The Bobcat M500 back together

A few weeks ago, I wrote about working on my Bobcat M500. I had to take it apart in order to pull the engine so I could get the starter off of it. The starter was in need of repair – the brushes were completely worn out. I also had Jack (the local guy who works on starters) check the generator, and it tested out fine, thankfully. That meant that something else was causing it not to keep the battery charged.

While I had the Bobcat taken apart, I cleaned it a bit. It had quite a bit of grease and grime on it. It probably could’ve used a good power washing, but since I didn’t have access to a power washer, I used soapy water, a brush, and a rag. I also purchased some cans of cheap spray paint and gave it a new coat of paint. It was nothing fancy, just something to cover up some of the scratches and places where the metal was bare.

While I had the engine out, I discovered it needed new head gaskets. Amazingly, new ones are still available – Kohler doesn’t support the engine (K662) anymore, but they apparently still have some engines that use the same head gaskets.

After getting the new gaskets installed and the repair starter on it, I completely rewired things. I welded a corner of the operator’s cage which had come apart (it’s home-made by a previous owner) and gave it a new coat of black paint. I also painted the wheels and rear weight red.

Putting it back together went well. I had to replace a few bolts that hold things together. Of course, when I had the engine back in and before I had all the other things put back, I checked to make sure it would start and run okay. It did.

After getting it all back together, I had to run it and check things out. It worked well, but I noticed the batter wasn’t charging. I suspected the voltage regulator, and, when I tested it, it was clear that it wasn’t working (it regulates the voltage from the generator for charging the battery – alternators have built-in voltage regulators). So, I ordered a new one, and when I arrived I put it on. it solved the problem.

The only other problem I had was that the air filter needs replaced. I still have to find one or figure out a way to put new filter material in/on the current one.

Since I got it back together a couple of weeks ago, I’ve used it around here some, and it is quite handy. I’ve moved compost and have loaded some manure and bedding into the truck to haul it to a compost pile. The only complaint I have about it besides that it’s almost underpowered (it is amazingly strong for its size and small engine) is that it drinks gas at an alarming rate. These old Kohler engines aren’t known for being fuel efficient.

Yesterday, I hauled the Bobcat to the stock yard in town. The company that owned the stock yard went bankrupt. So, it’s closed. Anyway, before it closed, the guy who ran the place had the power company tree trimmers dump several loads of wood chips for him to use in their back lots instead of rock (wood chips would keep the cows out of the mud). I liked this idea (it was my idea), because I intended to get the wood chips and manure later on.

However, since the place closed, the pile of wood chips has just sat there looking forlorn and lonely. When I asked, I was told that I might as well get the wood chips if I wanted them. So, I used the Bobcat to load them on my truck and bring them home. I used my smaller truck and trailer to haul the Bobcat, and then after bringing home a small truck load of manure/bedding (all that I hadn’t already gotten – I left it in case anyone else wanted it, but it was still there after four months), I drove my big truck back. I loaded and hauled six loads with the big truck, approximately 72 cubic yards of wood chips.

They’re all piled nice and neat here on the farm, now. It’s very satisfying to push things into a nine foot tall pile for some reason. We’ll use wood chips for garden walkways and to mulch around trees. When I get some more manure, it can be mixed with them. If they’re just left to break down, they’ll make some excellent compost on their own.

First load with the new truck!

We spent a few days with Forerunner and his family, arriving home Tuesday evening after a GREAT visit. Yesterday, I had a few things to work on, but the urge to haul compost material was strong upon me. Have you noticed that composting has become ‘important’ to me? (We won’t call it an obsession – maybe a passion, though.) So, I acquired the necessary materials to build a tailgate for the new truck. Construction of said tailgate began immediately and was finished (except for paint) this morning. Ain't she a beauty?



As soon as I finished the tailgate and checked the rear end shifter on the truck, I set off to town in hopes of bringing home a nice load of material from the sale barn. I was not disappointed.



Unloading was easy.





Empty in a matter of minutes (except for the 2x6 Malchiah threw in the back after removing it from the material -- whatta boy!).



