Not long ago, took down a lightning killed pine and nearby wind damaged pine. Wife wanted to pile them up into a brush pile instead of chipping to leave a habitat for rabbits and who knows what all. Not near the house, so whatever. Cut them into grapple size pieces and piled them up.
Couple days ago, she asked if it was too late to chip them because she doesn’t like the brush pile. Told her still a little early for anything that would nest in a brush pile to be nesting, but it’s either now or November because I might be an a$$hole but I’m not chipping baby rabbits. So we chipped. Neglected to take any pics.
Afterward, I rode into town to see if the local lawn equipment place had an air filter for my late father’s old mower now that it’s running for the first time in probably 10 years. Air filter looked like it had been running in a coal mine. Went with a shopping list of part numbers for a little maintenance on several small engines on the property. The little counter area was packed with customers and loud as a bar on Saturday night. The young guy that was pulling the parts on my list got to the air filter for the old mower (which I had the part number for) and asked what that went on. Told him a Pennsylvania Panzer T758ES with a Kohler K181 engine circa sometime in the late 1960’s. Even the guys who weren’t speaking English stopped and stared at me for a few seconds before resuming their conversations. Owner of the place over heard and told him where it would be if they had one. They actually had one. Young guy asked owner if he should enter it for restock since that was the last one. Owner told him, “Hell, no. Didn’t think I’d ever sell that one.”
Anyway, after downloading the WSM for the engine, checking point gap, spark plug condition and gap, changing fuel filter, cleaning up battery cables, etc. turned out the only two reasons it wouldn’t run were a dead battery and it was out of gas. Took it for a test drive and recalled not taking any pics of the chipping so stopped by the resulting chip pile and at least got a pic to show the fruit of the Kubota’s labor.
The belt from the engine to the deck is missing so I suppose I’ll have to see if that’s around somewhere. There are about two dozen belts on a peg at the shop and at least a couple dozen more hanging in the shed so pretty likely it’s here; I just have to find it.
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