Try to find a vehicle on the farm that will actually start day

Well the plan for today was to clean out the air seeder and put it away now that seeding is finished. What I actually did today was to work on vehicles that wouldn't start.. including the John Deere 8200.

I've had niggling problems with it starting for quite some time now. All I'd get was a "click" when trying to start. Usually after a few "clicks" it'd actually engage the starter and start no problems. Well after clicking away for about 10 minutes this morning I gave in and decided that maybe today it wasn't going to start. I checked the starter/solenoid, fuses, relays... the operators manual, but didn't have any luck. So I called the local John Deere dealer. He couldn't help either but had a service tech in the area that could come round later in the day. It didn't take him long to diagnose a faulty starter relay. That effectively means that the relay wouldn't close and send voltage to the starter solenoid to turn the starter. So there's a new one being freighted down overnight. I'll fit it in the morning and we'll be all go again... then air seeder clean out.

I don't remember if I mentioned that I had problems with the supalux (toyota hilux) a few weeks back. If not, the story is that it completely died on me on the way home with it one day. Since then we pushed it into the shed to deal with after seeding. Well it's after seeding now so I dealt with it. A quick call to the RAA (Royal Automobile Association - road service organisation), and the mechanic come out to have a look. He found no spark, anywhere. Nothing at the spark plug, nothing at the points, nothing at the coil, nothing even at the ignition fuse in the cab. But he did find a blown main 30amp fuse near the battery. He didn't have a spare, but has ordered one. Least he found the problem and, once again, as soon as I have the part I'll be on the road again.

I'm also not sure if I mentioned that the Ford 8401 tractor has a clutch problem. I'm sure I would have, but probably not updated you that I've taken the tractor into the workshop in town. The mechanic was working on it today, and found the the clutch has got serious problems, and that he has to split the tractor in two to check it out, and fix it up. I'm hoping to get some good pictures of this.

I didn't think we'd had any rain in the last 24 hours, so I never checked the rain gauge this morning, even though my wife said she thought she heard rain in the night. I know that I should never question the wisdom of a good woman, and found, when I did actually look in the gauge late this afternoon, that we had in fact had 4mm of rain at some stage. I'm glad she was right.