I was very pleased with the amount -- at least twice as much as I can haul with my other truck and trailer, and I haven't even built the side boards yet.



There's one more load to haul after lunch, but I'm wishing there was more. . .

Increasing my hauling capacity

I brought home another piece of equipment this morning. I’ve acquired several things to make my composting endeavors more efficient. With my F250 and trailer, I’ve been able to haul about 5 tons of material per trip. Now, I expect I should be able to haul 10 to 12 tons per trip with my new truck:



It’s not brand new, of course. It’s a 1981 Chevrolet 2-ton truck with a 16 foot dump bed. I have to do a few things to it, like put on different tires (I have a source for some good used ones), build some extensions to raise the height of the sides, and construct a tail gate. I’m itching to put it to use.

Carbon material

Earlier in the week, I stopped and spoke with an Amish man who has a small sawmill at his dairy, inquiring about getting saw dust from him. He was happy to continue letting the gentleman who cleans up for him take care of it. When I got home, Anne said she had good news: a friend had dropped by to chat for a while, and she said that we could get saw dust at a small saw mill in Marrowbone. Well, I was busy working on a project Tuesday and Wednesday, so I couldn't get to the mill to see about acquiring saw dust until today.

This mill is only 10 miles away mostly across country roads. The guy in the loader said that I could help myself to the saw dust and take all I wanted, when I asked him about it. He didn't offer to load it, and I didn't ask him. As I show up for loads regularly, he may be more willing to load, but I'm not afraid of manual labor (working a shovel). Thankfully, I had taken the scoop shovel. I was able to back the truck right up to the pile to load it which didn't take long.
After unloading here at home, we (my good friend Danny was with me) hooked up the trailer and headed for another load.

 
The pile of sawdust is gorgeous. Apparently, when the pile gets too high, the push the saw dust back away from the auger that unloads it.

 

There's another pile of chipped bark from their debarking machine. We loaded the trailer with this material and then filled the truck with saw dust.

 
I took another photo with the trailer loaded. We used pitch forks for loading this material, and that worked pretty well.

 
Here’s a photo of the truck loaded with saw dust. We covered the load with the tarp so that not too much of it would blow away. Notice the dark material in the background: that's where they have pushed the saw dust and chipped bark in the past and let it sit. I'll have to ask about acquiring some of that good looking stuff, too. . .

When we got home, it was time to employ the "burrito-method" of unloading to get the material off of the trailer. It unloaded great.

 
The trailer load dumped right on top of the first load of saw dust.

 
Here's the carbon material we hauled today in two trips.

In the morning, I'm heading in the opposite direction to haul home some more material from the sale barn. They cleaned out some of the back lots today, and I want to get some of that back here. If that hauling goes well, I'll haul three or four loads of carbon material in the afternoon. Then, this Sunday, after a nice rest on the 7th day, I'll build a beautiful compost pile.

I bought a new tractor (as I mentioned in my previous post). Here is a photo of it:

 
It’s a 1976 Case 990 with a loader. The loader has been well used, broken, and repaired, but it’ll work for my purposes. It’s like having 100 men with shovels and pitchforks ready and willing to work for me, something not to be taken for granted. It's a great tool.

I’m thrilled about having a source for carbon material. It’s one more step toward extreme composting!

Truck repairs (the do it myself kind)

There’s a beautiful pile of manure and bedding at the sale barn. I’ve eyed it with great longing and hope to bring much of it home. I stopped by this morning to talk to the guy in charge to see if he’ll be in tomorrow. Nope, he won’t. He’s the one driving the skid loader who loads my truck. Unless, I come up with another option, I’ll have to wait until Friday to haul. I would haul my “new” Bobcat down there and use it to load, but I’m not sure I trust it well enough yet. I’ve still got to make a few more adjustments.

Yesterday, I tried out a couple different methods of unloading my trailer, hoping to be able to haul more at a time without adding a lot of extra time or effort to the process. I think I’ve got a pretty good method for unloading the trailer which I’ll share in another post soon. With the truck and trailer, I ought to be able to haul four or five tons of material per trip.

