Labor Day was an accurate description!

Well, labor day turned out to be an accurate description of Monday for me. I started working outside around 9am and pretty much kept at it until 7pm with just a few breaks thrown in for Lunch and Dinner. I mowed around the house (about 1 acre) and then mowed down some heavy weeds in what was a wheat field last year but this year turned into pretty much a weed patch. Some of the weeds were well over 6' tall and quite thick. I should have taken some pictures.

I mowed around the house in morning and didn't notice anything unusual. Went after the weed patch and the tractor knew it was going to be work but nothing really seemed unusual about it's performance at first. I had to drop down into 3rd Gear on some really thick Russian Thistle but that didn't seem completely abnormal. The tractor was running a little warm but I figured that was due to the weed seeds and I needed to watch the radiator screen and keep an eye on the air filter. I did run low on fuel, not completely out, but it acted like it was going to stall so I idled it down and turned it off. Went and got some diesel and got back to work but it was running warm again so I turned back to the house and cleaned up the radiator screen and checked the air filter. It wasn't really bad, but had some seeds in it. I got back out there and it was still running warm - generally it runs at about 1/3rd on the temp gauge and it was running 2/3rds - not up to the hot but still above normal. I was now having to downshift on some fairly light stuff, and I couldn't keep the cutter spinning in 5th gear at all which is my normal gear that I use for mowing.

I thought it could be the mower, so I double checked the gear box on the cutter and it had oil in it but I topped it off just for good measure. I could turn the cutter by hand fairly easy so it seemed to be okay. The gear box was warm, but not excessively hot. I cleaned the radiator screen and hosed off the radiator and double checked the engine oil and coolant and everything seemed okay. I figured I'd go ahead and finish the last bit. It seemed to do better but still didn't have the guts that I would normally expect her to have. I had to downshift in some light stuff a few more times and at the very end I ended up all the way down into 2nd gear which is absolutely crawling. I noticed more smoke than usual from the exhaust when it was really giving it her all. Kind of a blue tint to it but not much. The color you would expect from a tractor really giving it's all, but I was mowing light grass and was in 2nd gear. I figured it had to be the gear box on the mower. I finished up and took it back to the barn.

I checked it over and let it idle awhile and when I went to shut it down the key wouldn't turn it off. That means that I blew a fuse but that's an easy fix.

To help me decide if it was the mower or not, I took it off and hooked up my tandem disc. I normally pull it in 5th gear as well. The tractor had cooled off and I took it out and started discing. Pulled it pretty well in 5th gear for about 5 minutes and then the temp started climbing again. It wasn't hot out today so that couldn't be the issue and I've run the tractor hard for hours and hours when it was hot outside without any issues. After 5 minutes it started to act gutless again and wanting to bog down so I had to shift into 4th gear to pull with the disc engaged. About 10 minutes into it and it was all the way back up to 2/3rd on the temperature gauge and working hard to pull the disc in 4th gear. It seems that the problem is with the tractor, not the mower. I went ahead and picked up the disc and ran the tractor back to the barn. I let it idle down again and checked it over again and nothing seemed obviously wrong. It's not really smoking on the exhaust except when it seems to think it is under heavy load. No unusual knocking noises or anything like that. I'm at a loss to what could be wrong and am not excited about taking it to the dealership for them to poke around because I really don't like the local dealer.

I posted the narrative above on a tractor bulletin board, and also talked to a friend who is a tractor mechanic and everyone pretty much agreed that the most likely culprit is a simple fuel filter! That made me feel a LOT better. I'm also going to replace the air filter because it was fairly dirty as well. I'm going to work on it tonight and hopefully everything is okay with the tractor, I am planning on taking it down to the land this weekend to do some work down there.

I'm trying to get in shape for elk hunting coming up in just over 2 weeks and have been working out quite a bit for me. We ran 3.6 miles in Weatherford this weekend with quite a bit of hills and I'm up to 30 minutes on the Elliptical in the Hill Climb mode as well. Last week I logged 17 miles total! I've also lost 11 lbs in the last month.

Well that's about it for now. Sorry I didn't get any pictures of the weeds before I mowed them down or while I was mowing them.

Nathan