Barn Find Rebuild

[pepper]

Barn Find Rebuild Nuffield Tractor

Well what else do you expect to find in a Barn?

It has been sat on these axle stands for three years, my father in law finally got fed up with it and asked me to come over and sort it out, this ended up as quite a problem as it needed two new rear tyres, we took the wheels down to ATS and they took the old tyres off and rang me back with the bad news that the rims needed shot blasting and repainting, so I had to pick the rims back up, take them to a shot blaster (which took 4 months) and then pick them back up, paint them and then get them back to the tyre fitters.

Today my nephew and I took them over and got the axles back together and put the wheels back on again.

We then whipped the cylinder head off, which had only just been put on and never been started because some of the injector bolts had snapped and as there is no mains here my brother in law had been trying to drill the snapped bolts out with a cordless drill.

It has been sat with that piece of tissue in the injector hole for three years!



I said bugger that, lets get the head back off (for the cost of a £20 gasket) get it back to my farm and put it on the pillar drill and drill them out sensibly!

Well here she is with some repainted back wheels on.

 

[pepper]

Well does anyone else like tractors around here? Or is it just a sad pepper thing??

It's a 1954 Nuffield DM4, my father in law owned it about 25 years ago and sold it, he bought it back again about 3.5 years ago and my brother in law started trying to get it sorted. He's not been well and I don't think he can afford to get it sorted so I've offered to sort it out. I "may" do it up all shiny I may not, it does need a he'll of a lot doing to it!

 

[Azazello]

I have not such a knowledge about engines and tractors, the ancient ones look pretty, I do not like the modern giants...
I wish I had a farm to have an old tractor to take care of as for my r4... I am a kind of a farmer, but for a cooperative society; we have a little tractor (Carraro 55hp) to sort out the vegetable garden's works...

 

[godlike]

We have at home an IMT 539, this is a Yugoslavian built of Ferguson. I do the mechanical work on my own.

But I always fancied the neighbors Porsche. And it was dripping oil and in pretty bad shape. But it was an Porsche and that explains it all.
As I know he has it in his barn for 5 years and didn't even try to start it again.

 

[pepper]

This is about 53Hp when running at its best, but probably won't be able to do that these days, as the compression seemed a little low when I was turning it over the other day.

These engines were also used in early JCB's and it seems I can get most parts easily enough and I should be able to rebuild it quite easily if I need too.

 

[nicky4tl]

I do like a nice old tractor i do.
we have a ferguson te20 parked up in a neighbors shed awaiting work. great machine.

 

[pepper]

Ahh Fergusons are very different, we have a TE F 20 sitting at my cousins, which has been owned by them from new and has never been restored or prettified!

It was the very first thing I drove at the tender age of 8 they used to fill the trailer full of bales, point it straight at the barn and I used to let it do its own thing all the way home.

 

[pepper]

We've made a start!

Well we've started my Nuffield Tractor Restoration.

I sort of inherited the poor old thing from my Brother in Law, he had bought it and started doing it up. He then got stuck when an injector bolt snapped, leaving the remains well and truly in the cylinder head. He had been trying to drill it out with a cordless drill and the things are on an angle to the head to make it even worse!

In the end I took the head back off (wasting a head gasket which was the thing he hadn't wanted to do and took it back to my friends workshop to get him to drill the stud out and replace it.

Three months go by and he still hasn't sorted it, so on Friday I went up and did it myself. The main reason I think he stopped doing it was he had drilled a pilot hole straight through the cylinder head water jacket! I in the end decided to up the bolt diameter to M10 and use a bigger bolt down to the old correct depth and will hylomar the bolt when it goes in. I had to drill the injector hole out bigger as well as setting up the head in a drill to get it all level and upright. In the end I seem to have managed it as it has gone on reasonably well and the injector pipes fitted straight back on!


This morning, my nephew and I went down the field and replaced the head and have started trying to loosely assemble everything back together as my Bro in Law (henceforth to be called BIL) has managed to strip bits off the tractor and scatter them far and wide across a huge barn.

We got the head back on, fitted the fuel system back together and then started making lists of bits we need.

Not missing much only 3 injector bolts, most of the accelerator linkage, injector bleed off bolts, primary fuel filter bowl, and loads of other stuff that's really important!

The main bits I will now source to enable us to get the engine started before we go down again, so that hopefully we will be able to have her running before the end of the day.

I have picked the tin work up from BIL and now need to unseize everything (he has prepared some of the metal work for paint before fixing all the seized up bits, which is a little difficult but we have most of the nuts and bolts loose now after judicious use of heat and motion lotion!

I'm going to have to do some surgery on the nose cone as we have two, but one is from a different tractor but has better metal work so I'm going to get the welder out and make one good one out of two.

One thing I do like about tractors is the way we paint them, basically degrease, get all prepared, take the wheels off and then spray the whole thing, job done boom bosh!

 

[pepper]

Well tonight I have mostly been fixing the starter motor. It turned over but very very slowly, so I stripped it out cleaned the whole of the insides out, and lubricated all the bushes, it now flings it self over very well indeed!

I am slowly turning my attention to the metal work a few pictures of the work ahead are below!

The main problem is the front cowl which has some serious corrosion and I'm nt quite sure how to proceed?

I have a second front cowl but it is from the three cylinder version and has a much smaller hole in the top for a smaller radiator cap, I could just try and enlarge the hole in the second cowl rather than going to all the trouble of trying to sort out all the holes on this one!

Trouble is getting a nice round hole into a bit of tin seems pretty difficult too, and this cowl isn't with out issues like bent, front and seized/snapped studs!

So it's difficult, but I'm reckoning, on going down the enlarging the hole in the better cowl option at the moment, I reckon if I draw it carefully and get the dremel out I'll cut it out roughly then file it down very slowly and I should be halfway there!