Nice work on the wire-Very clean! 
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I was so excited to finish this and rushed to post a pic. I will bet you an aircraft mechanic will appear from the sky to criticize. In this case that would be great.
Its my first time to actually safety wire something, but Ive seen it done. My harbor freight safety wire pliers stopped latching closed on the second set of bolts. So thats mostly twisting by hand. Some of the wire positioning in the bolts is questionable but threading the wire through some places was not possible with my skills. Red loctite is also on the bolts.
Be fair aircraft mechanics. Haha. Let me know if Ive worsened safety though please.
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Actually I am a former U.S. Navy Jet Engine mechanic and have done literally miles of safety wire in my days and they look good to me.
I remember well the days I spent in school learning how to do it by hand first and only after mastering that did we move on to using safety wire pliers. Talk about some sore fingers and hands.
Keep the updates coming looks like that is going to be one sweet ride when you get it done.
Edit:
I went back and looked close and they all look like they are positioned correctly enough to me. I think you did a fine job especially for doing it by hand. That is no easy task, I know oh to well what that is like.
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Latest update on the tractor repairs.
In my previous post I showed the installation of the thrust washers and now the view of the 2 piece real seal housing that covers up the view of those on the back side of the engine.
The lower half of the engine is back together and back on the cherry picker. Plans are to bolt it back to the rear half of the tractor this coming weekend.
Front of engine all back together
Flywheel and new 2 stage clutch assembly back on.
Hanging on the cherry picker and all ready to re-attach.
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Just out of curiosity-Why leave the head off the engine? Most teardowns/installs I’ve done involve the head being on the motor. Granted-I’ve not done any heavy equipment repair. The largest I’ve worked on was a 454 we took out of a friend’s truck back when I was in high school.
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Mostly because this engine is so heavy it makes it much easier to re-install it to the back half of the tractor. The back plate that goes between the 2 sections is cast iron and the massive oil pan is also cast iron. The flywheel on this because of the 2 stage clutch is also very heavy as well as the 2 stage clutch assemble. The 4 pieces I mentioned probably add almost 400 pounds to the weight of the engine itself.
The head is very easy to put on once the engine is bolted back to the rest of the tractor so it just seems easier to me to do it this way. If I had a larger, heavier duty engine stand and cherry picker I probably would have done the head before installation.
The reason for the massive oil pan is that unlike a car or truck that has a steel frame the oil pan is actually part of the framework on farm tractors like this. The front axle assemble actually bolts directly to the oil pan.
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Wow! Learn something new every day-Thanks for taking the time and also sharing the journey you’re going through with this beastie!
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@wvsanta Wow, I actually did NOT know that. Spent many years, and dollars breaking, building up, fixing, lifting, rolling, repairing a lot of 4X4’s, and this actually caught me off guard. The old adage holds true (from a co-worker), “You don’t know, what you don’t know…”.
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Awesome Santa! Haha what a coincidence. My concern was some of the bolts I wrapped the wire around nearly 180 degrees. I paid attention to the direction I wrapped the wire, but it still seems like some of the wires may be held the way they are by wishful thinking. We shall see though.
I cant wait to hear those little guitar strings sing when I hit the binders. Never had two piece rotors on a car before, but I just love the sound from race bikes with safety wire on the rotors.
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Considering you used red Loctite also I highly doubt you will have any issues.
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Yes, Red for the win !!!
The engine is finally back attached to the rest of the tractor. We ran into some major problems getting the 2 stage clutch assembly to line up on the shaft. I get very small windows of opportunity to have “muscular” help on this because my son has been working crazy amounts of overtime and sometimes working 12 to 14 days in a row without a day off.
Now let me explain a 2 stage clutch. This is a clutch that is in reality 2 different clutches in one unit with only one clutch pedal working both stages.
When you push the clutch pedal in the first half of the travel works the connection between the engine and the transmission. The second half of the travel of the clutch pedal works the PTO drive. This setup allows you to stop and take off or back up while the PTO drive is still engaged and working the attachment you have on. This is very useful for many of the different things you do with a farm tractor.
Number 1 is the flywheel that attaches to the crankshaft and number 2 is the clutch assembly. This consist of 2 separate pressure plates and two separate clutch plates. The black plastic piece sticking out is the alignment tool used to line up all of this so it SHOULD slide right on the input shaft for the transmission and PTO drive.
The circled part is the drive splines for the transmission only.
Now the circled part shows the PTO drive splines only.
This is a shot of this same picture but before I blew it up to show the shaft better.
The problem we ran into when trying to get the engine back onto the transmission housing was the PTO shaft has some up and down play inside of the transmission shaft. This caused it to keep getting hung up and not going thru the clutch plate properly. After several times of trying to re-aling the clutches differently and putting the engine back in we decided to take a break so I could call a friend and see if he had any suggestions. Keep in mind my Son and I had been at this for probably 5 hrs at this point.
The friend I called worked on farm tractors for a living his whole life and he just laughed and told me to fold up a tiny piece of paper and wedge it in the opening between the shafts on the bottom to hold the PTO shaft up some. He said the paper will be shredded to dust the first time the shafts turn separately and not hurt a thing.
The little piece of paper got shoved in between the shafts at the area this arrow is pointing.
Did it work? You bet it did. When we slide the engine back in this time we had it in with minimal effort in less than 20 min.
Will that little piece of paper hurt anything? I hope not but my buddy assured me it will not. Hope he’s right.
Now to help ya’ll understand how many farm tractors have no separate frame like a car or truck does.
The rear axel housing ( #3)
The transmission housing (#2)
The oil pan (#1)
The engine (#4)
When this is all back together number 1, 2 and 3 actually make up the FRAME of this tractor.
This is a better view of the oil pan for the engine
This is the part of the oil pan that the front axle attaches to the tractor.
And last, the front axle carrier and axle’s. This assembly I would guess is very close to 200lbs or possibly even a little more. And no I have no clue how many kilograms or what ever that equals. ( I think I have mentioned I hate metric before some place LOL) Just to old to try and learn something new.
More to come in the near future.
By the way @therabidweasel if you ever decide you want a decent set of safety wire pliers try Milbar brand. They seem to be the best I have ever used. I know it is hard to see but the black lines running across inside the red circle is indeed Safety wire on a farm tractor LOL.
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Check out this C8 Corvette. This thing fly’s around the track
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To bad GM is gonna be out of business.
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There has been rumors that Corvette will turn into it’s own company
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I would love to put this Nelson twin turbo set up on my 2011 Camaro SS
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Even if it was it would still be under the GM umbrella, so unless it’s sold off it won’t make a difference.
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Check this video out
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I’m not a gear head by any means, but I did the rear brakes on my 2008 Tundra awhile back and it was a breeze, I am pretty sure I could be a mechanic
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Did you know as a Profession that Car Mechanics have the lowest suicide rate? True …very personally satisfying to fix broken stuff, solve complex puzzles, and bang hot chics in your 1,500 HP Camaro. Ya know they offer classes in various Automotive fields? Plus since you live in Canada you can call that place you fix cars your “Graj” eh? So that’s a bonus. Sorry, I just like typing Canadian 
“…lets go oat tooda graj”
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