The tale of the tractor ~ January 27, 1994

David Heiller

The Oliver 66 Row Crop Tractor quit working about a month ago, which sent me on an adventure that ended tonight.

David had many tractor adventures.
He did love having a tractor. 

I'm no mechanic. A long list of people start to tremble when I have tractor problems, because they know I’ll be calling and asking dumb questions.

But first I did have enough sense to check the gas tank. Plenty there. I cleaned the sediment bowl to get rid of any water. The gas lines were clear and running to the carburetor.

So Ι figured that it had to be an electrical problem. I called Jim Kephart first. I’ve been known to rouse Jim from a sound sleep to ask him tractor questions. Jim took a deep, patient breath.

JIM: It seems to me you’ve got some bad wires running to the coil. Did you check those bad wires? ME: No. How do you check them?

JIM: With a volt ohm meter. Don’t you have a volt ohm meter? Jim carries a volt ohm meter with him like some people carry, a pocket knife. Anybody who doesn’t have a volt ohm meter is a little bit suspect in Jim’s eyes.

ΜE: What’s a volt ohm meter?

Jim is a teacher. No student of his will ever leave Willow River High School without knowing what a volt ohm meter is. Unfortunately, I graduated from high school 23 years ago, and I didn’t have him for a teacher.

So I moved on to Pat Mee, owner of Askov Deep Rock. I like to spread my ignorance around. I told him I didn’t think my tractor had a spark.

“Do you have a volt ohm meter?” he asked.

Once we got past that hurdle, he told me to check the spark by taking the spark plug out and holding it near the tractor. A spark should arc off, he said.

I went home that night and tried it. No spark.

So I asked Marvin Shank, Pat’s right hand man at Askov Deep Rock, what to do next. “Could be the points,” Marvin said gruffly. If you take your car to Marvin Shank, first thing he’ll ask is if you checked the points. If you need air in your tire, he’ll ask if you checked the points.

“What are the points?” I asked.

Marvin explained about points. He told me how to check them. So I went home that night and checked the points. They were fine, but they didn’t spark.

Back to Marvin the next day. He said: Did you check the coil?” He had a tone that said: You checked the coil, right?

“What’s the coil?” I asked.

So he told me about the coil, and I went that night, and there was no spark from the coil

It must be the switch then, I figured. So I took the switch off and had Dan Zimmer at Sturgeon Lake Oil check it for me. The switch worked fine.

So Ι went back to Marvin. He told me to buy a circuit tester at Stanton Lumber. “Check the resistor,” he told me.

“What’s the resistor,” I said.

He told me about the resistor.

Then the weather turned to 40 below for two, straight weeks, and I forgot about the whole lousy thing.

Until yesterday, when my fancy Stanton Lumber circuit tester showed a bad resistor and bad wire to the coil.

And today, I bought a new resistor at Jenson Tractor in Askov, and put in a new wire to the coil, and sure enough, the Oliver 66 Row Crop Tractor started right up.

I had to jump it first because the battery was dead. But I know how to jump a tractor. An idiot can do that.