This afternoon as I was adjusting the rear brakes on my truck, I noticed that the passenger side wheel had some movement it shouldn’t have. I figured bearings. Even if it was only the nut having loosened, I thought it best to put new bearings in that wheel. I had noticed a vibration when driving the truck at highway speed and had changed the rear U-joint last week. That helped but didn’t solve the problem. Probably was the bearings. Thankfully, the local auto parts place had the bearings in stock. So, after a quick trip to town, I was ready to change the wheel bearings.

Only there was a problem. I didn’t have a wrench or socket to fit the nut that holds the wheel on. I thought that the tool I had for doing the front wheels, which I did a few months ago, would fit. Nope, I was wrong. These nuts actually take a 2-9/16” (or thereabouts) socket. The auto parts place didn’t have one (I called – they don’t stock it). What to do? Get creative.

I quickly discerned that a screw driver and hammer wouldn’t work. Scrounging around in the garage, I found part of an old driveshaft, what remained after a previous project (I don’t remember exactly what right now). It happened to be about the right diameter, and after a couple minutes with the bench grinder and a few hammer blows, I had a socket to fit the wheel nuts. A large pipe wrench worked for turning loosening and tightening.

So, the project was completed. It’s probably best to have this done before hauling more material. The extra weight puts more wear and tear and strain on the the truck and specifically the wheel bearings. The bearings weren’t completely worn out, but some pitting on the bearing races was visible (the bearings fit sit inside the races).

I’m not a mechanic by trade. There’s a lot about vehicles that I don’t understand. Usually, if I can see how a thing goes together and works and if I can look up some directions online, I can do it. This was a straight forward project, much easier than changing the front wheel bearings and axle U-joints which I did a few months ago. That project took about three days. Earlier this week, I put in new spark plugs and wires and new vacuum hoses. That was simple.

Oh, on a different note, Regina received the maple syrup fine and enjoyed it on some fresh biscuits! She said, “It is yummy!”

Our new pond (part 4)

I worked the two full days in order to add height to the dam. The most tiring part was associated with the stress of driving my truck, my tractor, and a backhoe on top of the dam. I especially don't like when the backhoe leans to the side and when I got it into some of the soft topsoil on the back slope. I decided I didn't need it up there.

The method that seemed to work well for me was to load clay into my truck from a couple different places in the floor of the pond. Then, I drove this onto the dam and dumped it where I wanted it, spreading it out some as I dumped. After several loads, I switched to the tractor and blade to move the material where I wanted it and to pack it some more (the truck tires were doing a pretty good job of packing).

After getting enough clay built up, I took a few loads of top soil to put on top and spread that around. It went fairly well.

 
This photo shows the outcome of my efforts. I added enough material to put the top of the dam two feet above the primary spillway (the 12" culvert). This also allowed more freeboard above the emergency spillway, which is a good thing.

 
A little closer look. The section I built up looks darker because of the topsoil I added.
Digging clay and soil out of the pond bottom helped to add some more structure for fish. Structure is basically variation in depth, especially differences within a short distance There is a fair bit of variation on the bottom.

 
This is a view looking toward the dock from the dam. I was trying to show how the dock is on a ridge with drop offs on either side. There's also another elevation change going into the shallow end of the pond which is a result of digging out clay and top soil to raise the dam.

 
Looking a little to the left toward the shallow end. One of the things I wanted to do but haven’t done yet is to make a small beach area toward the house where I drove in and out of the pond hauling material.

 
This photo looks past the pond from below the dam toward some of my fields. Shortly after finishing the dam height project, I seeded the dam with fescue. At this point, I needed to finish the dock framework and then wait for rain to fill up the pond.

