Replacing a Tachometer Cable (Massey Ferguson GC2400 Tractor)

   

 

The above image was copied from Tractor Data dot com, a great site for looking up the specifications of most all modern tractors and some older ones. I have found it to be accurate and used it heavily prior to purchasing any used or new tractors

 

    A couple weeks ago the tachometer on my Massey Ferguson GC2400 tractor went TU. Not good. The tach is needed to ensure the RPMs are correct for what you are doing. For me, it is far more important in the warm months when I am cutting grass with the five-foot mower deck than in the winter when most use is plowing. Regardless, today I was doing lots of maintenance tasks on other equipment so today was the day to fix it.

 

The center gauge is the Tachometer. On most tractors, the tach will show at what speed the engine must run to to run the attachment at the pro[er speed. For the rear PTO to turn at 540 RPMs (the industry standard), the engine RPMs need to be in the green zone, 2500 RPMs.

 

    As always, it was not as simple as it could have been if the engineers had been a little more thoughtful. I had to remove the air intake and hoses, the alternator, and the fan belt. It is a small tractor so everything is packed in tight and I have big hands. For the most part, this small tractor is easy to maintain; the filters and fluids are accessible without taking much apart. This was the exception.

    In my attached car garage, I have ample workspace, decent lighting, and a pretty good set of tools. I would love to have a separate shop just for working on machinery but right now I don't. An open and organized workspace isn't just convenient, it is also safer to work in. You don't want to trip over stuff on the floor, knock things over, or not be able to access your work area due to a confined or cluttered work space. 

 

    

    The back side of the dash and the battery. The tachometer on this tractor is mechanical, which means there is a cable going from the engine to the tachometer. I am pointing to cable connection on the backside of the tach. The cable comes out the left then runs down to a fitting on the engine. You can see a great deal of wear on the cable there. The cable shroud simply screws on with the knurled fitting.

 

     Apparently the cables breaking is a known problem. When I did my Google and YouTube searches, I saw many complaints. Mine lasted longer than average, I bought this tractor in 2009 so it has a lot of hours on it. Part of the problem is the ridiculous length of the cable. It is less than 13 inches from the tach housing to the engine housing, but the cable is 60 inches long. That requires the cable to be snaked through the engine compartment and the way the factory did it causes several sharp bends that cause friction and heat. My cable broke nearly in the middle.

 

    I thought the cable shroud was worn down from rubbing on something, but it looks like some critter chewed on it really. The damaged area her was five inches long and another damaged area was three inches long. To repair this, I first wrapped it with electrical tape.

 

     Then I put shrink tubing over the tape. Luckily, I was able to slide the retaining fitting up the cable so I could slide two pieces of shrink tube over the end. I am new to using shrink tube, but for the few applications I used it, I like it a lot.

 

     Shrink tubing is great stuff; slide it over whatever you need to cover and heat it up. I used a butane torch but a lighter or a heat gun also work. Once it is shrunk, it forms a neat, tight seal.

 

     The tachometer cable needs to change it direction 90 degrees and to do that there is a "worm gear" inside the back of the tach. Several YouTubers recommended to disassemble the tachometer to clean and grease the worm gear inside. They also cautioned about losing the screws in the cramped quarters so I used a towel as a safety net. It came apart very easy.

 

 

    

    I cleaned both sides and packed them with fresh grease. That should help to reduce friction and thus heat. It was easy to reinstall, there are only two screws and everything lines up easily. Once the worm drive housing was back together I reconnected the cable to the engine mount. The cable end has a ridge on it that fits into a slot, or key-way, inside the engine mount. That was a little tricky to line up  but I used a pair of needle-nose pliers to turn it until the two side matched up and it slid into place.

    The next step was to find route to run all this cable but up to the back of the tachometer. I needed to find a route that didn't make any sharp turns and where it would be exposed to too much heat. It took some trial and error but I think I have a good solution. I zip-tied it where I could to keep it from moving around and to keep it away from high heat areas such as the exhaust.

    Lastly, to reassemble all the parts I had to remove to gain access to the engine areas I was working on.

