how the new part is now rounded to match the old part.

Freshly painted and modified Kosch Grass Board

After a few coats of black paint, I took the new part out and did a fit check on that.  SUCCESS!  It fits great, and it gives plenty of upward motion.  I'm very happy about this.  Grassboard is complete and installed!

There it is!  Grass Board installed on the sickle bar.

Today or tomorrow I should get the last few parts in the mail and then the mower will be complete!

IH #9 Mower Page

The mower is almost done!!

I've made some good progress on the mower, and I'm really excited about it.

After I installed the wheels, and the lifting lever assembly, I was kind of stuck.  It seems when I pounded the pin out of the gag lever hinge, I cracked it.  I couldn't install any more of the components until I got that hinge.

I bought a new one from Norman Macknair (www.macknair.com).  I also got a new pin for the hinge.  It arrived last week and I was like a little kid in a candy store.  Out I went with part in hand.  I then installed the pushbar, yoke, gag-lever hinge, gag-lever, and the hook that attaches the gag-lever to the lifting assembly.  Soooo exciting.

I then started working on the sickle bar.  I used a wire wheel and cleaned it all up.  Then I removed every sickle guard.  This left me with the sickle bar and the inner shoe.  The 3 bolts holding it on were not budging.  I decided to cut them off with a grinder.  This went pretty easy, and soon I had everything broken down.  I finished cleaning it all, and then painted.

If you recall, I had bought 3 new sickle guards to replace some old ones that had the ledger plates lifted or damaged.  I painted these guards as well so they would match the rest of the mower.

The inner shoe ... oh that sucked.  If you recall, I used a sawzall to cut through the inner shoe pins holding the shoe to the yoke.  They were frozen solid.  The front pin was stuck solid in the yoke (and after a long battle using a drill, sawzall, punches, sledge hammer, and a few choice cuss words, I was finally able to free it).  The back pin was stuck solid in the shoe.  I thought that what I really needed, was a hydraulic press.  I think that would have done a good job removing it.  I didn't have one though, so out to the garage I went, for round 2 of using drill bits, sawzall, punches, and cuss words.  It finally worked though, and I freed it.  I was so excited I cleaned it up, painted it, and installed it on the mower.

Shoe installed, you can see the sole sitting below it, ready to be installed once I get the 3 bar bolts.

Next I had to decide what to do about the hardware that attaches everything to the sickle bar.  I could try to re-use the old bolts and nuts, but the nuts were worn down a lot, and it may be tough to tighten them without stripping them.  I stopped by Tractor Supply, and found that they had a box of bolts exactly like I needed.  With these in hand, I went home and did a preliminary assembly of the entire sickle bar.  It looks great!  I then slide the sickle blade in it and it slide very easily.  I'm sure I had a grin the size of the state of Texas.

Preliminary assembly from the outer shoe looking inward.  Need a grassboard!

Preliminary Assembly from the inner side of the sickle bar looking outward.  Blade slides easy!

I need a few more parts before I can finish.  Thanks to the Macknairs, I'll have them soon.  1st, I need the 3 bolts that bolt the sickle bar to the inner shoe.  These are only made by one company in the entire US, and I'm so glad that Norman Macknair knows how to get them.  Second, I am getting a new fender rod.  This mower didn't come with one, so I'm putting a new on on it.  I also need to get a grassboard.  I think I'm going to buy a new metal one from a local tractor house.  it's cheaper than buying the old wood ones, and it's locally available.  Hope that works.

 So here it is ... here's where we're at as of right now.  Once I get the parts I need, I'll be able to go for my first ride on it.  This has been a long project, and it's very exciting to see the end in sight!

And here she is.  PRETTY!

You can see the shoe here.  I just need 3 bolts to attach the bar to it.

IH #9 Mower Page

February 2013 Update

It seems my posting is getting less and less frequent.  My job is a bit more demanding now, and I just seem to forget to blog some of the things going on around the place.  I'll work on that.  Here's pretty much what's been going on with me.

The horses:

The horses are well.  Nellie is pregnant and is starting to show a bit of a belly.  She's still queen of this place and makes sure all others fall in line.

We've had a shift in the herd.  Buck decided he was done being bossed around by Rachael, and he challenged her.  I couldn't believe that he did that, and won the battle.  Rachael is now kind of the odd horse out.  Buck and Pam have formed a tight bond to each other, and they both bond with Nellie.  Rachael is the grouchy old lady that once used to rule the land.  Kind of sad.  Due to this shift, Rachael is not getting all she needs to eat, and since she is a hard keeper anyway, she really started to show it for a bit.  We have her pulled out in her own pen now, and we're feeding her a large portion of food to get her nice and healthy again.  I think she enjoys being able to take her time eating and not have Buck come challenging her for her food.

I had the farrier out today.  Oliver Jetton is amazing!  He removed the shoes of Rachael and Pam and trimmed everyone up.  I love having Oliver out, because not only to I get farrier work done, but the horses all have a great experience with him and it's good for them.

I haven't driven the horses in a bit, but that's fixin' to change.

Equifest - February 23rd, 2013

Some folks are putting on the first annual NorthEast Texas Equifest.  This is a day long event that focuses on all horses, breeds, and disciplines.  My friend Bev was invited to show her Belgian Stallion Vegas and represent the drafts.  She then arranged for me to do a 30 minute driving demo.  From 5PM - 5:30PM I'll be using Rachael and Pam to demonstrate driving.  Rather than focus on a boring wagon, I'm going to focus on the farm side of things.  I'll bring my forecart, disc, and mower.  I figure this will be very informational.  I plan on a brief overview of the harness (main parts, what they do, and how a harness works).  I then plan on driving the girls.  I might skid a log, or pull the mower.  It's going to be a great time.  The equipment will set out near us, and will be something that anyone who walks by can touch, look at, and enjoy.

Anyone around, feel free to come say hi.  I should be there all day.

 

 

 

 

The Mower

Here is the current status.  Just need 3 bolts to attach the sickle bar.  So close!

Equifest kind of lit a fire under my butt to finish my mower.  I got a part I was in need of, and did more painting.  I'm almost done.  I'll cover all the mower stuff in a separate blog entry.


Good times for me!  I just wish I had more time to drive.