I walked into the garage and stared longingly at the old girl, her clunky metal body has sure seen better days. It has been more than a year that she has been sitting there, a solid year since she has felt the grass swaying under her chassis. That's a long time for a tractor to be out of work, especially if it is the only workhorse on the farm.
"Today is the day old girl," I thought to myself. I finally managed to get the money together to get all the spares and pay for a diesel Mac to fix her up.
Now, as far as tractors go, the Massey Ferguson 165 must be one of the best "Die Hard" tractors to date. Sure I often dream of having a brand-new Tractor with all the attachments and trimmings imaginable, but, as far as it goes, they are as reliable as they come.
As for my tractor, She took a huge knock a year back when some idiot decided to use her to lift excessively heavy implements without my knowledge. This caused other Hydraulic lift arms to fail. This meant that she could no longer be used to work the land. Over and above that she had some issues with her fuel supply, she was not getting enough Diesel through her system, so she would cut out sporadically.
Given that I had just lost my job at that stage, and that money was tight, I simply wasn't able to get her up and running. This of course fed into a cycle of not being able to plant sustainable crops which in turn affected the cash flow even more. But what could I do? I first had to find a way to get myself back on my feet seeing that this farm has not been the primary source of income since the drought hit a few years ago. (And trust me when I say that there is a lot of work to be done if I ever want to see the point where it is again)
But, here we are, ready to make work of the old girls' issues and finally get her back to work.
The task at hand involved removing the seat and the top cover to gain access to the hydraulic system. This would have been a harder task, had it not been for the handy block and tackle we set up nearby. Once this was done the Mechanic could get to work on draining the oil and, repairing & replacing all the broken parts, the main component being the hydraulic seals that popped. But he also replaced some other parts that were worn out by years of wear and tear.
It was only then that we could replace all the old oil and reassemble the tractor.
Next up there was the diesel supply issue. I knew that the fault was not on the filters or the fuel tank as we had that redone shortly before the tractor came to a standstill. Luckily the Mechanic seemed to know what the cause of the problem was almost immediately. "The Fuel lift pump seems a bit worse for wear and the inline diesel tap and filter... well you don't have one."
You see, over the years as things broke on the tractor, there have been a lot of "quick fix plans" applied to the poor girl, some of those were corrected at a later stage, and others are yet to be rediscovered. The mechanic quickly fitted the inline tap and replaced some seals on the fuel lift pump. And let me tell you, once this man was done, the tractor started up with enthusiasm.
The Tractor Mechanic did a damn fine job on her before saying "She's as good as gold now, she can run from 6 am to 6 pm, and longer if you care to install some headlights"
All and all, it was farewell to a pretty penny, but I do believe that this is a big step in moving forward as far as the far goes.