Our new pond (part 3)

I continued the excavation of the pond’s shallow end the next day. It takes time to move dirt. I hauled a few loads of top soil up the hill and dumped it in front of Dad’s house so he could move it onto a hillside he wanted to get some grass growing on. Most of the dirt I continued to dump in front of our new house in order to make the slope in front more gradual. The process involved digging out five or six full shovels of dirt, get out the backhoe and into the truck, drive the truck over and dump the dirt, park the truck near the backhoe, get out of the truck and into the backhoe, and then start again. This process was interrupted occasionally by the need to move the backhoe to another spot for digging. Still, it was a lot of up and down.

I was able to get a fair bit excavated in a couple of days. Then, because of a comment on an online forum where I shared information about our pond construction, I realized I needed to check the height of the dam. I used a level to try to sight the lines, and this worked fairly well. This method indicated that there were some low spots which needed raised.

So, I decided to rent a transit and check everything with a little more accuracy. With it I discovered that the dam was lower than I wanted it to be. In fact, on one section its height was the same as the emergency spillway’s height. I decided that while I had the backhoe to use, it would be a good time to raise the height of the dam. I called and talked with the guy who did the excavation. He assured me that I would be able to do the job.

 

Raising the height of the dam was the next task to tackle. . .

Our new pond (part 2)

After the contractor left, I spent some time working on building a dock. I also used the grader blade on my tractor to take a little soil off of the shallow end. When I checked the water line on the shallow end of the pond, I realized I hadn't paid enough attention during construction. The slope and depth on a couple of the edges for several feet were not what I wanted. Just looking at it, I didn't realize how shallow the water would be along the edge of the pond.

In the following photo you can see the shallow end and the beginning of my dock construction. At the edge of the smoothed area, the bottom drops down several feet. I'm placing the dock between the deep end of the pond and the shallow end. I thought this would be an ideal location. The four posts that are set in the photo are 6x6 eastern red cedar I milled. The foreground in the photo is the shallow end of the pond after I scraped it with the grader blade. I was only able to take off a few inches of soil – not enough to make an appreciable difference, though.



The next photo looks the other direction across the shallow end. The line I cut with the blade (on the right) denotes the approximate water level. As you can see, it was going to be quite shallow.



Here’s a view of the dock construction after I set all of the posts:





The photo above shows the dock posts and the first water in the pond.

In order to deepen the pond on the shallow end, I borrowed a friend’s backhoe again. I am deeply grateful to Mike for letting me use his machine so much.



As I removed dirt with the backhoe, I put it i the back of my 1979 F250 and moved it to the slope in front of our new house.



The photo above shows the dump bed in action, a feature that makes this truck very handy. I can load up to 2 tons of material in it. That only takes 6 or 7 shovels full of dirt with the backhoe.



The photo above shows how much dirt I moved in the first afternoon and put in front of the house. It was a good opportunity to accomplish two things: deepen the shallow end of the pond and feather out the slope in front of the house.



This is a view of what I was able to get done in the first afternoon with the backhoe. I dug it down about 2.5 feet. At this point I still needed to extend the excavation out toward the middle, of course. I left a ridge under the dock dividing the deep end from the shallow end in the hope that the fish will like it that way.



This view shows the pool of water from the rain we received earlier that week. You can also see that although I got down to clay in one part of this excavation (the reddish/orange colored dirt), I was still digging out top soil. I didn’t remove all of it. I did end up digging deeper and removing a bit of the clay, though. More about that later. . .

Ice in Kentucky

In my last post I mentioned that Anne and I were heading to Michigan to deliver a vehicle. Well, we sold the Suburban to a really nice individual who lives near Flint, Michigan. It was a 550 mile trip there (and about the same coming back). We put our car on a U-Haul trailer so that we could drive it home. We left on Thursday, January 29, 2009, the day after the major winter storm moved on east. We were going to leave on Wednesday, but we were concerned about the snow and ice and how they were affecting road conditions.

You may have heard about how many people in Kentucky were affected by this storm. In our neck of the woods, it didn’t cause any problems. However, we didn’t drive very far after we left before we saw evidence of much greater ice accumulation. Driving north on I-65, there was lots of ice all the way from Cave City, KY, where we got on the interstate, to about Columbus, Indiana. From that point on, there was plenty of snow. The roads were fine, though.

