MASSEY FERGUSON 135/ MF20 INDUSTRIAL FULL RESTORATION

[greendragon3]

hello everyone im terry , new here but certainly not new to the tractor scene , we have restored a few ( 6 and 7 more waiting to be done ) old zetors over the years and ive shared some of work on a few different forums and it has generated a bit of work for us on other tractors which has been nice ,
anyway ive shared most of the links to my other projects on my introduction post and now im going to share my latest project with you , we are currently about 2 months into it so i will start at the beginning and try not to forget anything along the way until we get up to date .

its a Massey Ferguson 135 which started life as an industrial MF 20 industrial , it was " converted " back to 135 guise at some stage and the current owner had always planned to restore it to its former glory so we got the job !!

the plan is to fit an original Duncan cab back on the tractor , it currently has a longford cab fitted , the owner has painstakingly sourced some very scarce and hard to get parts from Ireland and the uk to aid in the resto including a rare sprung MF seat ( pics to follow ) .

anyway first job as always was to get her home and start stripping her down ready for a good cleaning .

 

[greendragon3]

you can see some of the original industrial yellow paint starting to peep through here and there , she was actually painted blue at some stage , perhaps a Leicester council tractor or something , note the extra clocks in the dash , a dead giveaway of her heritage .

it took an awful lot of persuading to get the old cab off , the bolts were totally seized solid and we had to take the grinder to em , this left the studs to be removed from the axle casing which took ample amounts of heat and plenty of sledging before they finally shifted . ( maybe we are getting weak in our old age or something !!!

) .

more pics .

 

[greendragon3]

we have the Duncan cab waiting in the wings , it needs a bit of work but nothing we cant handle .

 

[greendragon3]

we also have a huge amount of parts that the owner has gathered for this restoration .

 

[greendragon3]

 

[greendragon3]

the MF sprung seat which i will send down to pj Kerr for reupholstering

 

[greendragon3]

we took the lift arms bonnet and pick up hitch off ready for a good old soaking in jizer to shift the dirt and then a good blast of the power hose revealed more blue and yellow paint !.

 

[greendragon3]

 

[greendragon3]

so then it was time to get stuck into the brakes , now for those that are not familiar ( myself included ) in industrial spec Massey's they came fitted with a dual shoe set up , one for the foot brakes and a separate cable operated set for the handbrake , these had not worked for some time and were very badly seized , also the backing plated of the brakes themselves were well shook and luckily we had good replacement set waiting to go on ,
unfortunately it took us nearly three days of sweating , cursing , stripped knuckles , huge amounts of heat and quiet a few split sockets before we got the blasted backing plates off !!!,
years of rust had built up around the end of the axle and the nuts had corroded so bad that there wasn't a usable side left to get on to , we had to chisel one of them off it was that bad , anyway the brakes are done now with all new components fitted but we have hit another hurdle which i will explain in my next post , more pics .

 

[REStracTORATION]

Good stuff great pics all the best for it she looks quite ruff old lass

 

[Robigus]

YOU'RE DOING IT ALL WRONG YOU ARE!!

Looks good, keep posting.

 

[REStracTORATION]

YOU'RE DOING IT ALL WRONG YOU ARE!!

Looks good, keep posting.

Hahaha who says
He shall be along shortly and start an argument about nothing hhaahhaahahahh

 

[Pennine Ploughing]

is it going to be red, yellow or blue when finished

 

[Derek67]

Just wondering do you know the serial number of that tractor?

 

[greendragon3]

so that's our progress to date guys and therein our latest problem , there are two actuator rods that activate both the foot brake and the handbrake independently as can be seen in this picture


now the problem we are having is that the cast " locators " on each end of one of these rods have been broken at some stage , i have two spare ones that came with the parts but they are for a right hand side and sods law i need a left hand side pair , i would say these will be nigh on impossible to get as most of them break when they seize and someone tries to force the handbrake , im going to try to get something fabricated using cast welding but i dont know how effective this is going to be .

 

[greendragon3]

so its update time again guys and yesterday i got both axle spindles off ready for new bearing and seal kits , there is not too much play in them to be honest because the owner is a great believer in keeping stuff greased and as ive said before the lack of grease and oil has been the downfall of a lot of machinery in this country . but rather than have to strip them down in the future we decided to get them done now and be finished with them . we are also going to replace all four track rod ends .

 

[greendragon3]

i also removed the lift head to replace to bushings on the lift arm spindles and to investigate some iffy controls that the owner spoke about , i also have to replace the quadrant shaft which was broke at some time and poorly welded , it may have happened when the last cab was being fitted or something .

you will see in one or two pictures that when i got the lift head off there was a gathering of metal chunks sitting on top of the casing , i think these look like they were from one of the spindle bushing which has disintegrated .

 

[greendragon3]

the quadrant shaft was a bit tricky to get out so im hoping everything will line back up again during re-assembly ! we are going to rebuild the top link/draft control rod as well when we have her split .

 

[greendragon3]

another update guys , today we got the seat stripped down and got it ready to ship off to pj kerr in portlaoise for some new upholstery , it was seized solid but we got it apart eventually , i rubbed down any surface rust on the seat pan and treated it to some rust preventive before giving it a light coat of primer before boxing it up , the primer will keep it until it comes back and we prep it ready for paint .

 

[greendragon3]

then i took stock of some of the new parts that arrived today from mackey plant and agri spares in beeleek .