Fathers Day!

I distinctly remember when the OC-3 came home that I was on gift probation until at least Christmas. My wonderful wife and kids surprised me with a 20 gallon parts washer. Let me tell you it is a welcome addition to the garage at this time. I have plenty of greasy parts that need some washing.



Parts washing has changed a bit over the years. Today you can't find a solvent based washer at Fleet Farm. They only carry a detergent based solution that, counter to logic, is diluted on a 1:1 bases with water? It is green, smells good, and is "mild and easy on your hands". It worked rather well and I did about 4 hours of washing on Father Day afternoon. Note to self: Buy some rubber gloves. Apparently, "mild and easy on your hands" does not apply after 4 hours. My hands were peeling like a snake for the next three days.


Here are some pictures of some newly washed parts all laid out nice and neat on the work bench.

Row Crop 550?

One more Oliver related post other than the OC-3. After raking hay and trying out a newly acquired two-row cultivator it was apparent that the 550 needed to be widened just a touch to match the rows.

A job that should have taken an hour actually took about 4 hours. The rear wheels were rusted to the hubs and it took a hydraulic jack to get them off. The front axle bolts (all four of them) were less than easy as well. It has probably been 25 years since any of this stuff has been moved.

Anyway the job got done and now it is jokingly called the Row Crop 550. It is kind of like driving a 32 Ford Roadster with the wheels out so wide and away from the fenders. In the pictures you can see the Ferguson Two-Row cultivator acquired by my father-in-law. Did I mention I really love this tractor? It is pound for pound the best little tractor you can find.

Making Hay. . .

Progress on the OC-3 has slowed a bit because other things have required my attention. An "Oliver" related event took place a couple of weeks ago. It has been about 20 years since I've done some serious haying but I had the opportunity to bale some hay on my father-in-law's hay land.

This was an All-Oliver operation. The Row Crop 77 was used for cutting the hay. My 550 was an outstanding (and fuel efficient) raking tractor. And, the 1600 was a great match for the 520 Oliver baler. The row crop 66 was left at home and I thought it was unfortunate that we didn't find a job for the old girl.

The 520 Oliver baler was found at an auction about a year ago for $35. It broke an axle on the way home from the auction and the replacement axle cost $45 (ten more than the actual baler). The baler is probably a 1962 model. It had a few knot-tying problems that got better with adjustments and usage. All-in all the 45 year old Oliver baler worked quite well.

I was reminded what a hot, dirty, sweaty, and exhausting job it is to bale hay. There is a reason that today's farmers use round balers. However, when you are using "the finest in farm machinery" it makes it worth while.

OC-3? Nope. . .OCC!!!

Snap-On tools is holding a regional sales meeting in our building at work this weekend. I happened to see them load-in about $100,000 of tools earlier in the day - cool stuff. Towards the end of the day someone said, "I think they are pushing a motorcycle down the hallway?!?"

I looked in Ballroom C and wow! It was the Orange County Choppers Snap-On Tools Bike. We've had rock stars, authors, activists, comedians, TV personalities, and a US Senator in the building; but this is the first time I have run to get my camera. . .And then the battery was dead.

Anyway the bike is really cool. There are some awesome details. (Bill, I knew you were already headed up north, otherwise I would have given you a call.)

It had to be Done. . .

It had to be done. I think it was a combination of things. I think it was partly due to the fact that the parts were sprawling into the second garage stall. It may have been partly due to the fact that I was constantly looking for, or tripping over misplaced tools. It may have had something to do with the need to pile the kids bikes on top of concrete blocks and track frames at the end of the night. It may have been a natural break in the project. Lastly, it may have had something to do with seeing Mike & Jim's shop (my parts source). Although the shop was spacious and they had nice toys - they have let tool and part sprawl take over their shop.

It had to be done. I cleaned up the garage. I got the snowmobile trailer out with the Craftsman Garden tractor and backed up to the garage. I rolled up both tracks and pushed them onto the the trailer. I got about 1/3 of the way up the tilt bed and I couldn't push them anymore. Oh crap now what? I not so gracefully flopped them over on their sides. I muscled the track frames up on the trailer. The sprockets were thrown on and the extra concrete blocks too. The trailer had a pretty good squat going on. . .I'm guessing 1000-1200 lbs. I got all of this stuff tucked away in the back of the shed for the time being.


