InMaintaining Small-Farm Equipment: How to Keep Tractors and Implements Running Well, Steve and Ann Larkin Hansen equip readers with their experienced guidance to sustaining smooth-running farm equipment that will last for years and save on costly services. With their clear-cut instructions and service tips, readers will learn to pinpoint problems before they get out of hand, as well as the tools and knowledge needed for basic repairs. The following excerpt is from Chapter 7, “Repairs.”
Field Repairs
Equipment doesn’t break when it’s sitting in the shed; it breaks in the field, often when there’s not enough time to get equipment back to the shop, run to town for a part, make the repair, and still finish the task before bad weather moves in or a marketing deadline passes.
For this reason, it’s handy to have not only commonly needed spare parts on hand but also a mobile tool kit, either in a box bolted to the tractor frame or in the cargo area of a pickup truck or ATV. This allows you to get basic tools to the equipment and make minor repairs quickly. The minimum field tool kit is a hammer, large pair of pliers, flat head and Phillips head screwdrivers, and a couple of sizes of adjustable wrenches.
If you have more room, add a grease gun, penetrating oil, pry bar, shop rags, and whatever else seems to be needed regularly; we routinely carry a set of socket wrenches. Also include some zerks, cotter pins, hitch pins, nails, nuts and bolts, and pieces of wire for jury-rigging emergency repairs; once the equipment is back in the shed you can remove the jury-rig (such as a nail for a cotter pin) and put in the proper part.
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Excerpted fromMaintaining Small-Farm Equipment, © by Ann Larkin Hansen and Steven Frederick Hansen. Used with permission from Storey Publishing.