Arthur's track reapair

Sometimes, when you start a project, you work straight through to the end, with out delay or interruption.  This year's farming season has NOT been one of those projects, at least not so far!  Fortunately, everything that has come up, has been fixable, which is a good thing.

The best fix is Reynald's healed burns!  Just three photos to show you how amazing his arm looks after the terrible burn six weeks ago.  I'll spare you the dreadful images because they are nightmarish.

The darker areas of Ron's right arm are where the burns were the deepest. but now these look so good.

His right thumb and knuckles were also deeply burned.   

And the inside of his arm is almost back to normal.  Just a tiny bit of pigment discoloration.  

I massage moisturizer in to his arms and hands twice a day to minimize scar tissue and keep the skin pliable.  He's gaining strength every day through exercise and just our normal work day.  What a miracle his healing has been.

Thursday afternoon we were fertilizing the summer fallow fields when a block on the inside of one of Arthur's track flew off.  A few hours later, another block flew off.  If three in a row come off, you need to stop NOW or the whole track may just walk itself off the tractor!

Just about the time the second block came off, it started to rain, so we were done anyway.  Friday afternoon, Kelly, our tractor mechanic, arrived to save the day.  The following photos will show the process involved to repair the track.

A tractorless fertilizer applicator!

Arthur with one track missing.

Kelly's service truck has this cool boom that was needed to lift the track. Actually, Kelly's service truck has everything needed for any kind of repair.  It's a shop on wheels!

I didn't get a photo of them drilling through the blocks.  This photo shows the portable drill press that Kelly has for this job.  It's in the left side of  this photo, on the ground.  It's the only possible way to do this job.

These are the blocks that were flying off!  You can see that the top blocks are drilled, and the bottom two are not.   

Ron is using a hand drill to go through the track.

This is the front idler on the tractor.  The blocks run in the groove.  There is also a groove on the tall back "wheels".  If you follow the the path to the back, you can see that the outside wheel that provides the rear track, is removed.  They had to take this off to get the track off.  

Alicia is inserting the bolts in to the track and block.

Alicia and Kelly tightening the bolts.

Two bolts per block.

A little perspective on how massive these tracks are.

All blocks bolted and tightened and track replaced!

Done!  Just cleaning up and picking up tools.

Finished up in record time, Saturday morning around 9am.  Kelly  was gracious enough to spend a couple hours on his day off, to get us back up and running, for which we more grateful than words can adequately express.  The rest of the day was smooth sailing!  We'll do the other track after we finish fertilizing.  New tracks cost $19,000.00!!!  It's worth the time and effort to fix these, since there is still a lot of grab on the grousers.  Unfortunately, a new set of tracks will be needed for our Indy tractor one day soon.  Hoping to get through at least one more farming season before we have to write that check!