The parts I ordered prior to Christmas have been installed on the 55-66 and the 284. It took a little more to get it on than I had hoped to get them done quickly but the Fuel Lift Pump was reluctant to go on. The spark plugs on the 284 looked good. I don't see a problem in the distributor. I put on the new plug wires just because I ordered them. Tomorrow I put new battery connectors on and see if we can get it to start and run effectively.
The 284 didn't run smoothly. Now I'm thinking the carburetor is the problem. Preston is the carb man but I don't know if he knows much about this kind. I'll ask him next visit. I'm thinking the float valve is the problem.
The 55-66 is running good and the fuel lift pump shows no leakage. But when we tried to operate the front loader, the bucket wouldn't tilt. I watched some videos about hydraulic problems and went out to attempt to diagnose the problem the next morning. The old Bush Hog loader wasn't anything like the ones I saw in the videos. I pulled the rubber cover off the controller and fiddled with the valves there. I noticed that one of the little control pieces was loose. Further inspection found that all the connectors had worked loose and the one controlling the bucket tilt was undone. At first I thought a bolt had come off the end but it had no threads. All we had to do was to tighten all the connectors and it was working as good as new. From there, I put the bucket on and we went over into the field and scooped a load of dirt. That dirt filled the wash around the drain by the pond.
We found that one of the circuit breakers in the shop didn't trip when you hit the gfi test button. The replacement I got at Lowes was the wrong one. Darn.
We also got 3 apple trees down and cut into pieces that MawMaw can pile on her fire. We'd like to have got it better stacked but just ran out of energy and time. We still need to trim the limbs above the shop. Then we need to spot paint the rusty spots. Maybe apply some naval jelly to stop the rust. Then at some point, paint that roof.