L175 Restore Thread

Hello my name is Matt. I'm 23 and I've recently bought an L175 to fix up and use to plow my mom's driveway and perhaps cut our grass (I haven't decided if it's too big for our yard yet). I learned everything I know about metal and machines from my old man who I lost to a motorcycle accident back in August. After we sold his plow truck I decided we needed something to plow our driveway rather than rely on contractors and opted for a compact tractor. The build is also sort of a tribute to him.

But enough about that. The purpose of this thread is because everyone likes to watch someone else doing the work instead of them

I was going to adapt a snow blower to it but I'm having trouble finding one large and cheap enough. It needs to be at least 48" with 5" wings added on to clear the rear tires but I can't really find a used 48" so I'm considering either a cheap back blade or adapting a plow to it. We'll see when I get it running again. Once it's running and has a blade on it I'll see about some sheet metal work and a coat of paint come summer.



I got it for $1000 as is. Reverse was stripped and the steering wheel just spun. It's not pretty but it's all there and in reasonable condition. The seller ran the motor for me and the clutch and pto worked fine. I figured eh what the hell and it followed me home the next day.



First thing was to get the steering box out for a rebuild. Anyone know what went in the hole to the left of the column there? I figure I'll convert it to automotive style fuses later since all but one of the fuses had been replaced with paper clips I didn't have a camera for a week so will be some missing pictures. I yanked the fuel tank, dash, column, and tie rod and when I unbolted the box found this.



Hummm. I didn't think I was suppose to be able to see through that, let me check the book..... After decided that, no I wasn't suppose to be able to see through it, I looked down into the bell housing.



Looking up at me from the bottom of the bell housing was the bottom of the steering box with all the balls that had been in the lower bearing. How it didn't rattle it's way between the pressure plate and housing I don't know but luck was with the seller when he fired it up for me. I'd seen a few on this site with cracks in 'em but I'm guessing ice blowing the bottom off is a new one. I wonder if I can weld that..... All the water/oil that had been in the steering box had coated the everything in there and rusted most of it pretty good. I decided I had to split the tractor.



While mulling over how to do that I decided to have a look in the tranny since the top was only on finger tight (he'd had a look at reverse). Apparently he'd left the thing sitting outside without the cover on because that lovely egg nog color is produced by water mixing with oil. Great. No real harm done other than I need to flush the hydraulic system and change the fluid. Reverse is gone and the rest look a little chewed, probably because someone was in a hurry and this thing doesn't have an overrunning pto clutch. 3rd also turns a little rough but I think I can get away without replacing the shafts. I'll decide whether I really want to pull the trans later.

Waiting til I got the halves apart to tackle the tranny gear I removed the exhaust and tried to remove the hydraulic lines. I tired to cheat a few different ways but in the end there was really nothing to do but remove the peddles, running boards and hydraulic pump. I pulled the starter for too just to see if it was rusty (it was). Then I setup my rigging.



Again I didn't have a camera so these were taken today well after the split. The cable is looped over a 4x4 that goes across 3 rafters of the attic floor. I then have a 1.5 ton ratchet strap going under the engine side of the bell housing and that is attached to a chain hoist which does the actual lifting. Once everything was separate I put jack stands on the front bumper and bell housing to keep the engine from rocking on the center pivot. Whose bright idea was it not to include molex connectors on this thing? I decided it looked like to much fun to unscrew all those connectors so I just flopped the dash onto the engine.



The rear is supported by a floor jack that is strapped to the tranny with a ratchet strap. Makes it a bit of a pain since it's hard to move and I can only move in a straight line but it works. I set it down on a jack stand just for added security but the jack was pretty stable.



Here's a good spot to mention it's always a good idea to make sure the engine you're working on can't start with your fingers in it. With a gas motor this means removing the negative battery cable or taking out the spark plugs. With diesels it's a bit more complicated. On this motor it's probably easiest just to remove the glow plugs to cause a loss of compression but an extra layer of security can be added by unscrewing and breaking the seal of the lines on the top of the injectors like it was being bled. This last one is the only way on direct injection motors.

The pressure plate came off without a fuss but it was pretty rusty, more on that later. Nice looking flywheel eh? I was hoping not to have to pull it but no choice seeing how it looks. Bolts come out easy despite the rust (every bolt has actually, knock on wood) but the flywheel itself wouldn't budge. Puller couldn't grab on anything as there is a fillet on the lip just outside the bolt pattern.



