Well, folks, no “Vroom-vroom” to report today… Not even a “click-whirrrrrrr”… Just a “click”… Well, not even that…
Bolted out of bed at 7:00 this morning, had my coffee and checked the forum, ate a bit of breakfast, then LTBabe woke up so I got HER dressed and eating, made LTGal her morning coffee then headed out to get to work on Wally. Had to segue into some garage cleaning because I had misplaced a piece of the throttle linkage for Wally. Back out and I put the PTO-side guard on, then went to set up the throttle linkage, then took the guide off, because you can’t get the little fiddly bits of linkage in place with that guard on. After some partial disassembly, I got the throttle and choke linkages set up… Like so!
Its been really nice having Ernie handy so that I could run over and check what things are SUPPOSED to look like. That was really helpful for getting all the tins back on in the right places. Hooked up the generator, got the starter pulley on to the flywheel, put the PTO-side guard back on, decided I wasn’t going to put the PTO safety switch back on just yet because it occurred to me I’m going to need to pull the guard off AGAIN when I finally get around to putting the hydro pump on… And I’ll probably need to unbolt the whole engine again when I go to put the belt from the PTO to the mule drive on… DOH! Oh well, I focussed back on getting things hooked up… Got to the point where I had dropped a litre of oil in and was ready to drop the spark plug on… DOH, gotta go buy more oil, ‘cuz 2.5 pints (or whatever it calls for in the tech manual) is MORE than 1 litre. Oil level was only up to half way between add and full on the stick. I’d feel better with more… AND I needed a new spark plug…
So off to Canadian Tire… Well, they DID have the spark plug, but I wanted to stay with straight 30Weight oil for the first runup of Wally, and they didn’t have that. So back at home and I continue doing a few –
DOH – our day got interrupted at noon by a trip to the Medical Clinic for stitches! Fortunately, NOT for ME (whew!)… Unfortunately, for Littletractorgal! Her cleanup project in the hallway had spiraled out of control, it went from just cleaning up the greasy hand prints on the door trim to scraping the paint off because cleaning it started removing the paint to pulling the trim off because the paint was so bad it needed to be stripped to banging the nails out of the trim pieces to DOH! Slicing her finger open on what was probably a chunk of lead-based paint… So, LTBabe and I rushed her to the Medical Clinic, then picked her up after about an hour, then grabbed lunch at A&W, stopped at Home Depot to get NEW trim rather than continuing to use the TRIM OF DEATH AND MAYHEM, drop LTBabe off at the grandparents for a while, then back home and setting up the tables in he garage for painting and firing up the chop saw for cutting trim then
BACK to regularly scheduled tractors at about 3:00… Pulled the helper spring off Ernie (DANG I’m impressed with it! I’ll have to take some more pictures of it) then decided if I was REALLY going to get Wally going, I’d need a touch more 30wt oil and some 1/4″ carriage bolts and wingnuts for the battery terminals (I live in fear of having to try to get the socket wrench onto the positive terminal to get things disconnected if somehow something goes wrong and I wind up letting out the magic smoke or causing a tractor-bbq…). Sure, I should be able to get that at the CO-OP… Well, no. Can you believe it, they’re outta wing nuts! How can somebody be OUT of wing nuts? And 600 mils (about a pint, I guess) of 30wt oil is 6.99… Um, I don’t THINK so, Tim. Over to Princess Auto, well they’ve got 30wt oil b y the litre for 4.99, PLUS the ever-elusive gear oil, so I stock up… Plus some air tool oil, cuz I was out of light oil… But THEY don’t carry carriage bolts… So over to Peavy Mart, and I pick up 6 1/4″ by 1″ carriage bolts and some wing nuts by 4:55 pm, I’m the LAST person through the till… Rush home, hook up the generator light, connect the battery, make sure LTGal is handy with the phone for 911 if all heck breaks loose, then as the tech manual says, briefly connect the battery terminal of the regulator to the Armature post of the generator to polarize it proper- Did I get it on there? Nothing happened… Check my connection… nothing… NADA…. My battery is dead! 
By this time, its time to go pick up LTBabe from the grandparents, have supper, finish the trim, do the dishes, put the kid to bed, clean the kitchen, prep the carrots we got from Grandma, put the kid to bed AGAIN and here I sit typing this at nearly 11:00 pm… And still no running Wally…
Oh well, I made LOTS of progress.