Reviving a G1900

[Hugo Habicht]

Steering box

After fixing all the steering linkages and getting them play free the remaining play is in the steering box itself. I bought a second hand one to be able to work on it while using the tractor.

Disassembly

Remove the nut on the Pitman arm and pull off the arm. It is a tapered splined joint that most likely requires persuasion through heat, force, hammering and possibly swearing too.

Then pry apart the two halves of the housing. Pull out the main shaft and the steering shaft.



Pull off the old bearings, the seal ring and the gear sector.





Assembly

Clean everything. Press in the new seal ring (17x30x7). Press in new bearings on the steering input shaft (17x35x10 6003 2RS). Slide gear sector over the output shaft and make sure the dot marks align. Press in the two bearings (20x42x12 6004 2RS).

Put in the output shaft and input shaft into the housing. Fill upper sector where the pinion gear is with grease. Insert the two alignment pins into the housing and push top part together with bottom part. The two parts are held together by the mounting bolts.

Push on Pitman arm so that the groove marks meet, insert washer and tighten nut.



Modifications

The play in the steering box is due to two parts: the first is the play in the splines of the gear sector and the other is the gear play.

The first I removed by glueing the sector onto the shaft. Due to the play I machined two Delrin parts that have a tapered nose that centers the sector on the shaft while the glue sets. I used Loctice high strength. The glueing of the shaft is no problem since the bearings can still be changed.



To get rid of the play of the gears I machined a bronze bushing which holds smaller bearings (17x30x7). Those smaller bearings are fitted off-centre allowing the play to be removed by turning the bushing.



The bearings are 1mm off the centre which is way too much I noticed. 0.5mm should be more than sufficient.

The bushing is turned with a tool having two pins that fit in the holes in the bushing at the bottom. It is then fixed by two grub screws.



I added a grease nipple that allows to refresh the grease near the pinion. I will also make a cap to fit over the top of the output shaft. Water must have got in here; the bearings were rusted.


Assembly is otherwise the same as the original steering box.



Looking forward fitting this modified steering box and finally enjoying a precise steering.

 

[lmichael]

Interesting. I thought that had the electronic steering as mine does

 

[Hugo Habicht]

Rear lights

One of the rear reflectors was damaged, so I had to do something. The G1900 has front lights, so why not rear lights?

Reading posts here where people damaged their rear lights I wanted something that matches the design of the G1900 and yet protects the lenses.

I came up with a design using two bent aluminium pieces. I made a bending fixture, annealed the 6060-T6 aluminium at the bending areas and bent it in the press.





Next was welding the pieces together. My TIG welder can only DC, so a friend of mine did the welding.



I had made cardboard templates of the shape of the fender, unfortunately very little straight parts there. With the templates I machined the contour and the final fitting was done on the tractor itself.

 

[Hugo Habicht]

Rear lights (continued...)

For the lights I had bought truck sidemarkers on Aliexpress. The electronics inside was working but not bery efficient, they had 9 LEDs in parallel and then burnt most of the electricity with a voltage regulator.

I made my own electronics having three LEDs in series and then groups of three in parallel. I also used brighter LEDs. So I have more light with lower current.

For the red lenses I included a two stage brightness control (running and brake lights) and also inserted a reflector. Everything is sealed with elastic glue.



To connect all the individual wires I made a little adapter board and included a Molex connector for the wire loom.

Spray painted the enclosures, unfortunately the satin paint turned out high gloss, have to talk to my paint guy why this happened.



Lights look good on the tractor, I think, very happy with the result. The wire loom will be done when the body parts of the tractor are being restored.

 

[22R]

Hugo.
You are gonna have the world's first G1900 valued at over 40K when done.
Nice Craftsmanship in all you do Sir.

22R

 

[lmichael]

Amazing craftsmanship. And I thought I'd gone over the top with the lighting mods I did on my G2160 retrofitting very bright LED driving lights inside the stock housings and lenses, and removing the rear reflectors, finding truck running lights that nearly matched the reflectors then adding in all the wiring and using relays to cut power consumption through the switch.

 

[Hugo Habicht]

Hugo.
You are gonna have the world's first G1900 valued at over 40K when done.
Nice Craftsmanship in all you do Sir.

22R

Thank you for the kind words Sir, which are encouraging to continue doing up the G1900.

But I do not think anybody would give me 40k for a 35ish year old tractor with over 6000 hours on the clock.

I just do it for myself, more of a hobby and certainly not economical just looking at the hours I spend. For good reason I do not keep a record of those.

I just hate throwing things away just because they are old. Often the quality is better and they are easier to repair and maintain than newer models.

Pictures (before, after) show another of those projects where my brain was not functioning properly when I started it

 

[Hugo Habicht]

And I thought I'd gone over the top with the lighting mods I did on my G2160 retrofitting very bright LED driving lights inside the stock housings and lenses, and removing the rear reflectors, finding truck running lights that nearly matched the reflectors then adding in all the wiring and using relays to cut power consumption through the switch.

Looks great !

And to be honest, it is not a mistake having rear lights when you do cutting near a public road when it gets dark.