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(ET) Darn, the E15 is too far gone....



Ah well, drat...

Was working on the E15 frame today; rolled out the E20 and hooked up the stick welder. Which actually is a very good welder, not going to work on sheet metal but will penetrate deck steel properly. And being stick it doesn't seem to mind welding to solid rusted metal as long as you wire brush it a good bit.

Used some clamps to hook up the new angle iron, fired up the welder, and went to town. It's possible to balance an E15 on it's nose with the motor out and the transmission off, so welding was not too bad.

And when I was done sure enough the rear deck was solid. I was able to stand on the rear corner, jump on it, and hit it with a 3 pound setting maul with no problems.

Then I took a look at the transmission bracket. There was still one bolt fused into it; I tried everything to get it loose noticing that the bracket's hold on the rusted side steel was very weak. Weak enough that a single hit with the maul broke it off the frame.

Not good. Welding that back on would pretty much require building a whole new back end for this thing. That's not easy, requires a tight alignment, and is a structural member that I can't trust my welds on.

Oh well. I think this little E15 is shot. I spent about an hour removing two of the rusted remains of the rear rivets. For some reason those are an insanely hard carbon steel that requires about 20 minutes with the saber saw and oil to cut.

Any thoughts on what parts I should keep? The brake kit looks to be the upgraded later model; I'll hang onto that. The peerless has pits in it's shaft housing to the left wheel; I think what happened is that leaves and crud were stuck there for years and they held water against the metal like a sponge. Oh, wash your tractor at least once a year.

Anything else?

C