しーまブログ 2012年05月16日
The lawn tractor I fixed.
I just wanted to show you some pictures of an old machine I worked on.
I enjoy repairing things. I'll try to repair anything. When I see an old machine or device which is thrown away, I feel I would like to give it a new life. I really like old stuff that was made in Europe, the US, or Japan. I am not usually interested or happy to repair Chinese stuff.
It is extremely difficult to find any European things here in Amami which are old. There are a few European items for sale here, but if you look on the box you may find it was really made in China... Just the European brand name is European.
It makes me feel upset to work on Chinese-made things because a lot of the things are made under duress in 'political re-education' prisons. I understand things electric and electronic, and I can look at a circuit board and see that the Chinese things are made by people who have no pride in their work. I can easily imagine a team of undernourished political prisoners being forced to work in poor and unsafe conditions for no wages, with armed and sadistic guards watching over them. At least I feel the poor Chinese making the garbage electrical things are unlikely to be able to afford to buy them themselves, and the electrical things the Chinese buy are even worse than the crap they export to places like the US and Japan.
Old Japanese electrical things are usually beautifully made, and the circuit boards look like minature cities to me. Old Japanese electrical things used components with plenty of tolerance to spare, so they don't overheat or fail very often.
Old US-made stuff is perhaps even better. I have repaired some things made in the States which really surprised me because they were practically over-built, with things like tiny roller bearings on every moving part ... but I digress, and anyway, both US and Japanese stuff is often made either in China or with Chinese parts nowadays. This is why things don't last long. Apart from generally careless work, the components used in modern electrical appliances are chosen because they are the cheapest possible to do the job. But these cheap components have no tolerance and tend to overheat or spontaneously fail. Garbage, it is!
But wait until the Chinese get too expensive for the greedy corporations, and their work is out-sourced to Africa. Can you imagine driving a Toyota made in Africa by Africans? Such a thought scares the willies out of me.
Anyway, back to the tractor. I was waffling on about how the old stuff is good as opposed to newer things, because this Yanmar YC750 is forty years old, and it is built to last! The owner didn't maintain this old machine for over a decade, and during that time it got pretty rusty, and some parts were damaged by corrosion.
I was perplexed when I first got the machine because it looked impossible to fix. The tyres were cut, and flat, the wheel rims were badly rusted-away, the diesel injector pump was seized, a belt had broken, the front-end had been crashed, and the headlight was broken.
None of the controls moved because the cables were corroded. The rotating tiller on the back had a hole so the oil leaked out. The cover for the rototiller was completely rusted away. Generally, it was quite a mess (and I didn't take pics of it before I fixed it).
I welded the rims, and used pieces of steel I had lying about the place for filler. The holes were very big, and I even welded the edges. After it was welded, I sandpapered it, and then put a layer of epoxy over the whole inside area. I thought there might be too many sharp edges, so the epoxy was to make the inside smooth.
The injector pump was a big milestone to pass. I'd never worked on a diesel engine before, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to adjust the pump volume or timing correctly. I had studied a bit on the internet about setting the diesel pump, and what I read made me feel that diesels needed special equipment and trained personnel to set properly.
Unfortunately I erroneously took the injection pump off the engine before realizing I had no way of knowing where the adjustment was set. Anyway, I took the pump to pieces, cleaned all the pieces up, tested it a bit, then re-installed it in the engine. I guessed that the governer would be set so it would adjust the flow to zero-flow within a small movement of the governer cam - and I was lucky, because I guessed it perfectly.
The body of the tractor was very tatty. I spent a long time sandpapering, priming and painting the machine. The cables all had to be removed and repaired. A lot of the nuts and bolts didn't want to move due to being severely corroded, so I had to cut many off with a grinder. Also, several threads were snapped-off inside the frame, so I had to drill them out and re-tap the threads.
But it was the working portion of the machine that needed the most effort. I am not an experienced welder, so doing a big welding job is something that I would prefer to avoid unless I had all the right stuff. Well all I had was some metal scraps, and I had to find a way somehow to make a strong cover for it.
Anyway, I hope you like the pictures I took of it. I'm quite pleased with myself for managing to fix that tractor. It took around 50 or 60 hours to repair.
It runs well, and everything works.
Wanna buy it? I'll let it go for 100,000 yen - or maybe I'll take an offer?
Another thing I've just done is I've just today finished rebuilding another scooter. This time it's a Honda Dio. I'll do a piece on that scooter in a day or so. I want to sell it, so if you are interested then contact me. I'm asking 40,000 yen for it, but again, I might accept a near offer.
