1946 B.F. Avery Model A Tractor Restoration

[IronCanine]

So we got right to work taking it apart.

[IronCanine]

The '46 A was powered by a Hercules IXB3. The serial number on this engine was 1281970...which could be the "born on" date of my K5. I thought that was kind of cool. Breakdown of this little Herc yielded the first broken bolt of the teardown and then eventually the cause of her inability to turn over. She was full of soup.

[IronCanine]

So all four cylinders got load of Marvel Mystery Oil and a dash of holy water, and my partner and I carried on with the teardown. As it turns out, her passion is grease removal. The thicker and gooey-er the better. She quickly traded her wrench for scrapers and wire brushes delightfully searching for any bright red that still clung to this old iron. Unfortunately, no matter how much we suited up or covered up, we never seemed to make it out of the basement unscathed. Much to her mother's chagrin...we had a bad habit of letting that grease hitch a ride upstairs.

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There is something about taking apart something for the first time since it was built that is just cool. The guy who twisted the wire on these flywheel bolts is long gone...just like the guy that torqued these rod and main bolts. I sure hope neither would frown on the removal of pistons 2 and 3. After a few weeks soaking, what started as a polite request became a forced eviction.

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Of course I drug poor Eric (OLDYELLOW) into this. I don't think he'd ever painted a tractor and we spent (continue to spend) a fair amount of time considering the best way to paint this. From the factory, it's obvious that some things were painted as subassemblies then I guess re-sprayed as part of the whole. So that was the approach. Parts were cleaned, assessed and if appropriate painted as a component. We still want to be factory considerate, but recognize like most restorations, we're upping the ante a bit on paint. We're only working the surfaces where it makes sense. For instance we're leaving all the tooling marks on stamped pieces, and even leaving spatter on factory welds, but cleaning up any pitting on factory smooth surfaces, like the rims.

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Epoxy, base, clear is the replacement for the remarkably tenacious factory lacquer.

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There's not a lot in the way of helpful instruction on rebuilding the factory Tillotson YC2B carburetor online. The rebuild kit is not the best and the instructions that come with that are a little wanting. So I just took a ton of pics and notes at disassembly.