Posted by Lucian Drumond on Wednesday, February 16, 2005 at 10:55PM :
The welcome rain here in the San Joaquine valley has slowed the planting and our seed business a little. I have finaly got around to removing the toggle switch clutch on our IH 4600 delivery truck.
While in Fresno at the clutch place,next door is an outfit called Bayshore truck. They have been in the business of overhauling differentials for about 50 years.The shop had racks and racks of complete differential cases hanging on racks like meat in a butcher shop.
Shop forman ask's me what i am looking for.I say" I'm looking for a FFPW case complete with 4.89 gears" I'm thinking yeah sure. He is not familiar with it. So i describe the thing. No go, he calls the old timer. He thinks for a bit then motions me to follow. We go thru many shelves of hanging pumpkins. We finally get to the back corner of the building and hanging up high is a once clear plastic bag. He reaches up to tear the bag and the bag disentegrates . Once the dust settles i see a complete FFPW differential case. Hmmmm it's up a ways so i climb up, tried too turn the pinion but it is resisting. I asked the guy how long this has been here? He said i have been working here for twenty years and this was here then!! The grease in the bearings are dry but everything is new, i'm getting exited at this point.
I finally get the ring gear around and it's 4.89 ratio, OH BOY!!! I take the thing down and ask the fellow if it's for sale? The front office guy comes out and read's the tag,and tells me "be right back". Now folks i did not go up there too look for this thing. I figured i would drop in to look at this place while the clutch outfit performed the SHIMY SHAM on the binder clutch!!
He comes back, tells me the thing was overhauled with all new gears and R/P back in the middle seventys. The owner changed his mind did'nt want it.So they finally wrote the cost of this thing off in 2000. They only want 250 for the thing which would cover the interest. They would also pull; the thing back apart and get the old grease out of there and recheck it all. I think i passed out! Needles to say i bought the thing,and since they had to pull it apart i will have them put a locker in it. Buried tressure. Thanks Lucian
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