The Frankenstein Tractor

a Facebook marketplace find that needed a village to fix it

First of all, I didn’t expect we’d need or buy a tractor in the first three months of owning the Ranch, but we pretty immediately decided “ope” we are definitely going to need one of those. Let’s back up a little, though.

My mom’s side of the family takes a bit of pride in tractors, specifically the red ones, due to my Poppy (my grandpa) working on tractors all his life and ensuring we all knew that International Harvester was the very best. He worked in a small town in Missouri with lots of farmers; it was also the kind of town where you might just ride to high school prom in a tractor. My Poppy was a big engine mechanic for 45 years and was well known for good work. I think my favorite story a farmer told my mom was that they got a new tractor and it broke down in the field. Several different mechanics went out to figure out what was wrong, but couldn’t. Then my Poppy showed up. The farmer said they knew he was the real deal when he walked across the field in his overalls. Growing up, I never saw him wear anything but denim overalls. He told the farmer to turn the tractor on and listened to it run, and then told the farmer what was wrong with it. Nobody believed him because it was a new tractor and not a cheap, easy fix. Poppy said, “Don’t believe me, I don’t care”. The next day, the tractor was in the shop, and the farmer only wanted him to work on it.

Our tractor isn’t fancy. It’s a Facebook Marketplace find that we bought off a family that didn’t need it anymore. We needed something cheap, and my husband and I don’t know a lot about them. We’ve never owned a diesel engine until now. We found a 1980 Yanmar - a small tractor at a good price, and

the guy was willing to deliver it to us. Sold.

So what’s the saga? It’s starting to become a Frankenstein tractor. This Yanmar might be brand new by the time we get done breaking it and replacing all its parts. We probably should have done a bit more research on what we were buying before we went through with it, because I’m not so sure it lived up to “it always starts right up.” It did not just start right up… many times.

We will start with incident #1. The big reason for purchasing the tractor was to get a brush hog implement because so much of the land we now own has not been maintained and is overgrown. The Agronomist who came out to survey the property told us we should go ahead and mow the small pasture often to manage weeds, while the big pasture could remain untouched until next year because it has a healthy mix of brome and alfalfa grass.

The day we got the tractor, we also managed to source a brush hog. The problem with the brush hog was that the PTO shaft (the shaft that makes the blade spin) was stuck in position and too short to attach to our 3-point. So, after probably four hours of trying to hit it, unstick it, cool it, and man-handle it, we decided to order a new PTO shaft. At one point, we even tied the sucker to a tree and put the tractor in gear. No mowing happened until two days later, when the new part came in the mail.

Okay, great. We have a brand new PTO shaft. Mowing is on!! Except, it wasn’t. The tractor wasn’t running properly and had a hard time even idling. What could be wrong? THE FUEL. Somehow, we managed to buy a tractor that had aged fuel. (I swear we test drove this thing!) We had some friends helping us with the house when it was giving us a hard time, and they noticed that there seemed to be some separation in the fuel tank. So, we drained it out and put in fresh fuel. Problem solved. I puttered around on it enough to get some paths mowed around the immediate area of the house and the backyard.

So it has fuel. But, guess what? After much closer inspection by my father-in-law, he realized that the air filter had been home to a mouse. While we waited for that part to come in, we turned the air filter around to a better, less-mousey side, and it ran so much smoother. After fixing two important components of combustion, fuel and air, we were off to the races, and I really started putting some hours on it.

We mulched the garden, used it to move drywall rubble, filled dumpsters, and then we decided, why not mow a mile-long walking path around the property? This idea was partly because my husband is trying to get a PR for his mile running time, and partly because it would be nice to have with the dogs.

I was just finishing the home stretch of the mile path along the front of the property near the road when POOF, a cloud of white mist exploded from the tractor with a hissing sound. I panicked. I shut it down immediately, and when I looked up, a truck had pulled off the road to see if I was okay (how nice, right?). The guy had a fire extinguisher and came to make sure I was fine, and told me that he thought the radiator hose had blown. Sure did.

While we had part #3 on order, we had to leave the tractor there in the field all week as a public monument of dishonor. A daily reminder that this tractor is trying its hardest to retire and didn’t want a second shot at a new farm.

My husband is the mechanic, and I’m simply moral support, holding the front open. Back to running shortly after the fix in the field!

Things were going great for a bit after that until we decided we should throw some grass seed in the backyard to prep for fall. I got the tractor out to scalp the yard before seeding, and I had 15 feet to go before we could seed when another POOF mist exploded everywhere. This time, it was the radiator itself.

My in-laws were coming back to Colorado to lend a hand, and my father-in-law inspected the tractor again. The top of the radiator had a decent-sized crack, and as you can see above, you can barely see through the cooling fins. We got a new radiator on order (part #4) to replace the old one. He installed it and found a new tube to get it back to running in pristine shape! He might have more hours on it than me now, but I don’t think he loves the thing.

After he spent five hours driving the brush hog around to knock down waist-high weeds, he said, “This is the worst steering wheel I’ve ever been behind.”

I don’t disagree. In fact, I think all our issues would have been solved if the tractor had just been red.

to be continued…

KB