Garden Tractor Forums banner

1963 L8 refurbish

5K views 52 replies 14 participants last post by  ScottD961 
#1 ·
I got this one for Christmas from my B.I.L. and now that the weather is finally warming up I got to itching to get to work on it. The perfect opportunity came when two guy's at the plant where I work went on vacation and I ended up working the night shift for ten days straight. I already striped it down so it was a matter of bringing things into work with me and getting things done. For some reason I didn't get any pictures showing at a distance what shape it was in when I got it. But there are closeups. There are lots of pictures but I'll to to keep it down some. As it arrived.

2013-01-02111910.jpg

2013-01-02111934.jpg

2013-01-02112049.jpg

2013-01-02112105.jpg
 
See less See more
4
#5 ·
Some more progress pictures. One thing you'll see here and that is items that won't rust won't have paint on them like the cooling fan. It was cleaned up and will get a clear coat. The same for the governor, engine block, all the brass nuts on the oil lines. Well you get the idea. I really don't care much for Gravelys philosophy of put the whole thing together and shoot it all the same color. I like the look of the natural colors, it just seems cleaner to me and gives the machine that little bit of extra pop.

2013-04-01153212.jpg

2013-04-01153236.jpg

2013-04-01153246.jpg

2013-04-04092924-1.jpg
 
#12 ·
Seems you do Lots at work.....cept WORK! Heee! Used to get GM millwrights to do things for me, now they won't, they keep eye on what they are doing, even when it is NOthing! Nice pictures and details. I was wondering how you painted all that stuff with NO over spray in first paint pix.....ha! Then see the paint barrel in next picture. Boss didn't say anything? One other thing...says this is new post, yet you say it Warmed Up there to do work?? Getting colder in IN now, would think real cold up your way now.
 
#13 ·
Thanks gents I really appreciate the compliments. In my former career I was a nuclear mechanic for 24 years at a private shipyard so attention to detail was very important and as a kid I worked in the family own body shop. Another detail oriented job. I do try.

Nice set of tires on that one.
Those are no flats made for gravely by firestone. I found these at a vendors shop, NOS. I had to put them on the rims. That was fun. They were intended for the roofing attachment machines because of the roofing nails.

Those sure look like they were built to last. Thanks for the pics.
They are really built like tanks, all cast iron transmission with gears. Just the machine weighs almost 400 pounds. Then the attachments add weight too. This machine with the snow blower attachment added weighs about 600 pounds.

Nice attention to detail. Isn't it nice working in a place where you can use company tools and techniques for what we like to call "government work". We have bead blasters, presses, CNC machine, lathe, spray booth... Makes it nice!
I don't have all that fancy equipment just a bench grinder and a drill press at work plus various hand tools but I do have the bosses permission to work on projects at work. He even helps. A better explaination is below.

Seems you do Lots at work.....cept WORK! Heee! Used to get GM millwrights to do things for me, now they won't, they keep eye on what they are doing, even when it is NOthing! Nice pictures and details. I was wondering how you painted all that stuff with NO over spray in first paint pix.....ha! Then see the paint barrel in next picture. Boss didn't say anything? One other thing...says this is new post, yet you say it Warmed Up there to do work?? Getting colder in IN now, would think real cold up your way now.
I'm a boiler operator at one of the state colleges. The plant is about 95% automatic which means I'm paid to baby sit the plant. I'm just here to turn stuff back on if it shuts down and to monitor things. The boss is cool with us bringing in projects to keep awake.

Those drums are empty so the boss doesn't care.

I probably should have started the thread by saying it's already done, well as done as it can be. There's always something else to do. So any mention of the weather should be ignored, I should have edited that out but it got by me.

I like doing the threads so that maybe someone who might be on the fence about their own machine might decide to tackle it.

Since I put my machine up for tractor of the month I figured I should at least put the refurb thread up. Plus the gravely section could stand to wake up some. There's not much going on there. Lol's.

I have other projects I've done I'll be putting up when I can so stay tuned and thanks for checking in.
 
#14 ·
I work 3 on 3 off 12 hour shifts at my job so after today I probably won't be online for a few days. I don't get much computer time at home because my other job is running the alpaca farm my wife and I own. So don't get upset if I'm not around for a bit.

