(ET) Fall, blowers, and load bearing rust....

[Chris Zach <cz alembic crystel com>]

Well, it's fall and the mighty E-20 has been reconfigured into a massive 
leaf vacuum. This year I got the deck replaced with my last new shell, 
and it's been working great.

So I hooked up the new(er) vacuum blower and got myself to work. First I 
drilled some holes and mounted a golf cart contactor on the blower so I 
could turn it on and off using the signal wire from the mower deck 
contactor. I used to have this on the old blower, but the kid threw that 
out by accident, so I modified this one and now it's working great!

Running the tractor, blower, and deck is a lot of power, but it does 
pick up the leaves well and turns them into seriously shredded stuff. I 
got a new 10 foot section of flexible tubing as the old stuff was rock 
hard and flat in places. Pretty cheap on Amazon, clear so I can see 
clogs, and quite flexible.

I'm using the rusted elec-trak trailer to hold the leaf bag, that works 
but I backed it into a tree and freed the tailgate from the rear of the 
trailer. It had been rusted to the floor panel and when it broke free I 
was thinking "oh dear, that is LOAD BEARING rust..." but it turns out 
there are two large frame box girders under there so all will be well.

I drilled two holes in the Deere seat mounting side so I could use zit 
ties and hose clamps to hold the hose on the rear fender, over the 
wheel. This keeps the hose from dragging on the ground and also away 
from the rear wheels and chains.

Wile mowing I found that the lift strap had broken. Not a big issue, I 
have a spare, however the wire clamp had frozen to the shaft and I 
realized it's been about 25 years since I last replaced it. So I took 
the whole lift apart and found that the shaft had literally rotted under 
the strap and it's pretty much shot. The most annoying thing is that the 
cotter pins that hold the side guides had also rotted, and it is 
impossible to drill/tap them out.

I finally gave up and swapped a spare lift onto the tractor to get going 
again. But yeah these things are starting to be consumable after 50+ years.

Everything's done, tractor is charging away, tomorrow I may mount the 
dozer blade on the other tractor and start working on moving the dirt 
and junk out of the driveway gutters. Nice to have the tractors, they do 
their jobs well.....

How is everyone else doing?

Chris