The tear-down begins

A couple days ago I pulled out the tractor and spent a couple hours scraping off grease and crud and then drove it back into the barn to begin the tear-down.  This morning I drained out the oil and anti-freeze.  Of course there was more oil in it than there was supposed to be and my drain pan didn't hold it all so made a nice mess.  To get at the radiator drain plug I had to knock out a good amount of dirt from right under it only to find there had at some time been a mouse nest there.  Strange place but must have been warm??  After that I removed the steering shaft that goes through the top of the radiator.  In the videos I watched it came right out after removing a couple bolts.  Not surprisingly that was not the case for me.  But after a good amount of pounding it did eventually come out.

Ready for disassembly

Removal of the steering shaft

Eventual success

The new wire from Brillman arrived so I made and installed the new wiring harness.  It looks a lot better and much cleaner without all the electrical tape and cut wires that had been on there.  Its hard to see but here's a pic of the harness connecting to the ammeter box.  The wires are inside the black loom.

The parts to rebuild the generator from Steiner Tractor Parts also arrived.  Included in the kit were new brushes, a new bearing and a new bushing.  Replacing the parts was pretty straight forward and to clean up the part of the armature that the brushes contact was done with some 600 grit paper.  Then I cleaned up the outside and painted it.  After re-installing it on the tractor I tested it by directly connecting it to the battery.  To my pleasant surprise it spun (like a DC motor) which indicates it works.

Thinking all was well I reattached the cutout relay on top of the generator and connected all the wires.  I polarized it by touching a wire momentarily between the BAT and GEN terminals.  Then started up the tractor and basically got no reading from the ammeter - crap, not charging.  Did a number of tests and determined the cutout relay (which keeps the battery from draining and regulates charging) wasn't working properly.  Unfortunately no one sells this type of cutout relay.  After studying how the relay works it dawned on me that it needs to be grounded and that's done by touching the generator.  Hmmm, that new paint could be the problem.  Posted the question to the forum on YTMAG.com and got several responses confirming my suspicion.  So I took off the generator and scraped and sanded the part where the cutout relay and the generator touch.  Put back together, fired it up and ta da, it worked.  At high RPM it charges at about 4-5 amps.  So as it turns out it was a good thing no one sells this cutout relay or I would have bought one and still had the problem.

Here's a pic of the rebuilt and repainted generator.  The cutout relay is the box on top.

Back at it.

Gone but not forgotten.....it's been over three years since my last post.  Since I retired last summer and I have a bit more time it's time to start again on the H project.  So last week I drained out the old gas, replaced the corroded points and bought a new battery (still the original 6 volt system).  Without too much trouble she started up.  Now that she's running again the question was where to begin on the restoration.  So before anything major I figured I would replace the old worn out wiring and make sure that is all correct and working properly.  I ordered some old fashioned cloth covered wire from Brillman and some woven loom for part of the wire harness.  In checking out the existing wiring I noticed the field wire on the generator was not connected to the cutout relay.  This got me wondering if the charging system was even working.  Nope.  I watched a great  youtube video made by Steiner Tractor that went through the steps to test the system and determined the generator was not working.  It's now removed and in pieces in the garage.  I ordered the pieces to rebuild it but in the meantime I'll clean it up and get a fresh coat of paint on it.