I ordered new manifold and muffler off of ebay and they should be here next week.   The manifold that is on the tractor now is interesting (if manifolds can be interesting) since the tractor was originally designed to run on distillate.  There are two fuel tanks, a one gallon tank to get the engine running and warmed up and then a second 17 gallon tank for the distillate.  Once the engine was good and warm the fuel line was switched over to distillate tank.  So what does this have to do with the manifold?  The manifold for a setup like this has a heat control valve in it and the manifold is designed so the hot exhaust gasses pass around the intake manifold to heat up the incoming distillate fuel mixture so it properly vaporizes and burns efficiently.  The muffler on the other hand is more straight forward.  Currently there is no muffler and funny enough, the operators manual includes a muffler in the "special equipment" section.

Tonight Fenn and I did a compression test to see what kind of shape the engine is in.  Unfortunately the test results were a bit puzzling to me and didn't really line up with what I expected.  Since this is new territory for me I posted the test results and a question on the antique tractor forum I frequent (YTMag).  It's been an incredible source of information over the years so hopefully I'll get some sound advice on this one.  As far as the test goes, all four cylinders had 65 lbs of pressure plus or minus 2 lbs.  Consistent across all cylinders is good but consistently low.  The tester I'm using isn't a great tester so that may be an issue.  Then I squirted oil in each cylinder and tested it again and all were at 75 lbs.  Some difference between the wet and dry but not sure if the difference is enough to worry about.  I had expected the difference between the wet and dry test to be significantly different as Frank had said it burned a lot of oil and I thought the rings were the culprit.  So we'll see what the folks on the forum have to say.......

To keep things interesting here are a couple of pics from the farm.  Yesterday when I went to the barn to feed the horses I pulled a bale of hay off the stack to find a clutch of eggs from one of our wondering hens.  She apparently liked the privacy.  The other pic is of our pony Pippin. 



Is a pony 1/2 horse power??