THEN, I picked up tools and swept up a ton of dirt, grease, and floor dry. I think it looks much better. The last picture is a before view from a couple weeks ago.

Parts Progress (my visit with Mike)

Well, I went to see fellow OC-3 restorer Mike. I got in contact with Mike on-line at http://www.cletrac.org/. We realized we lived less than an hour away from each other and he said he was selling off parts from his parts machine, an Oliver/Cletrac HG-42 (predecessor of the OC-3 and nearly identical).

Mike has been working on his OC-3 for 2 years. It is an OC-3 (42 inch wide with Ware Loader). It is stripped down to the frame. Quite frankly I wouldn't have realized there was an OC-3 lying around if he didn't walk me around to identify the piles of parts and pieces. Mike works out of a shop owned by his friend Jim. Jim and Mike tinker on a lot of different tractors and do quite a bit of on-the-side work for other folks. Looking around they had a John Deere B, Ford 8N, David Brown 990, Allis G, IH Utility, and Massey 30 sitting in the yard.

Mike was a wealth of knowledge. He too has had his challenges along the way. However, like me, he enjoys learning from the challenge. He also has access to some great tools, a good sized shop, a torch, a press, a lathe, a drill press, and he's retired - so he has some time to focus on the project.

At the end of the day I bought a few items from Mike: an empty transmission/differential case, two track rollers, and 4 bushing holders for those rollers.

I may go back to Mike for a few more parts in the future. Mike (and his friend Jim) also have the ability to manufacture some parts. They have been successful in turning their own shafts and bushings. He may also have a used HG stub shaft for me. . .He needs to press it out of the final drive housing (with his 100 ton press) and measure it up to see if it would match the OC-3. This is good because I have one stub shaft with bad threads. He also has a contact that may have a bull gear for me! That would be very good as noted in the "Toothfairy" post I have a bullgear with a broken tooth.

Oh, and I got that last stubborn roller out of the track frame tonight! Heat, spray, walk away rules the day once again. It was a good day in OC-3 restoration - progress was made.

Side note for myself: Mike gave the part numbers for the roller seals - Tisco 70218450 or Chicago Rawhide 15039CR1(or I?) - remember to put them in backwards.

Rollin', Rollin', Rollers on the OC-3

Please excuse the "Proud Mary" pun in the title (for those that got it).

My head was still spinning from the broken bull gear tooth so I looked for something easy to do next. The next project was to flip the track frames over and remove the 3 rollers on each track frame. I already knew just by looking at them that each rear roller was cracked in half.

The manual indicates this is a rather simple procedure. "Remove the stud nuts holding the wheel assembly to the track frame, allowing wheel to drop off studs."

Oh, only if it would be this easy, but 50 years of abuse, dirt, and rust tend to make everything more challenging. When I got the first roller loose I couldn't get the roller to get past the frame. It didn't have enough side clearance. I should have seen the problem but it was late and I wasn't seeing the whole picture. After an embarrassing post on http://www.cletrac.org/ I discovered that I had to simply remove the oil Zerk first then remove the roller. Proud Mary, I was not.

So the first couple of rollers came out fine. Then I had three rollers with mounting blocks that were seized to the frame. I finally made that trip to Fleet Farm for some higher end penetrating spray. After some heat, spray, walk-away - I only have one roller still giving me problems.

The pictures will show some good rollers (note the Oliver shield stamped in one of them), a cracked roller AND a roller that literally fell apart when I got it out.

The pictures below are of the shaft that fell out of the worst roller. I tried to capture the amazing amount of wear that the shaft has experienced. The close-up does a pretty good job of showing what used to be a perfectly round 1.5 inch shaft. One can only guess how long the shaft had been banging around in the roller to get to this state.

Side note: Up until now I have been blogging about past events. I've finally caught up so what you are reading is pretty much the current state of affairs. I'm going to see Mike the retired sheriff on Tuesday and see what he has for parts. I'm excited to see what he has and hopeful about a good price on this stuff.