After mulling this one over I came up with a solution. I made a "clutch disc" out of a piece of plate and drilled a hole in it big enough to fit the bolt on my puller. Then taking the arms off the puller it went together like so and was bolted back up to the flywheel. Once the pressure plate springs compressed it popped off into a pile of shirt/rags as easy as you please.



Next I needed to pull the pressure plate apart as everything here is going to get derusted electrolytically. We don't want any springs in here as the hydrogen gas produced by the process will tend to make them brittle and crack. Unfortunately the castle nuts and their cotter pins were rusted beyond hope and my only solution was to grind them off. I learned after I'd done this that you can only buy the whole pressure plate assembly. Hummmmm

So it looks like I've either got to make new pressure plate bolts and castle nuts or buy the whole assembly. I'll attempt the former first and when that fails preform the later First I've got to fix the mini lathe.





A few after shots after 30 minutes of work with a wire brush and some brake clean. I also noticed the rear oil seal is weeping a bit. I'd like to take a minute to thank the engineer that designed it so I don't have to drop the pan to change this.

More in a few nights,

Matt

Yes the compression release is on the far left. It's boogered up too, I'm was already planning on replacing it with a hardware store choke cable once I get the dash back on.

Horn and caution lights you say huh? Both the switches and hardware appear to be long gone. I found a wire running to the rear for the caution lights but I can't find where the horn used to be.

jcyphert that sounds really cool. I'd love to see pictures of that setup.



I setup the electrolysis rig yesterday with the pressure plate and cage in it. The idea here is the part to be cleaned is immersed in a conductive fluid, in this case washing soda (sodium carbonate) and water. Salt water won't work as this will produce chlorine gas. Then sacrificial electrodes are also immersed in the solution without touching the parts. A small battery charger is then hooked up with the positive lead on the sacrificial electrode and negative on the parts.



A GFI is highly recommended even though the voltage at the wet side is only 6-12v. Splash the battery charge though and it could get bad. The electrodes are connected with 8 gauge wire I had lying about and the water level high enough to submerge the parts but not touch the clamps or charger jaws. Anything on the waste electrode side below the water line will corrode away. My draw here is about 2amps, not as high as I'd like but it'll get the job done if a little slowly. Far more information available here.

EDIT: I figured out the reason for my low draw was simply not enough surface area on the waste electrodes. Out of curiosity I ditched the leaf spring and replaced it with a piece of scrap sheet metal. Works much better. Pegged the needle (14amps) on the 12v-hi setting and is drawing about 5 amps on the 6v-hi setting. We'll see low long it lasts but try and match your surface area to your battery charger. I get a nice stream of bubbles up from the part being cleaned now.



Once that was setup figured I'd swap the reverse gear. I can't find the thread anymore but someone mentioned that this tractor was fortuitously designed so the reverse gear could be changed without removing the transmission. Simply remove both the shifter and fork plates from the top of the transmission and then pull the clutch inspection plate out from the right side of the bell housing. Through the inspection port undo the two bolts and remove the plate that holds the shaft in place.



The shaft can then be slid backwards and the gear removed though the shaft may need a little persuasion, there is an oring on the front of it that seals the shaft. I slid it forward since I had it split but backwards would be better with the tractor whole. Once the new gear is on slide the shaft back forward then pry it from the rear with a screw driver and from the front via the slot til the plate slides back into the slot. Make sure you either replace or use instant gasket on the plates up top and be prepared to spend some time getting all four forks back into place.



This is the tub after 24 hours. Most of that rust is from the waste electrodes. It sits outside because a byproduct of the process is hydrogen gas from the water. Hydrogen + Pilot Light = Boom



The picture is kinda crappy because I was trying to hold 15lbs of steel in hand and use the camera with the other. You can see compared to the picture from my second post that all of the rusty areas on the cage have been changed to black. That rusty colored stuff is the water and a leaf or two. What's happened is the oxygen has been leached out of the rust converting it back into pure iron. It's in the form of fine particles attached to the surface that will quickly rust again but more on that tomorrow. The pressure plate needed some more time so I left everything in for another day.

Got a two parter tonight!

Robert, tire chains are on the list . I'm just south of the Lake in prime lake effect snow territory so at least once a year we'll get a foot or more in a day. I'd like to do the back blade as that way I don't have to fool with rigging my own hydraulic setup. I'm worried however that it will get bogged down easily or get itself stuck trying to drive over and pull that much snow at once. Ideally I'd just take it in 6in segments but I won't always have that luxury. Were it a bit bigger and heavier it would probably be fine but it's lighter than an MGB.



