Login

16

ATIS General Tractor Discussion / 1948 Empire tractor

« on: January 02, 2011, 09:33:50 PM »

Completed fabricating a foot throttle today for the Empire.  Since I don't have a governor for the engine the foot throttle is needed to maintain engine speed when the load varies.
Took it out for a test drive on our country lane.
Don't know how fast I got it up to, but the rear tires were obviously unbalanced at high speed and limited me from going any faster.
I haven't checked yet, but I'm hoping that there is water in the rear tires and that is causing the unbalanced feel.

17

John Deere / Just too quiet.

« on: December 31, 2010, 01:02:50 AM »

Being that the Empire uses the Willys/Jeep engine I'm sure a governor for a CJ2A would work fine.  Actually I could probably make most any governor setup for a v-belt drive work.
However, I think a NOVI governor is the correct brand I need.

18

John Deere / Just too quiet.

« on: December 30, 2010, 10:40:23 AM »

Charlie,

I see you're getting close to breaking the 200 postings mark!

I've been wondering if Spencer will give us another end of the year surprise.  I've been checking each day to see if the "Front Page" gets updated with something relevant.

I"m hoping to get some work done on my Empire this long weekend.  Trying to build a foot throttle since I don't have a governor for the engine.

George

19

ATIS General Tractor Discussion / 1948 Empire tractor

« on: December 20, 2010, 02:48:45 PM »

Yahoo!

The Empire is back in my shop.  The guy that built the engine for me, delivered it Sunday afternoon.  So now I get to work on it trying to have it ready for the Tulare show in April.

20

ATIS General Tractor Discussion / 1948 Empire tractor

« on: December 12, 2010, 05:39:33 PM »

Got the carburetor problem figured out and the engine revs up now!!!!!

First of all a little more history on the carb.

It is a reproduction of a SOLEX carburetor that was used as a replacement for the Carter carburetor during WWII.
These reproduction SOLEX carbs are apparently made in India, not China as I first thought.
The problem is in the block between the carb and the accelerator pump.  There is a hole that was partially drilled but not all the way through.  Since the hole didn't go completely through, fuel couldn't through either!

Drilled out the hole and it works fine now!
Sounds like the factory as a quality control issue where their machine wasn't set up to drill the hole deep enough to make it through the material.

21

ATIS General Tractor Discussion / 1948 Empire tractor

« on: December 12, 2010, 12:03:30 AM »

Here's a picture of the Empire engine with the bad carburetor.

22

ATIS General Tractor Discussion / 1948 Empire tractor

« on: December 10, 2010, 08:55:38 PM »

Saw the newly rebuilt engine run today!  It idles perfectly.
However there apparently is a problem with the carburetor I bought for it.
It's a Chinese copy of a Solex carburetor for the flathead Jeep engines.

Like I said, it idles great. But as soon as you try running faster than a fast idle the engine starves and dies.
We took the carb apart and checked every jet and passage we could and couldn't find the problem.
Finally called the seller I bought the carb from and they said they've had a few bad ones, so will send another carb for us to try.

Hopefully the next carb will arrive and work okay.

Otherwise I'll be looking to rebuild an American carburetor.

I tried loading a picture in the photo album, but apparently did something wrong.  I've got the album and it shows a photo for the album, but the album is empty.
Not sure what the photo problem is as the file is only 79k in size.

23

ATIS General Tractor Discussion / Tractor Storage

« on: December 06, 2010, 11:01:28 AM »

Interesting idea!
Looking forward to seeing the photos of the finished shrink wrap job.

George

24

ATIS General Tractor Discussion / 1948 Empire tractor

« on: December 06, 2010, 10:58:28 AM »

Gene,

I joined the Empire Tractor Club as soon as I got my Empire tractor.

This Friday (10th) I'm going to the shop where my friend is working on my tractor and we'll try to get the new engine running.
Hope everything goes well.

One bad thing about it getting towards the end of the work my friend is doing is that I'll have to bring it back home.  Unfortunately, that space in my barn as been already filled with other stuff and I'll have to do a lot of rearranging to find space to get the Empire back in the barn.  One of the problems of continuing to buy stuff and filling the available space.

