New weekend, new activities for Garlic Mom, Daron and Garlic Pete.

[Garlic Pete]

We scheduled a weekend trip to bring back some of our stuff from the Harvest Spectacular last July. Mom, Daron and I met for some lunch last Friday, then hit the road for the four hour drive to French Camp. At French Camp we picked up our last treasure from the many we acquired from SilverState55's Grandfather, a nearly new D4C, nice John Deere tandem disk and star roller. Silverstate's Grandfather maintained and operated everything himself and all of his equipment was top shelf. This D4C has a very nice No. 4 toolbar setup. We already brought the toolbar with 24" subsoilers and the pusharms home, since they had been removed to allow use with the disc.

We arrived at French Camp about 5:00 pm, just around dusk. A very nice neighbor had parked the D4C at the back of his property and helped us to find the right place to park, break down the truck and load up. Here are some pictures of the D4C at rest, moving around and loading up.

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The complete set just fit on the trailer perfectly. We didn't measure real carefully but our calibrated eyeball told us we were right at the 12 foot maximum our permit allowed. I don't know if its just me, but it seems every time we stop, one or another clearance lights always seem to want attention. In this case, the feed to the right tractor traillights decided to shake itself apart. After loading and some minor electrical repairs, we headed up the road for a nice truckstop coffee shop dinner, then to Clarksburg for a visit and stay with the Aunt and Uncle.

Saturday morning, we unloaded the D4C, disc and roller, as they will stay at Clarksburg for a while.

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Daron and I then headed to a warehouse where we had stashed Daron's C-Pull a few months ago. We pumped up the rear tires, got the Cummins 155 fired up and prepared to load.
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The tractor pulled up on the trailer easily, but when we got to the point of lifting the front wheels up onto the trailer tandems, while at the same time pulling the rear tires up onto the trailer, the left steering clutch appeared to slip.

After several unsuccessful tries, we decided to adjust the steering clutch. In preparing to do that, Daron happened to notice that the valve stem on the left drive wheel had disappeared. Daron and I have noticed over time that our learning curve is pretty flat. We had previously spun a tire, ruining a tube and necessitating a trip to the tire man, and vowed that we would check the air pressure every time. Unfortunatly, we both slept since then. Having identified that problem, we decided to unload the C-Pull and leave it at the warehouse for a later tire repair. We unloaded with no trouble and I was driving it around to a convenient place for a tire guy, when I noticed Daron frantically waving and shouting to stop. That was also when i noticed a pronounced list to the left. Upon dismounting, I discovered that the lock and lock ring had fallen off in my maneuvering and i've apparently done half the job for the tire man.

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We decided to leave well enought alone, since the C-Pull was in a pretty convenient place. We put the truck back together and headed to Woodland. There is a Jack in the Box conveniently located in Woodland on the way to Wallace's, and Daron and I needed some fuel after the morning's adventures. We decided that a Breakfast Jack sandwich was just the thing. We pulled in, got our food and started munching. As we were eating, a nice gentleman pulled up in a 1913 Buick touring car, just as though it was an everyday occurance. We struck up a conversation, finding out that the gentleman bought it thirty years ago completely disassembled. He put it back together to see if anything was missing (it wasn't) and if it would run (it did). He has driven it 170,000 miles, taking it to through Mexico and various other places. Garlic Mom has a 1914 White 5 Ton truck (Garlic Mom doesn't fool around with the light duty stuff, you see), so we had some common backround to discuss.

The gent was nice enough to recommend that we open the bonnet and take a look, since we were ready to depart before he was. We took him up on his offer, and dallied around taking pictures long enough that he finished his meal and came out to visit some more. He indicated that he was having a leisurely Saturday morning and wondered if we'd like to go for a ride down the bypass and back. We couldn't pass that up, so we took a nice excursion.

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Note the exposed rocker arms and pushrods, which the gentleman indicated needed oil from the handy oil can every 100 miles. Note also the speedometer drive behind the left, front wheel.

