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

[Chris Zach <cz alembic crystel com>]

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