Project Super C, Pulley Problems

FBN Network

Apr 02, 2020

This is the 15th post in our ongoing series on Project Super C. We are chronicling the rehabilitation of our 1954 Farmall Super C tractor, which has taken up residence outside of the Farmers Business Network℠ office. If you are new to this series, please start with the introduction to the project in our first post.

Where we last left off, we had removed the engine from the tractor and mounted it on an engine stand. This time we are going to start tearing the engine apart!

First, we flipped the engine over, removed the oil pan, and had a look into the crankcase. Below you can see the oil pump, crankshaft, camshaft, and the bottoms of the pistons and connecting rods:

Other than sludgy oil residue, the internal components looked pretty good at first glance. This gave us the confidence to begin stripping down the entire engine. We are going to have to remove, assess, and clean every internal component.

To begin removing internal components, we first needed to remove the remaining external components and then the crankcase front cover:

We unbolted and removed the governor and water pump. Both components will have to be assessed and rehabilitated or replaced, but we’ll work on those later. With those parts removed, we discovered decades of dirt and mud caked on the front of the engine:

We scraped away most of the mud, and then turned our attention to the fan drive pulley. The pulley is press-fitted very firmly onto the end of the crankshaft and must be removed in order to remove the crankcase front cover, which in turn must be removed in order to remove the crankshaft and the other internal components. 

Upon closer examination of the pulley, we realized that at some point two pieces of it had been broken off and had been crudely welded back on:

We are fairly certain that we know how this damage occurred. In yet another example of poor workmanship on this tractor, somebody previously tried to remove this pulley with a two-jaw puller. This caused the large amount of force required to remove the pulley to be applied to only the two places where the jaws attach, which lead to the pulley breaking in those places. This damage does raise a new question that we will look for an answer to as we tear down the engine - why did the pulley need to be removed in the first place?    

The correct way to remove this pulley is to put a collar behind the pulley and exert pulling force on the collar, thus distributing the force equally across the back of the pulley. Unfortunately we didn’t have such a collar and couldn’t find one at a reasonable price that was big enough to fit this pulley, so we decided to construct our own tool. 

The tool consists of two plates of steel connected by threaded rods, and uses a bottle jack to provide the force. You can see that one of the plates has a cutout so that it can serve as a collar behind the pulley:

The picture below shows our tool in place on the pulley. The red hydraulic bottle jack is braced between the rear metal plate and a shaft that goes through the center of the pulley and presses against the crankshaft. Thus, as force expands the jack it pushes against the rear plate, which then pulls on the plate behind the pulley, separating the pulley from the crankshaft.

To remove the pulley, we heated t and then expanded the jack.

A lot of force was required, but finally the pulley budged and we were able to to remove it.

When we got a good look at the back side of the pulley (as seen above) we noticed that a number of holes had been drilled into it. We suspect that this was done to balance the pulley after it was repaired. We will need to check its balance before deciding whether we want to re-use this pulley or get a replacement.

With the pulley removed, the crankcase front cover was fully visible and nothing now stands in the way of opening it up.

Next time we will remove the cover and see what lies beneath!

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FBN Network

Apr 02, 2020