Finally the Project Begins

Well, it's been 284 days since I brought my PPT home, but who's counting right? We've had a few weeks of no snowstorms, so at the Emporium we are enjoying the roughly two weeks of down time we get a year. Today I took the tractor and cleared myself a path out to my PPT to bring it in out of the snow bank. When we put it on a pallet in the spring, it looked like this:

It looked very similar today, besides being under about a foot of snow. I pulled it out, and up to my bay door, and got to work. Steve and I pulled the hood off, yanked the wiring harness out, and pulled what was left of the seat out. We then used the tractor to bring it into my bay and put it on the lift. Here is where the real surgery began. I pulled the engine, amazed that not a single bolt snapped as rusted as they were. My dad and I then used the cutting torches and die grinder to remove the gas tank and what was left of the rotten floor. After messing around with it for a few minutes, we were amazed to see that if we put it in forward or reverse and turned the pulley on the gearbox, it actually moved, and surprisingly smoothly. We put it up in the air, and again to our amazement found that all the bogey wheels were free. There was a lot of dirt, ice, and just plain sludge around the two brakes that act as the steering, so we pushed it outside and pressure washed the engine and drive compartment out. After pushing it back on the lift to continue to unthaw over the weekend, we spent a significant amount of time looking it all over, trying to figure out exactly how this will work. Of course, only time will surely tell.

My Dad pressure washing out the engine and drive compartment.

Me cleaning out around the gearbox.

The gearbox and brakes. The PPT is steered by a brake on either track. This area was the front of the PPT, but is now the back of the tank.