Wow, last post from me about the mower was from last summer!
Well, I got to mow my lawn a couple of times last summer, but the mower still needed plenty of work.
Recently, I started pulling a few parts off for cleaning, repair, and painting.
For example, I removed the rear deck ( back cover/seat holding part) and took off the seat.
I got all the paint and rust off of it as best I could, with a combination of a citrus-based paint stripper, a flapper wheel on an angle grinder, and a rotary brush on a drill.
It actually looked pretty good after a coat of quick-dry automotive primer.
A coat of yellow Rustoleum spray paint, and it was back on the tractor. (I have ZERO spray-painting skillz! I went over it with another coat later.)
My friend, Tim, has a powder-coating system and an old electric over in his garage. I have heard that powder-coating is one of the best ways to paint metal parts. I asked Tim if he would give me a hand painting a few parts.
I stripped several smaller parts from the tractor, and sand-blasted them over at another friend's work.
Here's what the front bumper, belt guards, and seat support bracket looked like after sandblasting.
I have never done any sandblasting before, and was amazed at the look. I would have expected a shiny silver look, but instead, the metal looked like it was just primed!
Later, over at Tim's place, we did a little more finish sandblasting, sprayed the parts with yellow powder-coat, and baked them in his oven.
Some of the parts turned out better than others. The curved belt guard ended up really nice. The paint clung to the curves of it very nice. It's a smooth, plastic-like finish. It should be very durable.
The other neat thing about powder-coating is that clean-up is easy. Since it's just a powder, it can be blown, brushed-off, or swept-up with a broom. Imagine paint like this if it were spray-paint!!!
The other more troublesome work was the rear wheels and transmission.
I took the tractor the the local EV Club Build Day, and some of the other guys helped completely remove the transmission from the tractor.
The rear rims were amazingly rusted on. It took quite some work with penetrating oil, a torch, and a very large puller to get the first rim off. The second rim actually broke the puller! We had to mangle that rim a bit to get it off.
The rims the Elec-Trak uses are an old style that I can't find anymore. The rim has a tube about 3 to 4 inches long, with a hole that matches up with a cross-hole in the drive-shaft. A clevis pin goes through that. The trouble with it is that it's really hard to get at the clevis pin when it's on the back side of the wheel. Also, the surface area is so great between the rim and driveshaft, that if it's a little rusty it becomes completely impossible to remove the rim!!!
Since I can't find any new rims of that style, I might be able to make an adapter. I can get plain "four-on-four"rims and tires for free if I look around. At the tool store, I saw that they had hub adapters for go-carts. It's a thing that slides onto a one-inch-diameter drive-shaft with four bolt-holes spaced out from it. I could drill out those holes bigger, and they would fit standard rims. Those adapters are about $20 each.
The transmission should also get new oil in it. I don't know if the transmission needs to get split open and inspected or not. The bolt heads are fairly corroded, and I would be worried about wrecking them and just causing problems.
Anyways, just chipping away at fixing up this tractor nice. It's over 30 years old. If I can make it run another 30, I will be a happy man.