There are only 4 guys at the plant where I work and 2 went on vacation at the same time so since I was going to be on the night shift for 10 days straight I really loaded up on the parts and went to town. Lots of small pieces in this load which went pretty fast, the hood however took me 5 hours just to clean up the old paint and rust. The one thing I have learned about Gravleys paint jobs is when you run into an area the original paint is still there then it's a real pain to get back off to bare metal.

I should also note that after doing this hood I found one that was used on this year tractor so I ended up painting two hoods. This hood was used on newer tractors than my '63 and will go to my '73.

2013-04-08193433.jpg

2013-04-08193454.jpg

2013-04-08193507.jpg

2013-04-10204446.jpg

2013-04-10204505.jpg
 
#16 ·
There were some parts I didn't get pictures of that I did differently than they originally were but I'll get those during the reassembly phase. To give you an idea of the type of detail I'm aiming for here's the shut off valve for the gas tank. There are more detail items like this throughout the entire tractor.

2013-04-14050229.jpg

2013-04-14050800.jpg

2013-04-14051450.jpg

2013-04-15012332.jpg

2013-04-15012350.jpg
 
#17 ·
Just some small parts plus I went ahead and repainted the nose cover I made before to match the color of the '63 but I kept the four seasons motif. This time though I made a template of the four seasons paint scheme on paper and plan to scan it to my hard drive for future use.

The nose cover is for when there is no attachment on the front to keep the oil in. In these pictures you can see the template I made. I taped it to the cover then used a razor knife to cut out the squares. This left lines to follow when I applied the masking tape. Then on goes the second color, easy.

2013-04-15012412.jpg

2013-04-16204750.jpg

2013-04-16210732.jpg

2013-04-16211317.jpg

2013-04-16211514.jpg

2013-04-16211531.jpg

2013-04-16213925.jpg

2013-04-16235937.jpg
 
#18 ·
I didn't think that I was going to bring the trans into work because I didn't think I could get it into my truck but I managed. While waiting for the paint on the trans to dry I started shining up the air filter adapter.

Not too bad on the tape job on the motor, I only have a little bit of cleanup to do on spots I missed with the tape. The lower part of the motor is cast aluminum so I wanted to leave it a natural color to help break up all that color and like I said before if it won't rust I didn't want to paint it.

2013-04-23014809.jpg

2013-04-23015909.jpg

2013-04-23015920.jpg

2013-04-24005847.jpg

2013-04-24005905.jpg

From here I start the reassembly phase. All the non painted items you've seen so far will start making more sense as to what I had envisioned the tractor to look like.
 
#19 · (Edited by Moderator)
And away we go.

Well I got the trans back home and managed to squeeze a couple of hours in on her while I was off shift.

The fan shroud is on there so I can set the fan belt tension, it will come back off when I put the top of the motor back together.

There's a closeup of the oil filter system to show how the brass, aluminum and painted parts compliment each other, also I decided to paint the oil pressure gauge in white epoxy. I also needed to clean the paint off the area below where the mag mounts.

2013-04-26154526.jpg

2013-04-26154546.jpg

2013-04-26154610.jpg

2013-04-26154632.jpg

2013-04-26154653.jpg

I'll leave off here for now. There isn't really too much more to ad but I fear I've over loaded the thread for one day. I'll get more up when I get the chance in a couple of days or I could ad more tonight, I'm here until 7:00 a.m. You tell me.
 
#20 ·
Wow! Thanks for the great refurb thread! It's always interesting to see a machine taken down to the components, cleaned, painted and put back together looking like new. I've never seen this done to an older Gravely and you have done a great job on the refurbish and the documentation of it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: devans
#22 · (Edited by Moderator)
Nice attention to detail. Isn't it nice working in a place where you can use company tools and techniques for what we like to call "government work". We have bead blasters, presses, CNC machine, lathe, spray booth... Makes it nice!
As long as it doesn't get out of hand, we can do what we want with company tools and equipment. We have had guys come in off time and line bore a cylinder block, bore the cylinders and rebuild the heads. As long as it was on your time....
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top