Ok, I learned a valuable life lesson this week; sometimes trees are
much tougher than they look.. particularly oaks. While mowing around
the perimeter of the property, the exhaust stack caught an overhanging
branch and wound up snapping the exhaust flange, which is the little
piece that sits on top of the exhaust manifold that the exhaust pipe
slips onto. One moment I was happily mowing away, and the next, I
thought I had blown up the old girl as the noise was so loud I'm
sure the folks a couple miles down the road could hear it. I stopped
the tractor immediately, only to look back and see the muffler,
exhaust pipe and exhaust flange laying on the ground behind me. So
much for getting the pasture knocked down this week. Being a
Sunday, I decided to park the tractor and hit the local Case dealer
the following day since they are closed on weekends. You can see
the old flange to the right, along with the replacement parts I used
to get her back in running order. The new pipe was obtained from
a local muffler shop, which custom made it for me.We all know the story.. nothing is as easy as we would like, and this was no exception. After driving over to what used to be the local Case dealer in town, I found out that they had lost their dealership and the next closet one was a 45 minute drive south. So I shot off an e-mail to them asking about the availability of a replacement flange. Of course, they no longer stock the correct flange for my DB880, but they do have a replacement part that will work. Trouble is, it's also a different diameter and casting, so I will need a couple new studs and a new muffler. I decided to hold off on the muffler since the one I have is in perfect shape, and instead would go by a local muffler shop and have them make up an adapter to fit it to the oversized flange.
Once the parts arrived, even more fun began. I should have realized
something was amiss when trying to take the remains of the old flange
off, and noticing that the nuts and studs were different sizes. While
taking one stud out, it of course snapped just level with the top of
the exhaust manifold like all good exhaust studs do. I figured it would
be a simple matter to drill it out as I've done thousands of times
before on other vehicles in the same situation, but after doing so,
it turns out that someone else had previously stripped out the threads
and replaced the stud with a modified bolt which was bigger than the
original. So here I was with two replacement studs, one which fits
perfectly, and another which simply drops through the hole.
I first tried some JB Weld type cold weld epoxy putty. Filled in the hole completely, let harden, then drilled and tapped it out. This had worked for me in the past, so I was hoping it would be a quick fix this time as well. Of course, it wasn't. Tightening up the nut pulled the epoxy right out of the hole. So it was on to plan B, to use a helicoil. For those of you not familiar with these little gems, they basically are a coil spring which you thread into the old hole and it creates new threads. You first drill out the existing hole so it is slightly oversized, then you tap it out with the proper threads for the coil to thread into. Let me tell you, tapping cast iron exhaust manifolds is no fun, but I got it done, and now the new stud fits perfectly, and securely, into it's new threads. A trip to the local Midas muffler shop got me a perfect extension pipe that fit both the old muffler and new flange for a net loss of $5USD, and another $0.84 for a couple of stainless steel nuts completed the job. Now, it's just a metter of staying away from the trees and trimming those low hanging branches!