Workshop Floor no Longer Bathed in Oil

It’s time to update the world on the things God is helping me get done.

I will probably repeat myself a little.

When I moved to the farm, I bought the seller’s machinery very cheaply. I got a Kubota tractor, a John Deere garden tractor, and an E-Z-GO gas cart with a dump bed. The mechanic who checked the machines out said the John Deere had a leak “around the rear PTO,” and he also said the Kubota was leaking from a hydraulic coupler. He felt both problems were easy and cheap to fix, and he seemed confident that I could do it myself.

After nearly two years of refilling the tractors with fluid and watching oil accumulate on the workshop floor, I tackled the jobs of fixing the leaks.

It turned out the garden tractor did not have a PTO leak. It has a hydraulic cylinder at the rear, and that cylinder raises and lowers the mower. It will also move a 3-point hitch. The rear seal was gone, and John Deere’s cylinder did not have removable end caps, so there was no way to change the seal. The ends of the cylinder were welded on. This is why I will avoid buying John Deere products in the future. There is no good reason for putting a welded cylinder on a $9200 tractor (1992 dollars). The only conceivable reason is to force customers to buy new cylinders.

I paid $180 for a new cylinder, and last week, I put it in. It was not a quick or easy job. Even if I had known what I was doing, and I had had help and proper tools, it would have been unpleasant.

The tractor has a steel pan that makes up the fenders, footboards, and seat area. The seat bolts to it. You have to remove it from the tractor in order to get at the front fitting on the cylinder. Of course, I found some guy on Youtube who removed his in 5 minutes. That always happens. Unfortunately, his tractor was not quite like mine.

To get his pan off, the Youtube guy undid 4 nuts, disconnected the seat kill switch (easily), popped the tail lamps out (easily), removed a shift lever (easily), and lifted the pan off. My seat kill switch had a fat cable that had to be fed through a hole in the pan. There was no way to part the cable with connectors. There was another panel on the side of the tractor that had to be removed in order to allow the pan to come off.

The shift lever was not fun to remove. It goes through a hole in the pan. The hole is way too small to admit a wrench, including a crowfoot wrench. The lever has a hex nut built into it at the bottom, so you can remove the upper part of the lever. The hex is below the steel pan, out of easy reach.

The Youtube guy had a lever which was already loose, so he twirled it off with his fingers. Mine was seized with rust.

Obviously, John Deere had no business putting a hex in a location where a wrench won’t go. The hex should have been near the top of the lever, or the lever should have had a T-handle to allow me to twist it. Stupid, stupid engineering.

I had to hold the pan up with one hand and turn the hex–literally–one tenth of a turn at a time. I was amazed. When I finally got it off, I coated it liberally with anti-seize. My plan is to weld a T-handle or a nut to the upper part, so it will come off quickly in the future. Alternatively, I can store the upper part of the lever in a drawer and go get it when I need to shift. I never really need to shift it. There are only two settings, and once you’re on the right one for your property, you can leave it there nearly all the time.

The seat kill switch is a very bad idea. The hope is that if you fall off the tractor, it will stop running. Problem: if you’re doing a job that requires you to get on and off a lot, you have to start the tractor over and over. It’s unbearable, and it can’t be good for the starter or battery.

The obvious solution is a pop-out kill switch on a lanyard. Boaters use these. The lanyard attaches to your wrist. When you fall off your boat, the lanyard pulls a stopper out of the switch, and the motor dies.

Right now, I have the kill switch disabled. I may add a switch to the tractor to bypass it on demand. I definitely need a quick disconnect in the cable.

My switch has a fat cable with a fat connector on the end, and to remove the pan, you have to stuff the connector through a grommeted hole in the steel. This is not bad when you’re doing it from above and have lots of room to work. When you have to shove it back in from below, you have to hold the pan up with one hand and shove with the other. The pan is very heavy. Very unpleasant.

I don’t know why my tractor has taillights. I know some people work around DWI’s by driving their lawnmowers on the road to get beer, but I have no reason to do that, and I’m pretty sure it would not be street legal anyway. The lamps on my tractor sit in rubber sockets that have to be jammed through holes in the seat pan. Very, very difficult. An intelligent engineer would have used twist-lock sockets, but this is John Deere we are talking about, so brute force is required.

I had to wrestle with each lamp for about 10 minutes to get it back in, and I used grease. Hello, John Deere! Have you heard of couplers? Put one on each wire, and you don’t have to pull the lamps. A 20-minute job becomes a 15-second job.

I apologize for bringing intelligence into the discussion.

The seat and pan must weigh 60 pounds. Lifting the assembly is like lifting an ironing board with a fat kid sitting on the far end. I really need to install my hoist in the workshop. I can’t blame John Deere for my lack of preparation. But I want to.

