Made a little progress today, engine is serviced, got the water pump replaced, looks like last time it was done somebody attempted to put the pump back in without the gasket, in doing so they used a liberal amount of the red Silicone, pump was leaking around the bottom sealing surface, replaced with a new, not reman pump, I have had to many troubles out of reman parts in times past.
Then we got on to resealing track adjusters, the one on the right side has never worked, track tension has been close to where it needed to be, but when I had tried to tighten it up it would not take grease, replaced grease zerk, still no go, the left side has always leaked down slowly.
Both sides came apart easy, had track spilt and idler fork out in about 15 minutes per side, but that’s where the fun begin, right side piston was froze in the tube, tried break clean, then penetrating lube, then screwing in a slide hammer ( which the book does not tell you about, the back of the piston has a threaded hole, 9/16 I believe, all the book says is remove piston) but it was stuck hard, then tried heating the tube with the torch to melt the hardened grease then pulling with a nut screwed down the piece of all thread while hitting with the slide hammer, still no go, so as a last ditch effort we took the slide hammer off, cut the all thread, and put the impact wrench on the nut on the remaining all thread and hammered away trying to pull the piston out, and of course the all thread broke, so that was 2 hrs of the morning wasted.
So after throwing all that in the scrap pile and just being resolved to buying a new idler fork and piston we went to the other side, screwed the slide hammer into the back of the piston and a few bumps and out she came, a few minutes of cleaning and pressing a new seal on, and that side is sitting on the floor ready to go.
With the tracks broke, the out side crossbar pins are easy to get at, I had about decided to leave them alone but after seeing how much room there is to work around them now, and with having to wait on parts this week since we need a new idler fork and piston, we went ahead and removed one of the pins, the out side collar that the pins go through had approximately 1/8 to 1/4” of slop, I have already found a piece of heavy wall pipe, I’m going to cut the collars off and make new ones that will hold the pin tight, and order new pins, and weld the new collars on, probably will take into next weekend to get this done but that should have everything as tight and as close to new as I can get.