George

25

'round the pot-bellied stove / Last real member to join and post something

« on: December 02, 2010, 04:47:03 PM »

ATIS Discussion Forums Statistics
Threads:243  Posts:1,325  Members:21,591  Active Members:1,987
Welcome to our newest member, Sawayslespeld

I'm curious on our 1987 active members who has joined this year and has posted anything?

Would be interesting to go back through the postings this year just to see if anyone joined and have posted something.

26

ATIS General Tractor Discussion / 1948 Empire tractor

« on: December 01, 2010, 08:52:30 PM »

Just checked and I don't have any good pictures of the Empire.

27

ATIS General Tractor Discussion / 1948 Empire tractor

« on: December 01, 2010, 11:51:18 AM »

I've had an Empire tractor for several years.  These tractors were made after WWII using the running gear from Willys jeeps.  They used the engine, transmission, transfer case, rearend, steering, etc from the jeep.  At some point in my tractors life someone replaced the flathead 4 Willys engine with a F-head Jeep engine.

My tractor looked pretty good, but had some issues like the hole cut in the hood needed for the taller carburetor height when using a F-head engine.  This was also common to the 4x4 Jeeps when people replaced the flathead four with the F-head four.

This year I decided to find a flathead engine to make the tractor more like original.  I ended up buying 3 different Willys/Jeep flathead four engines.  None were complete or running, but I thought with the three engines I would have enough to build one good engine.

Since I don't have enough time to finish any of the numerous other projects I've started I hired a retired professional mechanic to do the engine work for me.  He's done a real nice job on the engine so far and it should be like a new engine when he's finished.

After taking the F-head out of the tractor, I decided to also have the transmission and transfer case gone through as it had some noise when I had driven it in the past.  Good thing I did as it was really worn out and I had another friend that does rearend and manual transmission work completely rebuild both units.

The rebuilt transmission has been reinstalled.
The rebuilt engine has been reinstalled and just needs a few things hooked up and we should be able to get it started.

Hopefully it will be running again before Christmas!

Only bad part is I probably have more money invested in this tractor than it is worth, but on the bright side it will mechanically be just like new.

I don't have any photos handy to load, but will try to load some later.

George

28

'round the pot-bellied stove / Christmas surprise

« on: December 01, 2010, 11:35:06 AM »

 The new forum has a lot of possibilities, if people will accept it. When we finally get more usage, it will become even more uasble.

 
Gene,

I've said it before and will again.  We're not getting any help from Spencer.  The "Front Page" for the forums is a joke as it hasn't been changed since Spencer first loaded it with non-hobby related samples.  Only thing the Front Page is good for is to quickly check if anyone has posted recently to the forums.

I feel the Front Page is a total waste of space unless it is updated with something related to the hobby.

We also need an active administrator to answer questions and make sure things work.

I do agree that if we had more usage it would be more usable, but the problem is without more support I don't see us getting more usage.

Sorry for all the negative thoughts on my side.

George

29

'round the pot-bellied stove / Christmas surprise

« on: November 29, 2010, 05:09:13 PM »

I only check this forum occasionally as it pretty much has died from neglect.

Seems that it is around Christmas that Spencer makes changes to the forums, so wondering what he has planned for us this year?

I still think this forum could be viable, but without Spencer's help it is not going to survive.  Last year he gave us the newer fancy look, but never implemented anything or made updates during the year.  Any vistor finding us would see the old dates on messages and ignored questions and pretty much rightly guess that not much is going on there.

The one exception is that the forum still seems to attract the hackers or whatever they are creating bogus user names.  Maybe this was all just a test by Spencer to build a security system to keep hackers out.

30

'round the pot-bellied stove / Tractor Parade

« on: October 14, 2010, 05:22:47 PM »

Its been many many years since I drove a tractor in a parade (excluding parades at tractor shows).
In fact it has got to be over 30 years and the tractor I drove in a town parade was my first running Fordson which had been converted to rubber tires.
Back then I didn't even own a trailer and had to drive the Fordson all the way into town for the parade and drive it back home again.
About 6 miles each way which makes for a long trip on a old worm gear Fordson!

I'm hoping to start driving in parades again in the near future.  Possibly next year.
I've been having my Empire tractor rebuilt so I can take part in tractor drives.
Thought the Empire tractor would be perfect for doing tractor drives as it should be able to maintain a pretty decent road speed for an old tractor.

George