It was about the size of a BB. It was more cylindrical than orblike, like a short piece of a nail or a spaghetti noodle, less than 3/8 of an inch long.
“It” was responsible for three days of
agony, hair-tearing, and more than normal number of oaths I’ve vowed to stop
using.
All during the dry winter and spring, I
held off stirring any dirt for fear that the terrible winds we had during May
would start things blowing, like the 30’s or the 50’s. Late in May, we got a nice heavy wet
snow. And before that all dried out, in
early June we got a little over an inch of rain.
Suddenly, it was time, past time, to get
the ground ready if I was going to plant millet. All the dry spring, the dry ground remained
sterile. After the snow, the weeds began
to come. Before the June rain had dried
enough to farm, the weeds got to be 4—6 inches tall.
So on a nice June day, I set out with the
old Allis and the Calkins rod weeder and tried killing a few weeds. It was still too wet, and the weeds were
going over the rod alright. But so was
enough wet soil that some of the weeds were surviving.
But there was another problem. The tractor engine was dragging down, losing
rpm’s as if it were overloaded. Which of
course it wasn’t. Or was it?
I decided the tandem disk offered a
better opportunity to kill more weeds, so I returned to the farmyard and made
the exchange. All this took hours, of
course.
When I returned with the disk, the
tractor still acted like it was overloaded.
No way. Not with that disk.
I found that if I stopped for a few
seconds, the tractor would run top speed for about 30 seconds, and then start
dragging down again. I played that game
for 30 minutes. Stop and wait ten or
fifteen seconds. Go for thirty or
forty-five seconds. Do it again.
I decided that was no good, so I headed
back to the farm thinking, “What am I gonna do?” It almost certainly had to be a fuel
starvation problem, there being no ignition issue for a diesel.
The first thing I tried was changing the
fuel filters. Back in the field, it was
stop and go, still. This time, I pulled
the fuel line off at the tank. Plenty of
flow there. Next, I pulled the line off
in front of the fuel pump. Good flow there. I pulled the line in front of the
filters. Fuel flow there seemed okay,
though not as robust as in front of the electrical pump.
Back to the field. Same old
problem. Again, I managed to get over
some acres when it decided it could run up-to-speed. The key was once it got to running correctly,
don’t stop. Mother Nature determines
that strategy has some problems, bladderly speaking.
I got to thinking maybe the electrical fuel
pump I added last years was too small, was restricting fuel flow. The next morning, I went to town to try to
buy a bigger fuel pump. No luck. All they had was what was already installed.
With some vague hope that the problem had
cured itself overnight, I went to the field with the disk. But after about five minutes of the tractor
dragging down, I knew that I would have to fix the problem some way somehow.
Like most problems in life, determining
that I could and would find and fix the problem set me on the right path. That and centering on the fuel pump.
Back in the yard, it was quick work to
remove fuel lines. I had been down that
road a few times very recently. This
time, I removed the line right in front of the filters and in front of the fuel
pump.
I put a piece of an old sheet over the
fuel pump inlet. I put some compressed
air in the fuel line that connects to the filter, forcing air back through the
fuel pump.
When I removed the piece of old sheet from
the fuel pump inlet, there was my “rubber bb”.
Hard to imagine that a piece of rubber about the size of a whole
peppercorn could shut down a giant tractor.
Even the stone David used to take Goliath out
of the picture was a boulder compared to what I held in my hand. But the lesson was the same: How the Mighty are Fallen.
Back in the field I had every confidence
that things would run correctly now. And
it did, too. I finished disking the
millet field and moved into the summer fallow that will be wheat in the fall
(if moisture conditions allow).
That afternoon as I retired from my day’s
work and inspected things while the tractor filled with fuel. I discovered two more problems. One was quite apparent. The air conditioner had stopped working.
Two gangs on the disk had bearings that
had failed. My spirits sagged. Would I never get this job done?
I had to return to the city to keep an appointment
with the eye surgeon. (We scheduled
surgery in October to correct double vision.)
I used the trip to buy refrigerant but I
couldn’t find disk bearings. NAPA could
get them in overnight. It took one day
to remove and disassemble the disk gangs.
An
eight-foot cheater (a section of 1-1/2 inch pipe in this case) and two big pipe
wrenches were required to remove the nuts holding the disks on their shaft. Even
had I the bearings in hand, which I didn’t, I was pretty much done for the day
after that chore. I’m not as young as I
used to be!
Another day of reassembly wore me out
again. On the third day, I began by recharging
the air conditioner. Success! I headed for the field with a-c and disk
working great. Maybel
I pressed the lever and dropped the disk
in the ground. I got ten feet into my
chore when the tractor died dead.
What now?
When I tried to restart the tractor,
I found everything dead. Pushing the
starter button produced nothing.
That has to be electrical, I thought. I brought the portable generator and the
battery charger to the field. Still
nothing. An hour of checking battery
connections and other electrical things led me to a solenoid that didn’t appear
to be working.
Back to town. They had the solenoid. When I tried the starter button after
replacing the solenoid, I got the old “click-click-click” that means only one
thing. Dead battery, plural in this case—two
of them.
I put in a quick call to NAPA before
closing time, in case they had to order the batteries in overnight. They had the batteries. For only $579, the two new batteries would be
mine!
The batteries are huge weighing about 80
pounds apiece. Gravity assisted in
getting them down from their perch above the tractor tires. I wasn’t looking forward to getting the new
ones in place. Gravity switched sides in
this battle.
Day
four of this nightmare began with a trip to town. The young lady who waited on me at NAPA had
to have assistance to get the dolly with the batteries on it tilted back enough
to roll them to my pickup. Between the
two of us, we got them loaded and the old ones on her dolly. She didn’t volunteer to help me get them to
their proper place in the tractor.
The 4010 with frontend loader came to my
rescue. The scoop just below the
tailgate of the old Dodge pickup made it possible to slide the batteries into
the scoop. With the scoop perched above
the battery box, gravity was once again on my side and I managed to drop both
batteries into the battery box.
Some minutes later, with baited breath, I
tried the starter. The tractor whirred to
life almost before I could worry about what to do next if this didn’t work.
Two days later, the summer fallow was
done. Now, to plant the millet. But wait!
There’s more!
Weeds were coming up in the millet
field. The disk didn’t kill
everything. The field would have to be
worked again before planting.
This job took only two days with the
Calkins machine and everything running correctly. Another two days of getting the drills
calibrated and loaded with seed and I was planting.
I finally finished planting July 7, about
a month behind schedule.
Is somebody trying to tell me something? I
wonder.
On the other hand, Mother Nature blessed
me with .75” of rain the evening of July 8.
That should be the perfect amount to get the millet off to a good start.
Another old saying: "Hope springs eternal in the human breast."