Very long story short: I got it done. Now I need to install the hoist and fix the tractor so it’s easier to take apart.

As for the Kubota, I was intimidated. I didn’t even know which fitting was leaking, and I knew it was coming from a block of fittings situated too close together for the application of wrenches. I figured I would have to take everything apart.

I will not say I got some ideas. I will say they came to me, presumably from God. I realized I needed to clean the block so I could see where the oil was coming out. I blasted it with a hose and wiped off as much oil and crud as I could, and then I parked the tractor over a sheet of newspaper. The next day, there was maybe an ounce of oil on the paper. I couldn’t tell where it had landed, but I could see oil under one fitting, so I figured I knew where the problem was. I had a female coupler facing up, and it was leaking from below, where it threaded into the tractor.

Of course, the fitting did not have a hex on it that would allow the use of a flare crowfoot wrench. It was round, with two flats. Incredibly stupid. I could not use a crowfoot wrench, and if I managed to get an open-end wrench on the flats, I would have fewer opportunities to get a grip on it. When you have a hex, there is a workable wrench position every 60 degrees. With two flats, not so much.

Looking at the fitting, I saw that someone from the MIT/NASA tractor team had already gouged it up with a pipe wrench or something, so I realized it didn’t matter what I did to it. I put Vise Grips on it, and it came out. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I applied Ace Hardware pipe dope to the threads, and I put it back in. I put paper under the tractor and waited a day. When I checked, it appeared that maybe one drop of oil had come out. That was an improvement.

For the heck of it, I tried to get a wrench on it, and it turned out to be in just the right position for me to do so. I was able to tighten it considerably. The leaking decreased even more. I’m not sure it’s leaking at all. I could be seeing drops from oil I was not able to clean off the tractor at the beginning.

I am told that there is a limit to how much you can improve such a leak by tightening the coupler. The answer, if there is one, is to apply more dope. I plan to try that, but in any case, I am done refilling my tractors with oil every week.

Whew.

The E-Z-GO needs work. It burns oil. The answer is a rebuild kit. Looks like I’m going to spend about $400, but I can do the work myself. That will be a relief.

The tractor problems hung over my head for a long time. I’m very grateful to get them over with.

Every day, I’m knocking off nagging jobs that stole my peace. I’m getting my business in order. It’s wonderful to have so much success in my life.

God gave me promises a few years back. He said things like, “I am ending frustration in your life.” I also got words saying the curses on my life were gone. I wondered why things weren’t perfect, after hearing those things.

I have realized that a life is like an oil tanker. When you make a steering correction on a huge ship, it doesn’t turn instantly. It takes a while to correct. If God tells you you have a blessing, or that a curse is gone, don’t be discouraged because it takes a while for you to see the result.

When you put fertilizer on a plant, you don’t stand over it waiting for it to turn green and grow.

I moved a lot of junk in the workshop. I also took the leaf blowers and cleaned it out. I realized I needed more tool storage. My woodworking stuff is everywhere. I looked around and prayed for guidance, and I bought a Husky vertical cabinet. It’s very nice. I looked at a lot of options, and Husky turned out to be the best. It’s almost 6 feet tall. It has 4 shelves, and each one holds 150 pounds. It has pegboard on the insides of the doors. The base is threaded so you can put wheels on it (ordered).

People say not to put wheels on tall cabinets, and I get it. Here is my response: I refuse to lift this thing every time I need to move it or clean behind it, and believe it or not, cabinets with feet can also fall when you move them. I don’t know what kind of final shop configuration I’m going to have, and I insist on being able to move the cabinet. It has a safety strap to fasten it to walls, so it will only be free to fall when I’m moving it, and I’m intelligent enough to roll it a few feet without killing anyone.

The vertical configuration is a blessing because it takes up so little floor space.

I’m planning on getting a big pedestal fan. I already have one picked out. The shop has a tiny ceiling fan, but its only real effect is to amuse. It’s like 12 feet up. You might be able to feel something if you stood directly under it, but basically, it’s useless. A pedestal fan will be very helpful when I’m trying to get things done in hot weather.

Last night, I came up with a plan for a wooden cart. I want to put my belt grinders on one, but I don’t want to spend a fortune on a storebought cart. I have them on a Northern Tool structural foam cart which will supposedly hold over 250 pounds per shelf, and the cart is slowly bending. Northern’s specs are way off.

I’ve seen people build plywood carts on Youtube. Not impressed. Lots of splinters, hard to cut on table saws, and plywood is expensive. For some reason, people here use hardwood (maybe oak) for fencing, and I have a bunch of boards lying around. I have a jointer, a planer, and some saws. I plan to clean up some boards and put a cart together using glue. As long as you glue long grain to long grain, glue joints are at least as strong as wood itself, so there is nothing to be afraid of. You can add a few screws as backup, in case a joint pops, but it shouldn’t happen. I don’t know why people are so afraid to use glue. Ignorance, probably.

