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If they didn’t like your 4 cars I’ll bet they absolutely love the storage container. I think the hog lot idea is great.
I remember one spring I think 1972, my older brother built a hot rod pulling tractor that reminds me a little of this beast, it was a 70 Oliver with HVAC plumbing for intake manifold adapting a McCulloch supercharger from a Hudson Superhawk & an AFB mechanical secondary 4V. It sounded great, supercharger was mechanically engaged with an AC clutch at 60′. He made several 120′ pulls but never got through the gate, supercharger was not made for as much boost as he was running & always locked up hot.
We’ve got a TSC store here in Nixa, good to deal with. Very friendly. I have to cover a lot of distance & end up working on stuff at odd hours. So glad they are open in the evenings.
My book says 200 hours, but so does my IH 234, I do them both @ 100, works out to be once a year. both are in good shape, I got in the habit of visually monitoring oil appearance too. neither get ugly in that time. Dad was an aircraft mechanic in wwii. kinda raised us on the extreme side of maintenance. Oil & filters much cheaper than engines.
Hard weekend #2 with brush hog & loader. Still no cooling issue. I am pronouncing the little 254 cured! this little tractor now works like I knew it should when I bought it.
So this summer my cooling problem was back……..Ultimately I pulled the radiator to discover more than half of the heat exchanger fins were actually separated from the core tubes. I have a competent radiator shop just a few blocks from the office who told me they had never seen core separation to that degree, more than half of the fins were just loose & hanging there. I had a new US made core made & attached to my existing tanks. I ran full PTO RPM in 4th all day Friday in mid-upper 90 degree heat. Thermostat was actually closing to keep temp up to 80c. Electric fan came on only for about 3 seconds after a hot restart. I feel a little foolish, my instinct was saying radiator but I was thinking either sand in the block or corrosion. I could see circulation, but only what I could see through the radiator cap. Anyway, Automart said I likely only had half or less heat exchange. The cause, poor metal prep, lack of solder from the factory, or too quick cool down in manufacture. I know the previous owner was having cooling issues due to some of the things done.. It is fixed now.
So far seems like the fan runs about 3 minutes & off about 20. Haven't worked it terribly hard yet & the weather this summer hasn't really tested man or machine. I am going to upgrade the wiring up to & including the charging circuit.
Hey Bob, I've been studying your mounting epic adventure. Made mine sound really easy, I guess it was. Strange because your North Star & My Farm Pro in theory are the same tractor, (Jinma 254) but your battery mounts in a different location. My guess is yours is newer? Mine is a 2004 model. Odd they decided to start mounting the battery right in front of the radiator. I guess that is to provide easier access to the battery maybe? On Mine, the hood latch is mounted on a bar that is removable to access the battery inside the bumper. I got some quarter inch rod stock & threaded it & bent it along with some 1″ angle to make a battery tiedown. Evidently the previous owner didn't think a battery tiedown or hood latch were important. Affordable tractor sent me a new hood latch for a few US dollars along with the new alternator. Both are working great now, but I think I'm going to run new 12ga wire through the whole charging circuit. The factory ammeter didn't last long with the heavier alternator so I put in a new VDO 60amp ammeter. This circuit is only rated @ 25 amp & the new alternator , now while the fan should never exceed 10 amp, the new alternator is capapable of producing more than the 16ga factory circuit can carry (500 watts/14.5 volts =34.48 amps. I guess they thought it was ok because the factory alternator only produced 14.65 amps. Come to think of it, maybe I should mount a fire extinguisher on the canopy in the mean time.
ML
I've got an early 80's IHC 234 which was actually a Mitsubishi. Battery is mounted identically. Really looks like a bad idea to me, but rarely is an issue. That one has to be really clogged before it becomes an issue, however unlike the chinese tractors there are 6 blades on the fan & it is positioned correctly in the shroud to draw air from the full surface of the radiator. Clean, clean clean those fins.
ML
Hey,
Haven't been on for a bit, Yes, I will post pictures soon, I think the difference on the battery mounting is on my Farm Pro, the battery mounts inside the front bumper, not in front of the radiator, so it doesn't interfere with the fan mounting. Actually, one of the wires on the controller is a switch circuit to the controller & I powered it to the keyswitch, so now it can't come on when the key switch is turned off.
Because of the battery location it was really easy to draw power for the controller/fan circuit directly from the battery. I had to take it back to the farm as my wife was tired of it being in the driveway, I couldn't seem to stop tinkering & deer food plots needed tilled & planted.
Next move is to put a reversable plug on the fan so I can plug directly to the battery to reverse the fan direction by reversing the polarity on the DC fan motor, you don't really have to turn the blades around to blow out or rather suck out the radiator while using the air compressor to blow out from the mechanical fan side. Still gotta pay attention to those fins.
Mark Lyons
