OK...that was amazing.

[SilentbutnotreallyDeadly]

I have spent a large part of the last couple of days slashing our paddocks as part of preparing for fire season, ongoing weed management and land/soil regeneration.

Whilst my adventures with our Italian stallion (the Grillo) have been well documented, there is another elephant in the room.

This is our Massey Ferguson MF65 tractor. It dates from the early to mid 1960s and is powered by a Perkins AD04 4 cylinder diesel engine.

Unlike our continental prima donna, this old girl is more like your eccentric elderly English aunty who smells funny, leaves marks of unknown origin on the carpet and furniture and is permanently slightly wobbly (like she's been sneaking the gin). Heart of gold, will try anything at all at the drop of a hat but often struggles to butter toast. That sort of aunty. It's also quite possible that, due to the number of non genuine parts she's accumulated, there's a slight dementia issue...

When put to work, it's not uncommon for her to break something or have something fail. Last time, she ate part of her 3 point linkage...

This time however...she soldiered on like a champ. Nailed it without issue. First time in such a long time that I can't remember when it was. Good on her!

That said though...she has sprung a bit more of a leak in the hydraulics than the mere seep it was before. And yet I'm still not going to let that sand the shine off a sterling effort.

Maybe she's trying to impress the much younger Italian?

[pip bip]

hose leak? ram leak?

[SilentbutnotreallyDeadly]

@pip-bip it's leaking around the plate that replaced the old, unused and leaking hydraulic controller. I suspect that an o-ring on a lift pipe under the plate is undersized. Any leakage around that puts pressure on the plate itself and my efforts at a chemical gasket are for nought given the very low budget tolerances of the non genuine plate.

[Shop-Teacher]

@silentbutnotreallydeadly It's nice when things just work.

[ST80MND]

"Non-genuine parts dementia" This is the greatest wrenching term I've heard all year.

[Thomas Donohue]

When I was little we used to own a few acres 'upstate' in NY, and we got to hang out on farms during the summer. I will never forget riding on the fender of one farmers tractor, a Massey-Ferguson that looked something like this. It was a 70's model I assume, and I was so small that I had to climb the tire treads just to get to the steps to get up on the thing. 90% of the time the tractor was idle, but occasionally Mr. M would take me out when he was working (safety? Yeah hold on, kid!!!) and it was awesome.

[Cash Rewards]

@silentbutnotreallydeadly I worked on th grounds crew of a golf course for a couple summers at the end of high school/beginning of college. First year one of the mowers blew a hydraulic hose. Driver had the good sense to bail off the fairway while it still had power and bury it in the high grass. A year later you could see the line in the fairway where grass refused to regrow, and we had to grow high grass even higher to hide the disaster it left behind. Unless theyve hauled out that dirt, I bet it still won't grow 20 years later.

[Thomas Donohue]

Update - My brother thinks it was Allis Chalmers. It was a long time ago, but those headlights are jogging my memory....

they had two tractors, and there were two other neighboring farms. Who knows, it was a tractor and it was cool as shit.

[SilentbutnotreallyDeadly]

@cash-rewards Hydraulic oil is mean and nasty shit. There's a couple of spill patches around here due to the antics of the previous owner. Fortunately, this tractor uses plain old 80w-90 gear oil in its transmission, final drive and differential (better known as the back half of the tractor!) and the 3 point linkage and any hydraulic control is powered off this as well. So leaks aren't quite the issue they would otherwise be...