After our excursion, we proceeded to the play area for the day's main event. There, we found Jesse's 36A D8, MikeMc and his HO D8, several D7s, one with our five bottom John Deere plow, one with a nice grader, a mini-excavator and a backhoe working. We added our D7 9G with cable Kay Brunner ripper and FWD truck tractor to the mix.

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We spent the balance of the morning and early afternoon playing and having fun, as you can see above. As things were wrapping up, Pat Ghilotti was kind enough to help us with his excavator and skills to load our plow onto Garlic Mom's grey trailer for transport home.

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After that, we went over to Wallace's to load the FWD and ripper onto MikeMc's mighty Kenworth and trailer.

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At that point, Garlic Mom, Daron and I departed for West Sacramento. A long time family friend had passed away recently and we stopped to visit his widow, help her assess the farming and shop equipment he had accumulated and give her some recommendations for eventually liquidating things. Andy's Dad, and Andy after him, had farmed for their lifetimes and have accumulated a very nice, useful collection of stuff. Some selected photos below.

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After that nice visit, we returned to Clarksburg, got cleaned up and had a nice dinner.

[Garlic Pete]

The next morning, we took a quick picture of the morning lineup, then headed for Elk Grove to pick up a forklift and Thirty for another friend.

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At Elk Grove, we inspected several more treasures, then eventually buckled down and loaded the forklift.

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The forklift mast is 13 feet high while sitting on the ground, and our deck height is 2 feet 3 inches. Fully tilted forward, the mast is pretty much vertical, so the first idea was to pick up the rear of the forklift and sit it on tractor wheels, getting some lean on the mast.

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That didn't yield enough lean to gain the two feet of clearance we needed, so we had to remove the pins from the tilt cylinders to lean the mast separate from the lift.

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We proceeded back to the freeway and headed South toward some lunch. While cruising along on the freeway, we got a frantic call from Garlic Mom, who was riding drag, indicating that we'd dropped a tilt cylinder on the freeway. Garlic Mom quickly pulled to the side of the road, walked back about 3/4 of a mile and picked up the tilt cylinder, which weighed about seventy pounds, and lugged it back up to her rig. After lugging it about a half mile, a kindly tattoo parlor owner with a giant red beard stopped, put the cylinder in his trunk and gave Garlic Mom a ride the rest of the way back to the Suburban, trailer and plow. She said she was never so glad to see a bunch of tattoos!

Meanwhile, Daron and I chained the other cylinder on, just in case its retainer was as faulty as the other one. We met back up, got our lunch and sailed South back to Garlic Mom's. We arrived about 6:30 pm. MikeMc was about an hour ahead of us, so he met us out there so we could unload the FWD and ripper to free up his trailer.

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All in all, it was a very fun weekend. We got to play with many different people and pieces of equipment, the weather was perfect and the company was fine.

We will deliver the forklift next weekend and pick up our new 966 and a couple of implements we left scattered. We hope to do another circuit to Woodland in a few weeks, hopefully with three trucks on this turn, which will allow us to get most of our remaining stuff home.

Pete.

[ianoz]

Great story and Photos Pete .

[lyoncat]

Thanks for the story and the great photos, and once again Garlic Mum is picking up the pieces doing the behind the scenes work!
Pete your Mother is a saint for sure and you are blessed!
Keep them coming.
Mike.

[ROME/KG]

Great pics Pete, that was a pretty neat day! Glad you had fun!

[Barstart]

Thank you, Pat, for the backhoe lessons:

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Sue

[chriscokid]

Ok Pete time to submitt that to the magizine.
BUt I would leave out pic #148 hahaha

[d4e]

Hey Pete, I think you need to add this single axle FWD to your collection. Would look good next to your 3 axle. It is on ebay in Apple Valley.It says its got a gas engine, looks lika Jimmy to me.The same guy has several other Cats on ebay.