The old skills still work
Halfway through the mow this afternoon the tractor started coughing and popping. I figured it was the points, it’s usually a once a year job. I thought I could finish but it kept getting worse.
So I pulled it up to the garage and rooted around in the toolbox. Is it still there? yep. A little Craftsman toolbag with an emery board, a feeler gauge, a 3/8″ open end wrench filed thin on the end, and a shirt pocket screwdriver. I sit down on the right side mower deck and unscrew the point cover. Sure enough the points have worn to about .035″. I sand them so they shine, loosen the locknut, and screw the adjuster in until I get about .018. I tighten the locknut and that brings it out to a solid .020. Put the cover back on, put the tools away, and the tractor fires up and runs like it just rolled off a showroom floor.
46 years old, and it still mows like a new one.
I’m jealous. I have 3 acres, but it’s old growth forest, at a 40% slope. Ain’t no tractoring here. I may just go buy a ton of dirt farm in south Georgia. Or Kansas. I hear they’re giving away farmland in the new-frontier Great Plains. Nobody left to buy it.
My backyard is almost a 50% slope. Has to be done with a pushmower. I’ve rolled the tractor trying to do it. But you could get a wetback jetski, that’s the ticket.
Mow the yard and get some quality offroading in at the same time. Lucky bastard…
…wetback jetski…
Never heard ’em called that before, but I know exactly the apparatus you’re describing. I must live a sheltered life.
Congrats on fixing up the old tractor. I have to say — harkening back to a couple of threads from a few weeks back — assuming I ever really understood how to fix a mechanical ignition system, I’ve surely lost those skills over the past two decades of owning pre-OBDI/OBDI/OBDII vehicles.