almost had the forty-five running! !!!

For this story, we'll back up to 2011 to get started, because that's when I bought this motor grader. I bought from a guy about 150 miles from home. He had bought it from a neighboring city. Story was that the city had quit using it a few years prior, because the blower had locked up, so all it did was roll smoke, and had no power. Sat in the city yard long enough for young (or maybe old) vandals to knock every window out of the cab. Then this fella bought it with the intention of turning it into a pull type grader. After he got it home, he decided he didn't have the heart to cut it apart, and decided he should sell it to someone who would resurrect it, and I assume, make a handsome profit off it. That's where I came into the picture. I bought it, some time in the summer of 2011.
    I had went down and looked at it one night, and decided a couple days later to take it, so I sent him a check for it. He agreed to pull the blower off of it for me, and got it to Bismarck for me where I picked it up (way closer to home), and I had a buddy rebuild it. Time went by, then in the fall of 2012, me and this buddy loaded up the now rebuilt blower, and headed down to get the machine home. Had the semi and trailer. Also had batteries, and all of the fixings for an oil change. We got the blower put back on, oil changed, and batteries installed. Ready to fire it up, and load er on the trailer. ...but all we could get is a clunk out of the starter. Thought pull starting it would work. All we could do with that was slide the tires. Came to the conclusion that the engine had seized up from sitting, even though the exhaust had been covered. So we pushed it onto the trailer, I got it home and pulled it off the trailer, and there it sat until a couple days ago.
    An old time mechanic friend of mine had been telling me for a few years (guess I read it here on the forum, too), that pulling the starter, and prying on a flywheel tooth is a good option for freeing up a stuck engine. My son has been bugging me for a few years now, that we should try that on the grader, and I kind of drug my feet on it. I was gone the other day for a few hours, and when I got home, my son had the starter off of it, and didn't ask, but TOLD me that we were going to try to free up the engine with a pry bar. So we did. The engine rolled over, as if it never had been locked up! Looking back now, I don't think it ever was.
    Having forgotten about it being 24 volts, we decided to hook a jumper from the pickup to the starter (starter still off machine) to see if the starter even worked. We could make the starter spin, but the drive wouldn't pop out. We decided to take the starter over to the electric shop the next day, because the boy was going that way anyhow. Well, sometime in the night, it dawns on me that this is a 24 volt starter, and we were only testing it with 12 volts. I told the boy to leave the starter at home, and I was sure that when we would put 24 volts to it, it would work.
    It still didn't work even with 24 volts, so it still has to go to the shop. Meanwhile, yesterday we decided to try pull starting it, but only after making sure we knew where hi gear was. We only had partial success. Twice, we got it to turn over enough to smoke, but then it would pop out of gear before it would start. And with a couple gears being out, the other gears we tried would do nothing but slide the tires. So hopefully, when the starter gets fixed, I'll have some good news to report. I am very optimistic about it now. Thanks for listening! Darrel

Darrel

Slight correction on the gears.  1st is left and back then centre to right then forward for 2nd and back for 3rd.

The original starter has a Dyer drive to the pinion - you might need a vintage auto electrician.  IIRC they don't retract the pinion with the solenoid but need the engine to fire to spin it out.

A later M40 or 42 will interchange.

If your pump is worn starting might be problematical.

A "don't ask me why" on ours.  If you give it a squirt of ether BEFORE you start the engine turning it will usually not start with any amount.  If you give the engine a few turns before the squirt it usually will and on only a little squirt.

We set the injectors up on a tester to book pressures and it needed ether cold or hot. 
Diesel tech son has found that by fractionally backing the pressures off that it now only needs the squirt cold.  The score card of adjustments is scratched on the air cleaner.

When you get to the gearbox check for wear on the selector forks.  Ours has a 2nd gear problem from this.  The dog clutch for second (and presumably the rest)  have every second spline long - to do with selection?  Our fork wore till it was only engaging on these long splines and started to pop out.  The fork is only clamped to the selector rod.  So I found out that I could adjust it to get full 2nd engagement before the main lever ran out of travel space where it hit the frame - which hasn't entirely fixed things as yet.   That gives me space to get full 3rd engagement by forcing past the detent ball back towards the seat - held with a handy wire so far.

It looks like the fork might come out through the gearbox side plate without a major gearbox job but I haven't bitten that as yet.

Best of luck with it.

Dave

Early ones didn't have a solenoid.  The later ones did.  Ours came with a solenoid that had been set up with a hand lever to make it contact.  I took it apart and resoldered the connections and it now works as it should.

shameless (ne) wrote: and still.....no pics! PffffT!

some of us ain't retired, and still gots to get the real work done before we can mess around with the stuff that "doesn't pay the bills." Maybe when you was road tripping, you could have just came on up here and lent me a hand. Darrel

worked on it some more today. Got the starter back in. Put two 12 volt batteries in it , hooked up in series to get 24 volts. Cranked er over; initially with limited success. Then after some "figuring things out", and a little fuel line bleeding, we had er smoking and wanting to start, but then the batteries were getting too weak to do much any more. And with it being a 24 volt ordeal, jump starting is not an option, so we pulled the batteries back out, and got em charging again . I know that four big six volt batteries hooked in a series would be the way to go, but I want to be a little more sure of this machines functionality before I shell out that kind of money. I'll see what tomorrow brings, and report any progress. Darrel

whew....watch out ya'll....he's gittin grumpy! i'll gits up there someday and you better have the coffee on in the shop!

loud and clear! lol....ya old.....

Shameless

There are days when AC 45's do this to you!  From experience.

lol...thanks Ian....i'll try to remember that!