Thank you, Bob and nadogail.
My tractor story starts with my John Deere M(T). It is a vertical two-cylinder engine. The engine is square, meaning 4" bore, 4"stroke. about 101 cubic inch.
A co-worker owned it for many years before I got it. He let it sit in a shed much too long and the pistons seized in the cylinders. He proceeded to take the head off and managed to make a hole in the number one piston with a large hammer.... Thats when he sold it to me. The first thing I did was to remove the oil pan and unhook the connecting rods from the crankshaft. That way, I only needed to deal with one cylinder at a time. I made this pusher plate out of 1" steel that used the head bolts to hold it on. But with a 1"-8 thread in the center to push with against a 1" thick plug on top of what remained of the piston.
Didn't really work... I removed the pusher plate, left the plug on top of the piston, added a one foot long piece of 4x4, found a tall stool to
stand on, and pounded on that thing for hours
with a sledge hammer that had quite a bit of authority... Number one piston came loose, then I did the same with the back cylinder.
It really sucked, but got it done. got the engine block onto the jig borer so I could bore it out....
Hmmm... I dont have a boring head for this machine... Ok, I'll make one quick... Well, that took a quick month to machine a boring head...
I made the leadscrew on the lathe, the dovetail slides were made on my metal shaper. Got the engine bored out, leaving too much stock for honing.
Now I need an engine stand... So I made one. now, the block is on the engine stand, ready to hone, but I didn't have a hone...
A trip downtown to the local auto parts place, and a few hundred dollars later,
I owned a Lisle rigid hone and also bought an extra set of carriers that could do much larger JD cylinders. Got that done. The head had a crack in it. Wonderful, I thought....
I asked around and it was going to cost about the same to weld up the old head verses buying a new head. I bouught a new one.
The head cost me $400 dollars, the same amount that I spent, buying the tractor in the first place... after a year of this, I finally got it running.
I was pretty proud of myself, let me tell you...
