Howard junior Resto, My first rotary hoe resto.

[arikispencer]

Howdy all,

I like to take a lot of photos when I’m restoring something, but i have no way of displaying these for people to look at and i don’t know of anywhere else i could put it that it would be appreciated, so I’ve decided that as a new member i might just put my Howard juniors resto on here and if its well received and you’d all like me to i can add more restos as i do them, including the Colwood RA I’ve done.

I’ll start with how I come to get this Howard Junior.

One night after work I decided to go check out the ‘Show Room’ at one of the local scrapie, a mate of mine that I’d bought a little bit of stuff from in the past, i had a bit of a wander around and didn’t see anything that caught my eye, so i got back in the ute and was heading for the gate and looked over by the fence and hey presto what is that, i stopped got out had a look and went back the the scrapie to ask how much, $120, i had a fair bit of money back then, i didn’t have a house to pay off back then haha. But anyway i got the scrapie to fork it onto the ute for me and headed home full of smiles.

It was the first rotary hoe id ever bought and the only one in our collection, and we had absolutely no idea what it was, now almost 2 years down the track me and dad have close to 80 hoes and garden tractors between us, all starting from this one old machine.

Unfortunately for me i didn’t know what was missing from the machine when i got it but later found out i was missing the adapter between magneto and engine and also half the carbie.

Attached are a couple of photos as it was when I bought it, you will notice that it has the optional wide wheels. As you can see its not in bad condition and for the most part the decals a legible.

I will add more in replies
Thanks.
Dan

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[arikispencer]

Howdy again all i thought there might be no time like the present top add some more to this, i dare say i wont get it all added today though but over the next couple of weeks i might get it finished.

So i guess like with all things undergoing a resto is to pull it down, find any bad parts and acquire replacement parts or repair the bad parts, i was pretty lucky with this machine, the only problem parts i had was a few of the control rods, and since i was also missing half the carby and the maggie adapter i seemed logical to just go out and buy another Howard Junior with the parts on it i needed, but that’s sort of where it all got out of hand, because 2 weeks down the track we had another 2 Howard juniors and wed also done some research on the internet into Howard Rotary hoes and there age, and we thought they were pretty cool so we put an add in a newspaper looking for Howard Rotary hoes, The add was supposed to be in for 2 weeks but 3 months later it was still in and wed made several 1000+KM round trips to Melbourne and beyond and had around 30-40 rotary hoes, yes it got bad quick didn’t it :D.

Ill attach a couple of photos of the bad parts on the machine, The control rods, The Exhaust
so like i said not to bad over all aye.

Thanks
Dan

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[arikispencer]

Still got nothing better to do so ill add some more.

So i bought the machine on a Friday night after work and as i was having trouble with the Allis Chalmers B model seen in background of some of the photos i started on the rotary hoe on the Saturday morning.

So in the short space of half of the Saturday i had the machine stripped back as far as required to clean everything and to check all bearings and gears etc, all of which were still in really good condition.

I removed the motor and put it aside in the ‘To hard for now basket’
And then i got out the 4in angle grinder with the wire brush on it, one of the best tools for cleaning up parts and started cleaning up the rotary hoe and had it all the parts cleaned up by the end of the Saturday.

Pictures attached of course
This is probably all i’ll get up for today i may add a little more tomorrow or later in the week.
Thanks

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[arikispencer]

Howdy again all

It’s Christmas day and while i’m waiting for the roast chook and vegies to cook ill add some more to the thread.

Well i was impatient the weekend i got the Junior so the Sunday(day 2) seen some nice 2-pac undercoat/primer floating about to land on various pieces of the rotary hoe. But before i could crack open the can of paint i had to make a couple of the gaskets for the gear drive to the rotors and the gasket for the wheel drive cover. half the bolts holding these 2 gaurds on were rusted and broke or badly pitted etc so well over half of those bolts had to be replaced and there were quite a few bolts holding those 2 guards on, well over 30 in all if memory serves.

There was one small area down in behind the gearbox and wheel drive cover that it was quite difficult to get the paint to but there wasn’t much to be done about that. But by the end of the second day much of the rotary hoe was in nice primer white.

Please excuse any visible parts of other machines as i was also working on an Allis Chalmers b model, A Colwood RA and a Bentall Mark J mill at the time.

Theres quite a few parts to the Howard Junior Rotary hoe and in the end i had 3 four litre ice cream containers full of its bolts and other small pieces..

Thanks, Dan

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[arikispencer]

Howdy again,

I hit the Submit button then had a look through all my photos of this resto and realized that i didn’t have any pictures of the fuel tank or the back flap, this is because both pieces were 50ks away having the decals copied and stickers made for me. There was some writing on the back flap easily copied, on the end of the fuel tank was another easily copied decal, however on the side of the tank was one much like what was easily found on the internet however with a lot more scroll work in the design of it, and then on the top of the fuel tank was another sticker where only the outline could be made out. We could never find out what the sticker contained even after a great deal of searching on the internet and talking to many other Howard people, so as yet i don’t have one for it.

