My husband's 880 Oliver project

Two or Three months ago, Cliff brought home a parts tractor, an 880 Oliver built in 1958; it had been sitting outside for ages.  His reason for buying it was this:  He's never restored or worked on an 880, he always thought it was a good-looking style of tractor, and he was looking for a project.  When he bought this one, he already had picked out the one he was going to use the parts on:  It was in good shape except for one thing:  It won't go in reverse, or when it does, it's terribly noisy.  He thinks there's a bearing out somewhere.  He was in hopes that he could use the rear end of this old junker to fix the one he intended to buy.

Here it is from the side.

Cliff's curiosity got the best of him.  The more he walked around this pile of junk, the more he wondered if it could be fixed.  When you mess with an old tractor that's set in a fence-row for years, there is always a problem with fuel tanks.  He didn't even try to use the fuel lines of the tractor because he knew it would be a mess.  So in order to try and start the beast, he bypassed the fuel line and used a gasoline can to feed gas into it.

Then he had to work on the choke, which of course has a lot to do with getting gas where it needs to be.

It would have cost $10 to $12 to replace the choke, but poor people have poor ways, as the saying goes.  So my husband worked on the old, frozen-up choke for half a day and got it working.  He calls that "piddling".  

Next, the tank had to be cleaned out; it was full of rust and who knows what else.  He has a camera with a light on it that he can put inside the tank and see what's down there. 

Unfortunately, Cliff's solution that has worked on many tractor fuel tanks did not work on this one.  So he had to take it to a radiator repair shop and pay a guy $90 to boil it out and seal it.  Then he tried out the tractor.  It wasn't running right, but it was running!

The seat on the tractor was totally ruined, but Cliff had a universal replacement seat laying around and fitted it for the 880.  Unfortunately, it was a little wide for the tractor.  Once he installed it, he had no way to get up there and sit on it.  In the foreground is a chop saw and a cutoff saw, both for metal.

Since he couldn't get up to the seat any other way, he had to use a ladder when he was working on it.

Here is the seat, mounted.  There's precious little room for a big guy to get on it because the fenders are in the way.

This is how he would have had to climb aboard the Old Oliver, but there wasn't enough room for him to squeeze through.

Now THIS is the finished fat-man step.

Next, a tuneup.

He cut the plug wires to size.

The exhaust manifold had no gaskets on it for years, so the end of the manifold had deteriorated badly.  Thank God for JB Weld!

He put a strip of sandpaper on the bottom of the level you see in the picture.  The manifold has to be flat all the way across to seal up the exhaust and intake, and he used that sandpaper to sand the JB Weld level.

Meet the quality control cat, supervising the project.

There is more to the story, because the Oliver's governor is trashed.  Cliff has called a couple of places looking for one but hasn't found one yet.  So stay tuned.  It may be awhile.