Back to the workshop today. The cylinder fitted in very nicely with the new bearings and screws kindly supplied by Allett Mowers; the old cylinder bearing that I couldn’t get off the shaft had obviously posed a problem for somebody as the red paint had turned brown with the heat applied to get it moving, so a quick dose of grey primer and then Ford Sunburst Red over the top sorted that one out.
On Sunday I masked up the cutting edges of the bottom blade then gave the whole carrier assembly a coat of primer and Allett Green. This morning it was dry enough to handle, so I fitted that as well and adjusted it up using the four-point adjusters. In this machine the cylinder is bolted rigidly to the frame and adjustment is done by moving the bottom blade up to the cylinder; the advantage in this is that the cutting height remains constant as the bottom blade wears. If you bolt the bottom blade rigidly to the frame it does give a very strong structure but the height of cut gets lower as the bottom blade wears.
Anyway, enough of the sales patter (but it’s difficult not to after thirty years!). The concave had been repaired at some point in it’s life but the repair looked to be a good one. It’s also part of the machine’s history so I thought I’d just tidy up the frayed bottom edge to smarten it up a little; it fitted well with the three clips that fit over the bottom blade carrier and two 3/8″ BSF nuts on the top secured it in place.
The rest of the day was spent tidying up loose ends such as attaching the hinges to the lid, the catches on the back of the lid and touching up heads of bolts that needed a coat of green paint. I’ve even gone to the trouble to wash the stays for the lid- these are made from lengths of recoil rope that loop through parts of the framework and stop the lid from going too far and breaking. It would have been easier to use some new rope, but there wasn’t much wrong with the originals and I’ve tried to keep as much of the original machine as I can with this rebuild.
Tomorrow will come the big move outside so that I can turn it around and work on the drive chains. I wish I had the luxury of a large workshop again!