Got Mark Shelton and the boys all setup on the laptop and went to work. Out comes the pressure plate and cage and in goes the flywheel. As you can see where the rust was is still covered in what looks like a black scale. These are patches where the rust has pitted the surface and a black gunk that floats around in the water and coats everything.



One of my three electrodes after 3 days of use. Yes that's a chunk of leaf spring my dad had lying around in the barn. They seem to need some attention with a wire brush every 48 hours or so for best performance otherwise the current draw tends to sink.



After a few minutes with a wire brush and some water it's time to passivate. As explained in the link I posted last time the process leaves tiny nodules of iron attached to the surface where the rust used to be and if something isn't done these will form surface rust very quickly. Now in the article he recommends a metal prep compound which causes these nodules and the surface layer of iron to be converted into iron phosphate, protecting the underlying iron from oxygen. Now I didn't have any metal prep but it's just phosphoric acid with some metal salts, not at all unlike naval jelly. I happened to have a jar of the stuff formulated for aluminum (works just fine on iron too) so I gave it a shot. Let it sit for 10 minutes (wipe off immediately on cast iron!) rise off and not exactly like new but beats the hell out of wire brushing it.



With both parts passivated and clean I set them aside and tackled the rear oil seal. I could have left the starter casting in place but the aluminum seal plate is in contact with it and it makes more sense to get it out of the way first. A few bolts and blows with the rubber mallet and out it comes. Next all the bolts on the aluminum plate come out. Now you'll see I have two bolts in it. These are threaded holes (M8x1.25) which bottom on the block allowing you to easily push the plate off the crank flange. Any of the bolts that hold the plate on would work too. BE GENTLE! Aluminum is just butter in disguise, those threads won't take any serious force.



A few gentle taps with a drift and out comes the old seal. Now I've got to figure out a way to get the old gasket off the aluminum. I've never had good luck with these old gaskets as they've usually become harder than the metal they're attached to. My usual method involves a chisel and big scars in the metal, anyone got a better way?



The engine side of the equation. The big black piece is the rear main bearing and it's cap. This thing is pretty stout for 17hp!

While cleaning up I looked at the exhaust manifold remembering I'd need a gasket (and new pipe, it needs a clapper stack!). I figured I'd take it off and give it a trip through the vat and what'd ya know all the bolts came off without a fight. However what I saw when I got it off wasn't pretty.



Hard to see but there's a good 1/4in of carbon build up all the way around the inside of the exhaust runner. Hummmm. Got a leaking valve guide, bent valve, or possibly a reeeeally dirty injector. My money is on the valve guide since the other exhaust valve over had oil all over it's stem. Wonderful now the head has to come off.



At least it's easy This took me all of 15 minutes. Drain the coolant (all over the floor), pull the glow plugs, pull the intake, remove the injector lines and injectors, take off the valve cover, loosen all the adjusters, remove the rocker train, take out the push rods and then remove the head bolts in order. I did mark the position of all the bolts and push rods, you want those going back there they came from. I do not believe the head bolts are torque to yield (one time use). The manual mentions nothing about replacing the bolts and the torquing sequence isn't indicative of torque to yield bolts. Anyone care to disagree?



Nothing interesting going on here that I can see. Just looks like leaking valve guides. I hope that's what it is. Perhaps someone overheated it and there's a cooked valve hiding under all that carbon. Injectors looked normal too as did the prechambers. It's only got 900 hours on it. Alas I don't have the tools or knowledge to grind new valve seats and press in new guides so Monday I'm off to find someone who does. I might give the local dealer a try just to see what they charge.



My pic of the block came out blurry but nothing looked unusual there. That bucket is my uhh counter balance Since the starter casting was my pick point for the chain hoist I had to set it on a jack stand just forward of the oil pan and this made it very unstable. This was my solution. I still had to put my foot on the block when removing the injectors to keep it from rocking over but it's reasonably stable. Like my expensive and carefully designed dust covers? I'll probably fiddle with some things in the next week or two but nothing left to do but wait for parts right now so I rolled everything out of the way so my new Tacoma doesn't have to sit in the snow

Not a lot happened last week worth taking pictures of. I've mostly been running things through the vat and scraping gaskets while waiting for parts. By the way I found a nice trick via trial and error for removing baked on gaskets. Hit it with a propane torch for a little bit (careful with aluminum) til the gasket is cooked a bit and the surface has heated up. They'll then scrape up pretty easily. Tractorpartsasap.com put up some new old stock steering box castings which even with all the gaskets, seals, and bearings was cheaper than the whole unit. So I've been stripping and cleaning parts from the old box.