We took a few photos as we were driving north on that Thursday, and then we took some more on our return trip on Friday. The ice was still hanging tenaciously to the trees Friday afternoon (January 30, 2009). I thought I’d share a few of our photos so you can see some of what it looked like along the interstate as we traveled. The first two were taken in Kentucky as we were headed north on Thursday morning. We took several others on the following afternoon, mostly in Kentucky with a few in Indiana a little north of Louisville. I don’t remember exactly where the ones I’ve shared below were taken, except that they were along I-65 (I think these were all in KY).

What’s up?

Let’s see if I can meet my goal of five posts this week. I let down on the job last week with no good excuse. I just didn’t seem motivated to post. I could’ve found the time, I suppose. Part of the deal may be partially due to a bit of stress. What do I have to stress about? Nothing really, as long as I keep things in perspective: God’s in charge, giving me nothing to worry about.

As I mentioned previously, we live without debt. It’s been a way of life for the last ten years or so. We’ve been without a mortgage for nearly six years now. I’m currently in a situation that is akin to debt in my mind, and I don’t like it.

 

In August 2004, we bought a 1996 Chevrolet Suburban that had previously belonged to the National Forestry Service. I purchased it from a dealer off of Ebay who had bought it at an auction. We wanted an all-around vehicle that would serve our family and farm needs. This 3/4-ton Suburban did the job. Until gas prices escalated out of control, the pitiful gas mileage the big block V-8 in it achieved wasn’t a problem. Based upon the amount of miles we annually put on a vehicle, it wouldn’t have saved us anything to have another vehicle on which to pay taxes, registration, and insurance. However, last summer we were offered a good deal on a one-owner car in which all six of us could fit. The extra expenses associated with a second vehicle could be and have been met from what we’ve been able to save in gas.

So, now we don’t need a Suburban for the farm. In fact, a pickup truck would be more convenient. I began contemplating what I really desired and needed from a farm truck, and then I began looking to determine what it might cost. My idea was to sell the Suburban to pay for the truck. But, I didn’t want to be without a farm vehicle in the meantime. It’s convenient to be able to haul firewood and other things when needed or desired.

Then, a truck came up in my Ebay searches that met my criteria: four wheel drive, at least 3/4- ton, dependable, with a flat-bed dump. This truck was a 1979 F250. My dad offered to buy it for me, and after I sold the Suburban, I would buy it from him. Actually, he originally offered to loan me the money, but I felt better changing the terms, even if it really is only semantically different. So, we brought the truck home on January 1, 2009. Since then, I’ve been trying to sell the Suburban. Guess what? It’s not worth as much as I thought, or, rather, people aren’t willing to pay as much as it’s worth.

My stress has been because of the “debt” I feel I am in to my dad. I have to pay him for the truck. Until I do, it’s hanging over me. It’s been affecting me, kind of hanging there low-key. It’s been a good reminder about being in debt, though. For that I’m actually thankful.

The story continues. I listed the Suburban on Craigslist. One guy was interested. He looked at it, but wanted to get it painted. While he was getting an estimate, I listed it on Ebay. Then, it sold the next day for the Buy-it-Now price. The guy who bought it lives in Michigan. Great guy. I’ve talked to him on the phone several times, and I really like him. So, we made arrangements to meet him part way so that he didn’t have to drive the whole 600 miles to get it. He ended up driving nearly 500 miles. The only problem was that on the way to meet him, the Suburban began having some problems its never had before, something computer-related. I couldn’t meet him, and even if I could, he couldn’t drive it home acting the way it was.

So, I called him on his friend’s cell phone to let him know. They decided to head back to Michigan. He couldn’t take the Suburban. It was no longer sold. After it sat at a truck stop for a while, we drove it home with no more problems. I guess I wasn’t supposed to sell it that day. I’m having it checked out in the morning, though, because if it’s fixed and working properly, he’ll still buy it. In the meantime, I still have a truck to buy from my dad.

 

P.S. I took this photo the evening of January 9, 2008.