More progress on the 1948 Ford 8N this past weekend. Saturday I spent the morning at Acme in Sanford picking up some fasteners to replace the severely rusted ones I removed with Vise-Grips. After spending $6 on a bag full of stainless fasteners and some steel, I began assembling all the cleaned and painted parts. I mounted the new radiator, attached the dash plate and console. I attached the battery box and made a wood bottom to set the battery on. I may make a rubber one later but since I had a scrap piece of thin plywood almost already cut to size I decided that would work and I placed an old battery I had for the boat in there.
Saturday was also spent putting the starter back together. A few lessons learned: Make sure you press the bushing in far enough that it doesn't rub on the grooves in the starter shaft. Since my rear plate (think rear of tractor) had a crack I tried to press the bushing into the good half. I had to press it in more to make it clear those grooves to it ended up in about the middle. If you have the right sized bushing and your plate it not damaged you would press the bushing to the outside edge. After clearing that up we had one operational starter. Too bad the starter solenoid was bad so that would have to wait until Sunday.
I drained and replaced the oil with 20w50. I put in the new oil filter. I drained and added the 90w Mineral Oil I purchased from NAPA to the transmission. I installed the radiator and hoses (putting a thin coat of Teflon pipe compound to keep them from rusting more) an used some new all stainless pipe clamps. I filled the radiator with Anti-freeze and distilled water.
We attached a temporary tank to the dash and hooked up the fuel line. My dad and I hot-wired the starter and cranked it up. We ran it much longer than last time so it had a chance to warm up. The flat head 4 cylinder has a unique sound to it especially when there is no exhaust pipe.
Sunday I attached the air cleaner, attached the new starter solenoid from a 1970's ford. I think the original should be a 3 pole but mine is a 4 pole. I will add another page talking about wiring the tractor later. We wired in the new key ignition and the push button. Once everything was ready we attached the temporary gas tank again and started it up. This was the first chance I had to drive it so it was time for a road test.
We first adjusted the carburetor now that it had an air cleaner to give proper airflow resistance. I may also add another page talking about carb adjustment later. I put it in gear and pulled out of the shop. Under load it sputtered a lot so we continued with adjustments. Eventually it ran pretty good. I tried all the gears and pulled it up the hill. I will say that 4th gear really moves compared to the others. It is definitely a "get home for supper" gear. It did smoke once it got warmed up and the oil got thin. I will probably first try some Seafoam as I have read a few posts saying in some cases it works to help clean and free sticky rings. I will also check compression to see if any of the cylinders are real bad.
That's it for now. Next I need to work on fixing the front fenders to support my hood. So stay tuned...
