Relative Something

I was up and ready, well ahead of time, for the appointment with the tractor service person yesterday. As the time drew close, my phone rang with the message that he would be late. That was good for me, as I discovered I didn’t have any diesel fuel in the 5 gallon containers the seller left for us, and that allowed time to make a trip to town and get them filled.

The guy that arrived was wonderfully congenial, but moving at top speed. He barely got out of his flat-bed tow truck, and was already talking three steps ahead about how he was going to get the tractor loaded. It was hard to change his focus, but I asked if he couldn’t look at the starter right where the tractor was parked. His answer was, “No” as he walked around his truck another time.  Then, after he already had a chain connected, and the loader propped up off the ground, he asks me if I had tried to start it this morning. He went on to describe how it had happened on another call for him once, when the machine just started right up for him when he tried it for the customer.

Hoping this was my chance to get a word in edgewise, I explained that I hadn’t tried it yet that day, and that ‘not starting’ was my only problem, and since I had NEVER done it successfully, I was not the best one to test it. He hopped up and went through the steps and, …Vroooom! It started right up. I was shocked, but not surprised. Just as I suspected, there must have been some interlock that wasn’t being satisfied. Unfortunately, he didn’t know what it could have been.

I asked, “Could it be the position of the PTO?”

“No, no.” as he monkeyed with everything else. Oddly enough, he was still dead set on getting the tractor loaded up on the flat-bed. I felt we just needed to try a few different starts, to see if we could replicate my problem. He agreed, but explained that if it didn’t start again, he wanted it already loaded and ready to go, and since it was now running, this gave him the opportunity to easily drive it up on there.

I could see his point.

In the end, we confirmed that I was guessing right, it was the PTO that needed to be just right, to engage the interlock that allowed the starter to crank. It was possible to move it too far in the direction of “off.” I had no previous reference to judge from. Unfortunately, when the seller stopped by to check on it for me, he missed that the PTO lever was not in that sweet spot, and was too quick to focus on the starter as being the problem.

By the end of the day, both Cyndie and I had taken turns driving our new tractor, and we even got some real work done. I was moving firewood and discovered that there was a concrete slab under a mound of dirt and grass. My first inclination was to get a shovel. Then I realized I was standing next to the biggest shovel I have ever owned.

It worked like a charm. Now we have a great place to put a picnic table by our fire pit out back.