    Once the tractor was put back together I started it up and the tachometer worked perfectly. Conservatively, I saved at least $300 by doing this repair myself and the tractor was only out of service for two hours instead of several weeks.

Preparing Garden for Winter

    When my dad was gardening, and he gardened from childhood to age 91, once frost killed the plants he was done. He didn't set foot in the garden until spring. He didn't clean it up, weed it, mulch it...nothing. Then in  spring he had a whole lot of work to do getting the garden ready for planting. That seems to be the norm for most gardeners. By the end of fall, they are tired of it all and just let the garden go.  Since I did most of the manual labor on our farm, yard, and campground business, I got stuck trying to get the garden cleaned up and everything put away, in the spring.

    So, I vowed to not do that with my own gardens. I find that it saves a lot of time and effort to take care of things in the fall, as much as can be done anyway. I like to change the sheets and put my garden to bed so that it can rest, rejuvenate, and prepare itself for the next growing season.

    This all starts with cleaning out the garden of all plant material. The roots of a plant, especially legumes, should always be left in the soil where they grew. This is because they have established a deep collaboration between the plant processes and the micro-organisms that live on and around the roots. Those micro-organisms are critical to healthy soil, they are the life that converts organic materials in the soil and what comes from the roots, into ready nutrients for plants. If you rip the dead vegetable out of the ground, all that biology gets destroyed. I snip off the plants at the surface of the soil and let the roots decay in place, which continues to feed the soil organisms.

    I use a leaf rake to rake up and remove all the leaves and whatever else is on top of the soil. Many of your plant pests over-winter in this layer. Then I use a garden rake to rough up the top two inches of soil to disrupt any pest egg case and grubs. I leave the garden like this for a couple day to let the birds come and scratch around and eat anything, mostly bugs, that they find. It's free.

    While that is happening, I dig out all my compost bins and run the compost through my sifting screens to sort out the big chunks that haven't decomposed yet. The fine material falls through the screen into my yard wagon and I set that aside until I spread it on the garden beds. Once I clean out the two bins, I then fill them with fresh material, which will compost down over the winter, spring, and summer. 

 

    I tow a mulching lawn vacuum behind my riding mower to collect freshly cut grass and fallen leaves. My yard is four acres so I get plenty enough material to fill two bins that measure 54"x54"x48". I've talked about my composting system before so I won't go over that again.

    Compost from the previous year, which has been screened, gets spread over all the raised beds, usually about an inch deep. That is plenty in my case because I have been composting these beds for over twenty years. On top of the compost I add a four inch layer of fresh mulch. This mulch keeps the beds warmer and moist so that biological activity continues until the very coldest weeks of winter. I want the soil creatures to start feeding on the compost and taking it down into the soil. (Below is one of the beds. I cover them with wire to prevent the many feral cats in my area from digging up the garden to use as their cat box.)

 

    The soil organisms will also start breaking down the mulch, which is very finely chopped making it easier for the soil bio-activity to work on.

 

 

    I thin out the raspberry canes, add compost, and add mulch to help them get through the winter. Healthy canes in the fall and winter leads to more cane growth in the spring. My raspberries fruit on second year canes so getting the old canes pruned out gives them more light and air flow.

 

    I also put a heavy layer of mulch around a couple rooted cuttings that I did this summer so that I can transplant them in the spring. I used the air-rooting method to root two apple tree branches and three ornamental trees. Air-rooting is my most successful method of propagating trees.

 

     Many people neglect watering their gardens after they harvested the last of their produce. But the soil still needs regular watering. If the soil dries out, it gets hard-packed, which limits air and water infiltration. The soil organisms also need the moisture or they will die. It is far easier to keep life going then to regenerate microbial and bacterial populations later. The soil is alive, not just the plants (which are now gone). So, once the garden is all ready for winter, it gets watered.

 

    Your garden doesn't stop living just because it is winter. You need to clean it up, feed it, water it, and protect it from extreme temperatures. Do this and you will have a much easier workload in the spring AND your garden will be more fertile and have far fewer weeds. Happy Gardening!