Rebuilding Johnny

Saturday morning I was all psyched up to take L and N for a ride on the garden tractor.  Sure, the weather was cold and it was snow flurrying yet again outside, but a quick trip down the street and back wouldn't hurt.  I had L sitting on my lap, fired up Johnny, and the dipstick popped out.  The previous owner had told me the dipstick had a tendency to pop out, and had rigged up a wire to hold it in place.  So, I put the wire on, tried it again, and same thing.  I had seen on the JD garden tractor website that a bad dipstick and a plugged breather could cause that.  The dipstick obviously had some issues, but I thought I would take a quick look at the breather too.  Just getting to the breather required removing the hood, grill and carburetor.  OK, maybe not so "quick" of a look.  I opened up the breather and wouldn't you know it, there was a gasket in there that tore when I opened it up; two of them actually.  Of course by this time it was after noon when the small engine repair shop was closed.  A new gasket would have to wait until Monday at least.

So while the tractor was laid up, I thought I would tackle Johnny's leaky rear axle seal.  Again, I'd read some descriptions of the repair procedure online, so I was all geared up to tackle it.  To make a long story short, although replacing the seal might be "easy", I could not get to it because some previous owner had installed a pulley backwards.  To get said pulley off, I had to take the entire rear axle out of the tractor.  This issue also explained why the previous owner gave me some brand new belts for Johnny.  With that pulley on backwards, you can't get the belt off to replace it.  Once I had the rear axle out, I had the option of repairing it, or installing the spare I got with Johnny.  Looking over the two, the spare looks like the better one.  I won't know for sure until I run it.  At the very least, it will give me something to get by while I repair the original one.

I definitely spent more time working on Johnny this weekend than I anticipated.  Considering the weather, it wasn't a bad way to spend some time this weekend.  As usual the boys enjoyed spending some time in the garage.  L loves "helping" while I work on things.  He diligently picked up any wrench he could find and brought it to me.  He also thinks that any time I am laying on the ground it is time to roughhouse, and will jump on me even if I'm half under a tractor.  N doesn't have as much attention for the non-functional tractors, but has turned into quite a speed demon on the pedal tractor.  L climbed in a stroller and N chased he and I around on the pedal tractor, and had a hard time staying ahead of him.  It will be interesting to see how he does on his bike this spring.