To have the stickers made cost me $70, Not to bad in my estimation but i don’t really have anything to compare it to.

I will attach Photos of the Stickers when i post the end result as appose to posting it now,

Thanks,
Dan

[arikispencer]

Coffee break, spent most of today over in the shed dismantling 2 of my Howard Bantams for resto. but time for a break and to add to this.

Well it was a while before i could do any more after priming all of those parts because i was waiting for those parts back from the sticker fella and i believe that in that time i picked up 3 landmasters and a colwood, the landmasters for free and $40 for the colwood from the same scrappy the Junior came from. So when i eventually got the parts back from the sticker fella dad had the colwood completely dismantled and most of the parts cleaned up ready for primer.

So as i painted parts i started reassembling the rotary hoe as i went so that i could still get the paint to all parts of the rotary hoe, mighty helpful those engine cranes aren’t they, mine gets lots of use, i think its more colors then the original red now to haha.

Each photo shows the hoe progressively put back together all nicely painted up.

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[arikispencer]

Now we’ll skip close to a year down the track when i finally decided i could be bothered to pull the engine out from under my Allis Chalmers D270 tractor, yes I’ve started it to, nasty having so many projects on the go.

But anyway the main reason i hadn’t gotten around to the Engine earlier is i hadn’t had much to do with em, I’m only 22 even now and i never used to be interested in mechanics at all but i have become quite proficient since the Rotary hoe and tractor thing started haha

Now i was a little slack with the work on the motor because i can find very few photos of the job,
I started out by stripping the motor right back, checking the bearings, the workings of the oil pump on the front of the engine etc, i found very few problems the main one being one of the push rod covers being cross threaded and so not sitting down as it should, i probably spent 3 hours getting that off with out breaking anything and got another push rod cover off one of the spares engines we’d picked up in the mean time.

Having checked and fixed all the problems i set to cleaning all the components of the engine up, it was quite greased up so i started with de-greaser and it stripped the original paint as well so that saved a fair amount of effort on my part.

I rebuilt the engine and made up a bracket for the engine so i could hang it from the engine crane to be able to get right around it while painting etc. Taped up all the nice shiny brass bits like the oil pump and maggy drive cog.

I have managed to track down a picture of the engine in primer, but the next i have is of the engine back on the Rotary hoe however not all hooked up with oil lines and air filter, carby or maggy.

The next is with everything done including the decals put on it late at night the night before a Ralley at Lakegoldsmith Victoria. This is about 3 days short of the 1 year anniversary of purchase of this rotary hoe.

Several months later down the track i found time to put oil in the machine and to turn it over, it runs a little rough due to the needle in the carby being badly pitted but it does sound very nice all the same.

All thats left to do even still to date is to get the exhaust connected properly and a better carby.

I hope that some one gains something from having read all of this and i’d be more then happy to get any tips for my future restoes etc.

Thanks,
Dan

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[joegrgraham]

Hi Dan, seasons greetings to you.
Thanks for sharing all your pics, its really interesting to see some different machines. I had to chuckle about how your collection snow-balled! we’re all the same!.
That Allis B looks nice, its an early american one isn’t it? and was that a model U i spotted in the background?. How many tractors do you have?.

Joe.

[arikispencer]

Howdy Joe,

From memory its a 49 model american B. Yes it possible you spotted the 36 model U Allis, In total we have around 30 Tractors, including 8 Ferguson, a Massey Harris, a couple of International,
a couple AW6 McCormicdeering, over 10 Allis Chalmers and some odds and ends.

Tractors is where we started, but you can really only get 1 tractor on the trailer and none on the ute, With rotary hoes we can fit between 10-14 on the ute and trailer, makes quite a display and a really good talking point as over here in Australia not many take a large collection of garden machinery to a rally.

How many can claim their collection snowballed from 1 to 70 in the space of less then 2 years, i bought the Original Junior, the one mentioned above on the 2/4/2013. The cost of all these having just broken 15000.

I also have a nice old ford consul, a fargo truck, a 1938 oldsmobile truck, the cab built by Holden here in Australia, i believe these are only in Australia and i know they are extremely rare. a couble of Austin trcuks, a BMC truck and a bedford truck.

Dan

[charlie]

Dan, great to know you are helping spread the interest in garden machinery by putting on a large display, over the years we have had a number of club members in Australia. It is one of the great things about our hobby, you can load the trailer up and take a dozen or so machines.

[arikispencer]

Its great taking a lot of machines with me for the weekend to a rally, its amazing how many people I’ve met that were with the dealership that sold the machines and they can add a little more to a machines story that i hadn’t heard in the past and all sorts.

[Author]

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