[trusty220]

That’s stuck harder than any I’ve come across; they normally come out with heat and cooling, then under the press. Well done for finding another way to do it!

[trusty220]

It appears that YMMDDY isn’t the only layout that DVLA have used. They have also used M/D/YY which gives us some more possibilities. Assuming an August or September birth date- Virgo star sign- the sequence will start with either an 8 or a 9.

Knowing Wallingfield is older than me by just a little I reckon he’s a child of the 50’s, so his date of birth will be either 8/5/58 (5th August, 1958) or 9/5/59 (9th September, 1959). His place of birth (we all know he grew up in Sheffield) is probably Hallam.

Well, am I right, sir???

Thanks are due to Alan, a true Yorkshireman, for his local knowledge of the Sheffield area!

[trusty220]

OK, Wallingfield, here goes!

The date of birth on my driving license takes the form YMMDDY, so if yours runs the same format as mine then I guess your date of birth (to conform to the Virgo star sign) will be 608806 or 609906, which makes you born on either the 80th August, 1966 or 90th September, 1966.

Oh dear, I feel my headache coming on again…….

[trusty220]

That blows my theory right out of the water then! B****r!

[trusty220]

Looking at the DoB for Mr. Wallingfield ( because it’s raining outside and I’ve just sent Mrs. Geoff out to the farm to feed the animals- they are all hers, after all!), it appears that there may be three possibilities; could I ask you what star sign you were born under Mr. Wallingfield?

[trusty220]

You could have saved that one for the Christmas Quiz, Andrew!

[trusty220]

I use the following:-

INA Linear Technik
Part Number:- PAPZ2432P106159796
Made in USA

You may want to look up INA and find a local stockist.

[trusty220]

We used to have regular fly-tipping in one of the gateways; a retired gentleman who lived up the lane from it got fed up with seeing rubbish there that he put up a camera. On a tip-off from him last summer two coppers came from opposite ends of the lane and caught somebody in the act of emptying their trailer in the gateway and made them clear it all up again. I don’t know what happened after that but Mrs. Geoff got stuck behind one of the coppers and was highly amused at the time- the copper asked her if she wanted to get around and she said she would wait with a huge grin on her face.

Revenge can be sweet, but unfortunately doesn’t happen often!

[trusty220]

They are still available and can be bought over the counter from most bearing suppliers.

[trusty220]

You’re quite right about the younger generation being selfish, Andrew. We’ve had a procession of “walkers” coming across the farm all year using the public footpaths; besides the litter they leave and the dog crap, I had to ask a very large “family” to get down from one of our oak trees the other day and as a result had to endure a tirade of bad language from the mothers. The tree in question was ten yards of the footpath and I pointed out that I keep the paths mowed on a regular basis to stop people wandering off them.

Apparently I should have put a sign up.

Does anyone ever remember the sketch on Not The Nine O’Clock News? When the young copper was hauled before his sergeant for being over-zealous and had arrested some bloke for “Being in possession of an offensive wife”. That was the woman I came across the other day!

[trusty220]

I’ve been going around all day today thinking that I’ve got Covid 19 again, but then I read Alan’s post and realized why my ears were burning!

Many of you who are club members will have seen that I have spent my time this year finishing the second volume of the Trusty saga. I really love getting my hands dirty, restoring machinery and breathing new life into bits of metal that would otherwise have gone to the scrapman, but researching is just as rewarding and that is why I bullied Alan (sorry, Alan!) into writing a book on his particular interest. It is important that these things are written down for future generations- when I started collecting tractors there were only little titbits of information that I could find out, some of it was right and a lot of it was wrong, which is why I thought it best to put the record straight. Now I get people telling me all about Trusty stuff- most of which they have read in my books!

Now that we are heading into another prolonged period of lockdown why not give it a thought? What do you collect? What information do you have on the machinery in your collection? You may not have enough to write a book about, but could that be enough for a chapter in a book? You could always send it to Alan Rogers, aka Will Haggle, so that it goes into The Cultivator.

Think about it next time you’re at a loose end with nothing to do!

[trusty220]

That is how they normally come when they haven’t been greased. You could try heating the drawbar on the outside then twisting the pin with a pair of Stilsons, or unscrew the grease nipples, clean them out and re-fit them so that you could force grease into the join.

In the worst cases I have had to cut the pin at the top and underneath of the drawbar so that I could separate the drawbar from the support casting. I then built up a fire and put that end of the drawbar in it so that it all reached a cherry red colour, left it to cool and pushed it out with a press. A little drastic and you then have to make another pin, but at least it teaches you to grease the pin on a regular basis!

It’s probably the worst job you can get to do on a Trusty; once you’ve done it everything else will seem easy!

[trusty220]

What weather! Unable to work on the trailer- it’s in a barn but the wind is blowing from the wrong quarter- and far too wet to get anything done on the farm, the garage was the best place this weekend. The job that needed finishing was the wheel on the Trusty; everything was complete but needed painting before assembly, so that was done on Saturday ready for a final go on Sunday.

As you can see from the finished pictures it was worth putting the second row of strakes on, but it did make me swear more than a little and my knuckles and fingers have suffered as a consequence. The problem was that the second row of strakes is rivetted to a steel ring that was probably circular when it was made but is now oval with some circular bits- you can see my problem! It is compounded by the way the strakes are overlapped as well, so that once lined up they do slot into place but it is a major operation to slot each one into place one at a time.

The best method I found was to contract the ring with a ratchet strap so that it was roughly the right diameter, then start at one end (the ends aren’t welded) tapping the strakes with a rubber mallet and pulling them in with a hook bolt. Working around the rim, tapping each strake in turn to start it then pulling it in with a clamp I eventually found myself back to the beginning.

I then awarded myself a pint mug of tea before splashing some red paint all over it to hide the blood stains. One thing that I avoided doing was skimming the metal with filler to smooth it off, because there will be so much movement of the metal as the weight of the tractor comes on it that the filler would soon flake off, then it would look worse than if I’d never bothered. If you look closely you will see that the strakes are quite pitted still for this reason. Still, the overall effect is quite pleasing so it will have to do unless I make some new strakes and rims, but then it wouldn’t be original.

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[trusty220]

Looking good so far. As you say, attention to detail pays dividends at the end and will turn a good restoration into a winner.

If you need any help you know where we are.

[trusty220]

That makes me feel old- I sold an Allen Challenger new back in my early selling days! It makes you stop to think that they are thirty years old now and classed as collector’s items.

[Author]

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