I also found that one of the ball guides on the nut had been bent by the ice and several balls had gone missing. I found a ball nut repair kit at compactractorparts.com but unfortunately it didn't come with enough balls to fill it up so after the holidays I'll see if I can find a bag of 5.5mm balls locally. After weighing my options I've decided just to go with the back blade for plowing this season. It's got more than use as just a snow plow and I figure if it gets too deep I can get one of our friends with a plow truck to give us a hand. Thanks for the advice Robert. At the rate I'm going it'll be February before I could get a blower rigged up and a plow would be almost as expensive and time consuming. If I get a Woods belly mower for it come spring it'll make getting power to the blower much simpler.

Now as you might recall I had to grind off the nuts holding the pressure plate to the cage and subsequently damaged the pins themselves. I found I can get the whole plate assembly for $70 but occasionally I like to do things the hard way for the fun of it.



The original pins have a 10mm circular head with a shoulder down to the 6mm shank. There are two approximately 1/16in holes used for the cotter pins and at the tip of the bolt is a screw driver slot for holding the pin in place when adjusting the release forks. The thread is M6x0.75 which unfortunately is a metric fine thread that is about impossible to find. I decided to substitute in 1/4-28 bolts instead since the thread pitch is similar, I already have taps and dies in that size, and I can easily get the hardware. Now 0.25inches = 6.35mms so the shank is a little larger but there is enough play in the pressure plate that it should fit without issue. If not one pass with the lathe will solve that problem. I got a set of grade 8 bolts a little longer than the originals (simply because that's what they had) and threaded them up a little farther to match the originals.

Hardware store castle nuts are grade 2s (a little soft for my taste) and much smaller than the originals. McMaster had grade 5 coupling nuts with a 1/4-28 thread and a 1/2in hex for $5 a piece. Those will get chopped in half and slotted to make the castle nuts.



I measured the shoulder to be 1.5mm long by 2mm deep. Washing that through trig shows the shoulder angle should be about 36 degrees. I'm working way to close to the chuck to do be able to do that straight on with a triangle bit so a 45 degree tool minus a 36 degree angle (...... carry the one) and I need about 9 degrees of angle on the tool post. I'm working on a POS Harbor Fright 9x19 mini lathe. It's cheap but with a little reenforcing in the tool post area it's enough for small projects.



Then I carefully eat into the hex in steps until I reach the shank at that angle and I oughta be pretty close to the original.



Now we turn the remaining hex down to 10mm and face it til the flat section is 2.5mm wide.



Round the edges with a file while the lathe spins it and were done! The head looks a little longer in the photo but they're actually the same length, not that it would matter if it was a little longer. Next I've got to drill 1/16th holes in grade 8 steel. While this stuff machines nicely I'm not looking forward to that. I'll finish them up Monday along with the castle nuts, makes a nice excuse for getting away from the relatives!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Ok it's been a busy couple of days. The bolts and nuts are finally done though and the majority of the parts I remembered to order have come in so we're starting the long climb up the hill that is the reassembly process.

I decided to use my mill to drill the holes since I'd just rolled it out of corner into a position where it could be used for the first time in 5 years. My first attempt at drilling the holes I messed up. Apparently either the vice or the piece of plate the bolt is resting on wasn't square with the table because the holes in all three bolts I drilled ended up at an angle. Whoops. The hardware store was closed on the 26th so I had to skip a day.



A drill bit under my plate and a quick pass with the endmill solves that problem. First step in drilling the holes is to file a flat spot in the threads so the bit doesn't have anything to grab onto and wander. Then a little kiss with a small center drill. I just eyeballed the position from the head but carefully aligned my center drill via magnifying glass so it was perfectly centered on the bolt.

I love this picture. The lighting reminds me of this picture on wikipedia and it just looks old school. Old iron and sweat. Good stuff.



Now I'm not sure the size of the original cotter pins as there wasn't much left of them and they were probably metric anyway. I opted for 1/16th cotter pins, that's about the right size for the bolts anyway. The hole size for 1/16th cotter pins is 5/64ths, 1/64th larger than the pins.

