2016 Forum Meet

[texas pete]

Maria and I will be back there on Saturday now!

[portamurda1]

Maria and I will be back there on Saturday now!

Great stuff...

[marcus]

I can't make that weekend, same date as my show I run. Pity, the Zil could do with the cobwebs removing

[Rob Reznik]

I can't make that weekend, same date as my show I run. Pity, the Zil could do with the cobwebs removing

Doesn't the Praga have cobwebs as well ?

[marcus]

Praga is being sorted as we speak, plus a few more improvements ready for the wet season

[Rob Reznik]

Praga is being sorted as we speak, plus a few more improvements ready for the wet season

You mean axle stands and dust sheets ?? ;)

[marcus]

Gotta remove the LAK body off it that was "fitted" last year. New clutch as well as the old one had started to slip

[Rob Reznik]

Did you fit a new gearbox?

[marcus]

Averill trying to sort transport, I'm not brave enough for a road trip in the mondeo to Cz

[Abrs]

Is it not rebuildable? I'll bet being Czech it'll be a pretty crude affair internally if it's anything like the old Tatras Zetors etc. Personally I would just crack it open and have a look, you could be lucky and find you only need a few bearings/gears, it would probably cost you less to repair it than it would for the shipping cost of a whole gearbox

[Rob Reznik]

If your going to be spending time in water and mud holes it maybe worth pressurising the diffs and gearbox like the unimogs?

[marcus]

Yes Abers it is repairable, it's just the reverse shaft that has gone but every bearing is shot as all the seals have perished. I priced the bearings from my local factors and they have them in stock(all metric). The cost was more than a new box, a new box is only £230 including transfer box. This gives me plenty of spares plus I need a new clutch anyway. I was going to pressurize the running gear as I have done on the Zil, should of done it 4 years ago but was having too much fun in the Praga and am now paying the price

[Abrs]

Yeah I see your logic. Regarding bearings though for future reference, I've found there's a big difference in pricing depending on who the supplier is. I did a full gearbox rebuild on mates vintage tractor about a year ago, the local suppliers around here wanted the best part of £300(some big bearings) some nearer £400, anyway I managed to get them all at under half the price by ordering them from a supplier in china. I know what your thinking but the quality seems fine...up to now , the majority of bearing brands are manufactured in china/taiwan anyway and then rebranded as with virtually everything else.

[portamurda1]

Yeah I see your logic. Regarding bearings though for future reference, I've found there's a big difference in pricing depending on who the supplier is. I did a full gearbox rebuild on mates vintage tractor about a year ago, the local suppliers around here wanted the best part of £300(some big bearings) some nearer £400, anyway I managed to get them all at under half the price by ordering them from a supplier in china. I know what your thinking but the quality seems fine...up to now , the majority of bearing brands are manufactured in china/taiwan anyway and then rebranded as with virtually everything else.

Yep lots of OEM stuff made in China...with the OEM manufacturers original tooling...problem is metal quality and worn out tooling, especially by spurious manufacturers

[marcus]

I service a vegetable peeler and GKN bearings were lasting about 6 weeks before being too worn for the abrasive rollers to miss each other so we swapped to cheap chinese bearings. Total failure of 50% of the bearings within a week causing costly downtime so not so good in harsh environments

[portamurda1]

I service a vegetable peeler and GKN bearings were lasting about 6 weeks before being too worn for the abrasive rollers to miss each other so we swapped to cheap chinese bearings. Total failure of 50% of the bearings within a week causing costly downtime so not so good in harsh environments

Was looking at weber carbs the other day...advert said 'genuine Webber carbs, made in Italy, not that Chinese rubbish' and that was an actual advert on a company website!

[Abrs]

Yeah GKN, SKF etc also have manufacturing centres in china and in other countries that many people associate with poor quality products, but that said I've bought cheaper Toyo bearings made in India that have lasted just as well as supposedly high quality German made SKF bearings. I think it's just luck most of the time what you end up with if buying unbranded or lesser brands, but I certainly wouldn't discount items manufactured in China...Have you looked inside a iphone recently? However there are a lot of bearing manufacturers in China so it's always going to be a bit of a gamble if ordering unbranded bearings etc from there, I could have chosen known brands when I ordered the gearbox bearings for my mate for a bit more but he's more of a tight @ss than me so we went for the cheapest ones available Time will tell I guess but it's been working almost daily for a year without any signs of wear, I do the servicing for him and I've not seen any indication of undue wear, the oil is always clean as is the mag filter.

On a different note how did you manage to kill the reverse idler? Presume you must have been doing a lot of self recovery from sticky spots?

[Rob Reznik]

This is going off topic.

[marcus]

Yep, self recovery from a hole at Wagtails. I think the biggie though was using Wagtails mud as lube in the box

[paulob1]

I would have thought that mud was damn near perfect in the box as a replacement for graphite or oil, its damn slippery enough..