I also ordered parts for my table saw’s base. When I moved, the moving company damaged some things, and the base was one of them. Of course, being a Miami businessman, the owner of the company failed to comply when I asked for help in filing a claim.

I believe they dragged the saw on concrete and asphalt. The base has 4 plastic feet, and they were all ruined. They also managed to break a spring in a part called a floor lock assembly. Because of this, the saw has been very hard to move, so I’ve used it as a place to pile junk (which will soon be in the new cabinet). In a few days, the new parts will arrive, and I’ll be able to use the saw again. If I get my generator fixed. I still don’t have 220 in the shop, and my generator is surging because of ethanol-scam gas. Thanks to God, I have the correct tools and knowledge to fix the carburetor.

Lots of good things are happening. My world is opening up, and stress is going away.

I keep trying to prophesy and interpret tongues, and I keep getting the same basic messages: “Don’t worry.” “I will never leave you.” “I am beside you.” I also got, “Your enemies will be cut down before you like wheat before the scythe.” If I understand him correctly, God has said he will teach me how to stop worrying. I need that. I can’t do it all by myself.

I have been troubled because of the overwhelmingly positive tone of the things I’ve heard. False prophets are known for being overly positive and refusing to correct. My last church had a “house prophet” (whom I will call Ernesto) who always told us it would rain puppies and silver dollars, and he was wrong, wrong, wrong over and over. No one ever called him on it, so the church loved lies and invited more deception.

He was honored with a permanent front row seat, even though he was often late to church, and the pastor used to hand him the mike and let him go off for 20 minutes. He would yell as hard as he could, predicting great things, and his predictions failed. Having Ernesto was much worse than having no prophet at all, because he led us into problems.

Actually, we had no prophet at all. At least no recognized prophet people listened to.

I don’t want to have the same problem.

Ernesto lost his job, and his family has serious financial problems. I found that out recently. I don’t know if he ever dropped his defenses and admitted he was not a prophet. Surely that would help.

Telling him would not have helped. I guarantee you that.

A false prophet is like a guy who goes around pulling stop signs out of the ground. Very dangerous. Not to be taken lightly. False prophets destroy lives. What they do is not okay, and it’s not something to be ignored or tolerated. It has to be exposed. The fact that a false prophet means well doesn’t matter.

Ernesto was a problem, because he had pride. He spoke to people with a sort of paternal tone, as though he had authority and knowledge, but he was making things up, and he didn’t hear from God. He didn’t have in-your-face, abrasive pride, but that doesn’t matter. Lots of nice, likable guys are proud and deluded.

Today God finally gave me something negative. He said something bad was going to happen, and I wouldn’t like it. I was highly disturbed. Suddenly the positive words looked a lot better to me. I kept questioning him, and if I have things right, I’m not the person the bad thing will happen to. I know a couple of people who have some spiritual kinks in their relationship, and I believe they are going to have a problem. They already are: medical issues that haven’t responded to treatment.

I am relieved because I’m not headed for a problem, but I don’t want people I care about to have problems, either. But I can see why it’s happening. They haven’t been listening as well as they should have. People worthy of respect have commented on it. When you stop your ears, you invite harder lessons. The more you know about God, the more dangerous it is to reject correction.

Part of me hopes I’m mistaken, but on the other hand, I don’t want to learn that my efforts to hear from God have failed.

It’s not like I’m causing the problem. I have to remember that. I hear what I hear. If I pick up the paper, and it says there was a nuclear accident in Burma, and I repeat the story, I’m not the one who caused the accident.

It has to be a good thing. The purpose of chastisement is to help and correct. God told a friend of mine that whether something was a punishment or a lesson depended on how it was received.

I have prayed for God to give them every possible help to come around and avoid the chastisement.

We will see what happens. Future events and other types of confirmation (or refutation) will tell me whether I heard from God. I’m not going to buy myself a T-shirt that says “Prophet of God,” and I’m not going to do Youtube videos where I go around telling fortunes, like some “prophets” do.

Jesus said to take the worst seat at the feast and wait to be called to a better one. I know a lot of people who took the best seats and defended their right to them and then got pitched into the street. I’m lucky I’ve never had a position of honor in a church. I was an armorbearer, which is one step up from a janitor, and I was a deacon, which meant absolutely nothing and gave me no authority at all, so I don’t have to worry about being flattered and put to sleep by pastors. It’s hard to fall when no one has ever lifted you up.

I have a lot of concerns about pride. I often feel like I have figured out things about the kingdom of heaven, even though it’s very obvious that I could not figure them out alone. It’s very obvious that God handed me whatever I know. I have to be careful not to be scornful of other people who are wrong about various things. I’m no better than any of them.

I should go buy that fan. October is a long way off.