After careful alignment with the magnifying glass the hole is gently drilled, taking it slowly on the threads on the far side of the bolt.

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Next it's popped out of the vice and installed like so into another vice. The drill bit makes sure I get a perfect 90 degree angle to the previous hole. A flat is then filed and the drill bit trick is repeated to seat it back in the vice on the mill.

The tricky bit here is I need to come down very close to centered in the previous hole otherwise I risk the bit wandering and breaking off. After careful alignment it's center drilled and then drilled again going very slowly during breakthrough into the hole and when starting again on the far side. There's no reason this couldn't be done on a drill press but the mill was just begging to be used.



Next it's over to the lathe to cut the heads as shown before. Then I flipped them around and turned the bolt down to an overall length of 50mm. The originals were 45mm but this should be just fine.



Back in the vice to dremel in a screw driver slot and we're almost done.



Now I've got to cut the threads up a bit higher to match the original bolt. If I'd had my wits about me I'd have done it while the bolts still had hexes but the vice grip works well enough aside from damaging the shanks slightly.



Voila!

The castle nuts were easy. I bought hardened (grade 5) coupling nuts already threaded in 1/4-28 from McMaster Carr. They had the required 1/2 hex size, hardware store ones are too small, and are 7/8ths in length so I get a two for one deal.



Let's see my hacksaw blade is 1/16th so I oughta end up with two nuts about .406 (call it .400 after I face it with the lathe as I've already done in the photo) thick. Set the nuts in the jaws of the lathe with .468 sticking out past the jaws and go to town the hacksaw. A quick face with the lathe and onto the next step.



Lock it in the vice, load a cut off wheel into the dremel and attempt to make the slots as accuratly as possible. I didn't do great as you may be able to see but I went back and widened them slightly after this and it's close enough. Run a tap through it and poof castle nuts.



The finished assembly with one of the bolts I messed up Christmas night.



I figured I'd give the clutch cage, spring buckets, and throw out bearing parts a nice coat of "I had it lying around" silver. It's high temp caliper paint, should be fine this this application. I decided to do this after I discovered I forgot to order the inner gasket for the oil seal housing. I've got to wait 5 days to get it anyway. That'll give me time to rebuilt the steering box.

Now when I ordered everything I also ordered a cheap water temp gauge because in light of the likely cooked valve guides and this being a pure thermosiphon setup I'd like to know when it's not doing it's job. I decided tonight to attempt to install it. I'll walk you through it but I made a huge glaring mistake that still makes me feel stupid. I won't point it out til next time when I show the repair so see if you can spot it.



Here we have the gauge, probe, it's adapter, a 1/2 npt to 3/8ths npt adapter, a 3/8ths nipple, and behind that the water outlet plate that bolts to the head. This is the ideal spot for a temp sender because 1. I don't have to tap and risk messing up the head and 2. it's right next to the exhaust runner inside the head. The idea behind the fittings is rather than have to buy a rather expensive 1/2 npt tap I could instead use the 3/8ths npt tap I already have and at the same time move the probe a little farther away from the outlet plate. If I'd installed it directly into the plate the probe would have interfered with the exhaust runner.



The center of the plate was marked and a 37/64ths hole drilled in the plate. Back when I made my first hammer in high school I decided tapping holes is something best done in a machine because hand tapping things tend to come out crooked. To that end I found a collet that fit my tap and installed it in the mill and centered the plate like so.



With the mill unplugged I stood on my ladder, leaned on the quill arm, and spun the spindle by hand until I bottomed on the 1x4. Then out it comes now that it's started straight to get finished clamped in a vice. By the way the reason the belt guard is off is the geniuses that designed this thing failed to include a spindle brake. Meaning if I want to change tools I have to remove the guard, get a 2-1/8th (that's not a typo) wrench to hold the spindle while I unscrew the drawbar. I just used a c-clamp as I didn't have a 2-1/8th wrench lying around but I've got to see about adding a spindle brake one of these days.



Looks great doesn't it? I discovered my mistake shortly after this step and spent the next half hour alternating between cursing and trying to find a way to fix it without having to buy a whole new plate (which wouldn't be the worst thing, they're only $40).

Once I had a plan to fix it worked out I pressed in the new oil seal with the wood vice, added the next thing to the vat and called it a night. Perhaps I can actually make some progress tomorrow? That'd be nice