Carl's 416-8

I dug deeper and tried the correct plug in the head, it will never seat after the compression of the wrong plug.  I've never run into something like this.  I talked to Carl and said I wouldn't bother him again today (said the same yesterday morning oops) but the heads are toast...  Calling now lol.    

Last pic is one of the reconditioned heads I keep here for reference.

At 6pm, about 3 hours after the last post yesterday the power was out here from all the wild storms.  That's why there wasn't an update last night.  I was out in the shop when it came back on this morning around 10am, then after a shower and breakfast-lunch I got started on it again today around 12.

The heads were off yesterday and cleaning started before the power went out so that got finished up first along with cleaning and blasting the hardware.  Next the mess was taking off the throttle lever, it was all disassembled, cleaned up, and I did my special adjustable fix on it lol.  An NOS stop plate, bolt set, and knob is out for it ready to go back in.  After that was modifying some butt connectors, fixing the wiring to the oil sending unit and using waterproof heat shrink on it, then rerouting it where it belongs.

 

2 nice reconditioned heads are out and ready, we do them here in case anyone was wondering.  Other than that just getting new parts out and ready, doing some touch up painting on pulleys and other things, blasting and painting some things that need to be done before the motor goes back together, and a lot of little things while it's nice outside.  Some pics of the blade alignment with new blades on it as well for you Carl.  The first pic is the center and discharge side, they actually line up almost perfect (the camera angle just makes it look more off).  The second pic is the same camera angle showing the center and closed side, but shows more of how much the deck is bent from the hit it took.  I may work on that next just to see where we end up on that part of things. 
 

Well several things are amiss on the deck.  At least the center pulley came off easily, it's been off before...   

 

New heads and flywheel are on, torqued, and everything is set up ready to go.  Everything has plenty of clearance and looks really good.   I went on and got out some clamps to hook up the battery, some alligator leads for other grounds, put on the new filter + oil, hooked the new vac line to the fuel pump and it fired up right away.  It sounds great and I don't see any leaks after running it about 2 mins so I can get to finishing it up now. 

 

I knew tractors usually didn't get good work but this one will definitely beyond any doubt be the most amount of mechanical work ever done on one for me.  It is taking an enormous amount of time making sure everything is fixed, where it belongs, looks nice and just right.  The black covered wires ended up in the holder in the first pic  with the white covered ones but left out for the pic to show the clamp and where it bolts up.  These wires were behind the coil toward the rear when it got here which allowed some of them to get almost cut in two.   Special attention was given and a few things rerouted to make sure that when the oil is changed from now on nothing is in the way or gets oil all over it when the filter comes off.

The main steering shaft used all the extra shims put on these at the bottom of the shaft by Toro but it ended up good and snug.  The original positive cable was too short already so a new one was made with plenty of extra and put back in holders the way it belongs.  There was also one pin and lead replaced in the 9 pin harness, most of the rest of it looked pretty good.

 

A few more pics of it going together.  It got a set of our custom made 20 strand copper core plug wires we make for the Onans so they should be on there for many years to come.  A chrome shield was also added from a 520.  I don't know if this came with one or not, it didn't have one when it got here and the parts list at Toro on this one doesn't show one either.

All of the warning lights are working, it's been run for 2 hours since it started going back together, 1 hour of that solid, 30 mins a little above idle, then 30 mins at 1/2 throttle with no leaks or problems at all.  You can snap your fingers on the key and it's running so I'm happy with everything so far.

Anyway,,, it's yet another late night so I'm headed home. 
 

Seems like the deck matches the tractor in needing a lot of work, but at least it's apart... 

 

Started on getting a seat on it, a little buffing, straightening and misc things.  Trying to get the tractor somewhat wrapped up then on to the deck...

The sliders are going away, seat springs and seat are getting changed out to something that doesn't have to come from Toro.  You can see in the first pic from where the bolts are that the new weird bolt pattern didn't even include changing the main flip bracket.  That's Toro's way of doing things of course...  The next 2 pics show the old style spring that had the standard Wheel Horse bolt pattern that fits well and allows all the adjustment to be fully used.

Got a start on some straightening and buffing as well, I'll post that tomorrow because it's already getting close to bedtime lol... 

I've said it once and I'll say it again, everything turns bigger once I get into it lol.  

Here are the paint pics from last night.  The rear fender is pretty rough but at least it hasn't been painted over.  The sides and front of the hood did ok, but there is an enormous amount of some pretty tough spray can paint on the top of the hood.  It will take about 3 times longer to get it off but I think once it's off it will look better than the mess on there now.  I even got out some pretty rough red buffing compound paste and it's still pretty thick for that.  Time seems to be the only solution to save the original paint and get it shined back up.  Even when it gets a good shine you can still see the spray like on the front top section of the hood (on the left in the pic).  If all of the spray paint doesn't come off then it will fade pretty quickly and be a lot like it is now in a few months.

On a bright note the front between the headlamps was fairly easy to straighten without a scratch.