A New-ish Tractor for Jason

A post from Kelli–

You might not remember, but a while back, they had a little accident on the farm.  You can read more about it here–https://www.joscountryjunction.com/just-a-little-accident/

After everything was said and done, they ended up totaling out both the tractor and the chopper box.  Jason being the scrapper and mechanic that he is, bought both back from the insurance company with plans to fix things up and end up ahead of the game in the end.  The chopper box was a quick fix, but the tractor not so much.

When the tractor had rolled, the cab ended up badly damaged which was the main reason that the tractor was totaled as it would have been expensive to purchas a new cab.  Jason however has a few contacts so between calling a few parts places and Craig’s List, he was able to find a new tractor cab at a salvage yard near Applington, about a two hour drive from our place.

He had been working on the mechanical parts of things for a while, but called me out to the shop the other day when he was getting ready to put the new cab on as he was sure you would all want to take a peek at the work it takes to get the new cab on the tractor.

Here are a few pics of the tractor without the cab on it.

Jason and his brother Brent got things rigged up so that they were able to attach the new tractor cab to the loader of another tractor.  They then used the loader to lift up and move the new cab to the tractor.

They had to be careful and go slow as there was a nice little coating of ice under the snow.  Gotta love Iowa weather!

Slowly but surely they made their way over to the cabless tractor.

I was surprised at how many cords and things there were that ran between the cab and the actual tractor.

And Waalla!

One thing that has really helped the boys out has been the fact that Jason went to school for John Deere mechanics and his brother Brent went to school for Dairy Science.  Jason has been able to fix all of their mechanical mishaps over the years.  This has been great as the thing that usually costs the most when going to a mechanic of any time is the labor cost.  While it may not get done in the most timely manner, it still gets done–eventually!

I asked Jason a few days later how the cab transfer and such went and he informed me that when he went to get everything finished up, there was an issue with the crankshaft which lead to the wrong size of bearings and oil pressure problems so he had to take it back into the shop and put some new bearings in.  I don’t know the details, but it was broke and now it is fixed–That’s the important part!  I asked him if that meant he might have some time to work on the Honey-Do list…  He flashed me a smile-But it was the “HA–That’s funny” in the most sarcastic way possible.  Guess I’ll just wait a while longer….as he informed me he has another tractor that needs to be worked on.  Oh well–Good thing the shop is heated and big enough for me to join him!