My New (Old) Tractor

 

My New (Old) Tractor

by rdpecken on Sep.01, 2016, under Ranch Maintenance

While visiting relatives in Arkansas this summer, My brother Roger offered a deal I couldn’t refuse on a 1973 Ford 2000 tractor. This is a small tractor useful for light grading, pulling, chopping weeds, etc. After returning to Arizona, I prepared my trailer for the long round trip to Arkansas and back, and set off to pick up my new prize.

 

The tractor is in reasonable shape.  It has a few leaks, and a few cosmetic defects.  It could use a new seat and steering wheel, and will eventually need a new clutch.  While the clutch is a major job, the symptoms at this point are not too bad.  It just has a lot of play in the action, and engages only about an inch from the top of the clutch release.  I quickly learned to adapt to these conditions.

Here are some pictures from the walkaround that Roger and I did.








 

He also included a very old blade with a 3-point attachment for the back.  While it could use a rebuild, it actually works very well for blading our drive in Arizona, and general scraping around the homestead to clear cactus and rocks from the area.

Blade

After arriving back in Arizona, I couldn’t wait to try it out on some real work.  It had just rained that morning, so the ground was soft, but not muddy.  Perfect for grading.

Our old two-track driveway had always been very bumpy, with lots of bumps and holes along its half-mile length.  I decided to do a couple of passes, just light ones, to see if I could improve things any.  Here are the before shots…




And here are the results of one pass down and one pass up.  It went very easy, and I like the results.  Someday, we will add rock tot he drive, but for now this is much better than it ever has been.
 


The next day, I needed to find a place to park the tractor, until I could get a shed built to cover it.  The spot I decided on was near the spot that we store our leftover construction materials.  The ground has a lot of prickley pear cactus in the way, so I decided to scrape them out of the way to provide a cleaner area for the tractor and trailer. 

Here are the before pictures…


 

And here is a 10 minute video of the tractor in use doing this work…


And finally, here are the results.  Not bad for 15 minutes of work.  That would have been a couple hours by hand.




I’m very pleased with my new acquisition.

1 comment for this entry (From a previous blog site):
Lisa SVR 646
October 28th, 2016 on 4:56 pm

Hi Randy!

Just wanted to say how much I appreciate your website! I check it out from time to time (since I bumped into it on Cluade’s forum about 2? years ago). Your tractor adventure put such a smile on my face, that I had to let you know. It looks like your brother’s tractor has a great new home – I’m sure you two will be very happy together! hahaha

Thank you so much for journaling your property adventures. Your information is priceless. We brought SVR 646 in June 2008. We have dreams of a house on it some day and would like to tackle much of it ourselves. Well, reading about all your hard work makes our dream seem a little more achievable 🙂

We live in Scottsdale and don’t get to our property often (a few times? a year?) and are still learning the lay of the land south of the 40, but we hope to bump into the “real deal” Peckenpaugh Pack some day!

Thanks for sharing all your hard work,

Lisa and Michael Parker
(Address removed for privacy purposes)
just south of Ridge Runner, on the newly named, “Edge Ridge Way”
(Phone removed for privacy purposes)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Battery Upgrade for the LittleHouse

Image
 Over the past year or so, our batteries for the solar power system have been deteriorating.  This winter, I replaced just one of the eight 6 volt lead-acid batteries, in the hopes that it would improve operation until I could apply a fix in the spring. It worked for a while, but then other batteries in the string began losing their capacity to the point of the system going down nearly every day for a few hours before the sun rises each morning. I decided to bite the bullet and install a whole new string of batteries. On researching, it appeared that it would make sense to replace the old lead-acid battery technology with newer Lithium Iron Phosphate technology.  Not only are the new batteries considerably more compact and lightweight for a given capacity, they should also last much longer and require little maintenance. I decided the replace the eight batteries comprising the 48 volt, 200 amp hour lead acid string with two Lithium Iron battery packs of 100 amp hours each.  This matche
Read more

November 2022 Visit

Image
    With a cold front approaching, I decided to run up to the Ranch to winterize the water pipes before the sustained 20-degree days hit us later in the week. I rinsed out our 200 gallon water tank that we use to haul water from the standpipe in Seligman to our Ranch.  After loading up the tank in the truck, I headed for Seligman. There had been reports that the standpipe in town had been modernized to accept debit cards for thew water that is drawn.  But upon arrival to the standpipe, I found that people were inserting quarters, and found a note on the control that said the new system was "still not working". Luckily, I had a fist full of quarters in the truck that I save for carwashes, and things of that nature. When it was my turn, I used the quarters, and filled up the 200 gallon tank.  It cost about 20 cents per gallon, so $2.50 to fill the tank. I hauled the water up the hill and parked on a small slope near the LittleHouse to help get all of the water out of the tank. 
Read more