[06 DIESEL]

Well once again, while plowing snow this winter I blew a head gasket on a tractor. This tractor is used quite a bit around the house and to mow the pasture just up from the house so it will be getting a mechanical overhaul as soon as I clear room in the garage for it.

Plans are to tear down the tractor, send the block and head to a machine shop along with the crank and have them checked. It is going to get a complete rebuild kit, new pistons, sleeves, gaskets, bearings, valves, springs, etc. While I am in it I am going to fix the gaskets that have been leaking in the transmission, replace/rebuilt the clutch and T/A, re-do the brakes that have never worked properly and fix the PTO clutch that has been slipping under heavy load since I got the tractor about 10 years ago.

I also have two different '51 Super C's that will get rebuilt at some point so I am in the process of buying all of the tools that I will need for these projects. The one tool I am debating on is a valve resurfacer/grinder. I have found a few used bench models for the $150/200 range but the in head valve cutters is where I can not seem to find any used ones. New kits that are of quality will run me about $1,000 and knock offs are about $500ish depending on what I go with. That is the hardest pill to swallow in my budget for this rebuild. If I buy all of the tooling new other than a few small tools I will spend $2,000ish just on the tools cutting out over half of my total budget for the rebuild.

I have the full set of manuals for the 504D and plan to get started on the tear down in the next few weeks. My goal is to have the tractor ready to bush hog by the time it is needed in the early spring/summer. I will update this thread as I make progress. I plan to document the rebuild the best that I can without slowing my rebuilding progress too much. It will not be getting a full restoration, just a mechanical and gasket overhaul, it sits outside so I do not want to dump time and money into a great paint job that is just going to go to crap in a few years of sitting in the sun.