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A field report and question


Bret4207

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Howdy friends. Thought I'd pass along a report on my Simplicity/Allis Chalmers fleet. Middle son blew up the engine in the 3410 Landlord last fall. Can't go less than full throttle sweeping the lawn I guess. So the Briggs needs a rebuild and piston. Here's the question- I have a Sovereign parts machine with a 12 HP Briggs and hydraulic lift. Is there any reason not to transplant the larger engine into the Landlord? The Sovereign has a front PTO shaft, but everything else appears the same. The 312 Allis is doing great. The charging system and BGB were repaired last years with help from this site and Sandy Lake. This spring I put 4 new bearings in the mower deck and patched some weak spots. I'll be keeping an eye out for a new deck as this one is getting bad. I also found out why we kept losing belts and having the mower deck stop in heavy grass. The idler pulleys were mounted in the wrong holes. I found the lower holes while checking the front end and after switching the position and adjusting things it works great. I really need an Op manual for my implements, but they don;t seem to be on the download listing. I decided to try the tiller and, much to my surprise, I was able to find all the parts in the buckets of spares and had it on and tilling in half an hour! Does a fair job on my heavy clay, but it'll never match my Gravely for sheer quality. Of course the tiller is a sit down chore and it's much less tiring so the trade off works for me. It might take 3 passes, but it works. I also used the moldboard plow. As a guy who has done a fair amount of real plowing I have to say I was impressed. I had the mower deck on at the time and rather than take it off I used a strap to hold it up while I lowered the plow. Not the right way to do things, but it worked. All I was doing was laying off rows for potatoes and it worked great. I have no doubt with some adjusting and scouring the moldboard I could do a fair job plowing with the little guy. Next on the list is using the hillers when the potatoes get bigger. We'll have to see how that goes. If the mower deck was less of a chore to get on and off it'd be a no brainer to use them. BTW- there's a Montgomery Wards tractor in out local Craigslist. Sure looks like a Simplicity. Didn't Simplicity make the big MW garden tractors? I tried Simple Tractors but the site has a virus infection and good ol' AVG blocks it as soon as I try to get on.
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I was very interested to read about your tilling experience with your 312. Any other hints? What gear.. what speed.. etc.. Im gearing up my 310 for the same... probably get to it this weekend... wish me luck! Never had a tiller for the 310 before. BTW, I saw a homelite deck on the auction site yesterday, (albeit blue) that would fit your tractor. BTW, what do you think the cause of your BGB failure was? Did you fix/rebuild it or swap it? You should be able to get all the manuals here: http://www.simpletractors.com/club2/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=100750 I saw that MW tractor... your arent that far from me.. : )
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I went in 1st gear with the varidrive at the lowest setting. The engine was just above an idle and it worked great.
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I have the same AVG thing going on. I just click through it and continue on. There was a thread not to long ago on here about it.
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Okay, didn't mean to bend noses about the virus warning, sorry. Here's the Wards. Looks like a FDT to me. Opinons? http://watertown.craigslist.org/grd/1150015653.html
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quote:
Originally posted by Bret4207
Okay, didn't mean to bend noses about the virus warning, sorry. Here's the Wards. Looks like a FDT to me. Opinons? http://watertown.craigslist.org/grd/1150015653.html
That Wards was made by Gilson, not Simplicity.
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quote:
Originally posted by MPH
Sears did sell the PowerMax for a year or two. They were blue and I think called the Sears 20.
Close Marty, they were the older version of the 9020, they were Blue and White, were sold by Montgomery Wards and called the Twin-Twenty. It took me several years to find one and it's in way less than decent shape. I'm sure it will take me several more years to get it looking like what I want it to. Bret, it shouldn't hurt anything to swap the engines. As for the shaft, both tractors have this shaft, it's just hidden inside the grill on the newer large frame tractors.
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Gilson? Rats! Nice old tractor, but not quite up to Simplicity/Wheel Horse/Gravely quality. Thanks for the info on the engines. I just may do this. More power don'tcha know!:D
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I had a Wards tractor made by Gilson many years ago, 16 hp single briggs. It was a good machine. Had deck, snowblower, tiller, push blade, duel rear ag style tires, rear mounted weight box. Bought the whole thing for 1600 bucks and used it for over 10 years, till I moved to town. The tiller on that one was fantastic. Oh yes, it had a four speed tranny with vari-drive. Again, good machine. Steve
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I switched from AVG to Avast! antivirus and the problems went away. The thing the AVG pops up are ghost holes in script left from a previous infection but it interprets as a virus. Avast diferentiates this and you can tell it to not worry about it. Not to mention it takes way less system resources(for those of us who have vintage computers too):p
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