A Productive Week

In spite of not getting any hay cut or baled, the past week was pretty productive. Moved the majority of last year's crop to the terminal cleaning out ten grain bins. I suppose if I hadn't been doing that I might have been cutting hay. But it seemed every day there was either showers or the threat of them and I'd probably not have cut any hay. As it happened, the showers did not amount to much in this immediate area. Seems you can go from dust to mud and back to dust again in the space of half a mile.
I even took the time to get some crop photos with the Merc. The bloom is starting to fade a little on the early canola crops so I knew I better not wait much longer for photos. The sky and clouds were perfect, roads were dry, and the Merc was ready to roll. I think I got some of my best crop photos and video yet and put some of it on youtube. It will be good to look back on in December when the snow is blowing.

More Living Sky

Once again our "land of living skies" did not fail to impress me. Thunderstorm moving across the South while I was still in the clear watching the sunset. Made for some interesting photos and video. And of course an opportunity for some more "Mercury photos". That lightning strike picture is actually a freeze frame from the video. It was many miles away but still looked impressive. No rain fell here. There have been some wild storms in the South with hail and a tornado or two. Plow winds as well.

Quite A Mark Up

While shopping for groceries today this bag of wheat caught my eye.

That price works out to $300 a bushel. I'd just come from the Viterra elevator where the best price I can get for my feed grade wheat is $5.25 a bushel. But only if it is dry. All last year's wheat was harvested high moisture level because the weather simply never got dry enough all fall, right up til winter started.
I guess some spent good money on carbon taxed propane to dry their damp wheat so they will be able to sell enough to pay their bills. Mine will be safe until spring but once the weather starts to warm up, the grain in the bins will too. That is when the risk of heating grain gets real. Hopefully the aeration fans will be able to dry it down to safe levels before it starts to spoil.
On a lighter note, spring is on the way and I will be able to take the rusty old Mercury out for a bit of "stress relief".

Rusty Buckets On The Merc

I was just thinking about how we used to get around all through a Saskatchewan winter in a two wheel  drive car. No four wheel drive pickups with traction control and anti lock brakes. Just a little good driving skill and a shovel in the trunk for when your luck ran out. I can't recall my dad ever having to pull the old Merc out of a snowbank with a tractor but maybe my memory is failing.

No steel belted studded winter radial tires. Just the same old ground grip tires that had been on the car all summer. It was too costly to have an extra set of rims or tires for winter.

New plastic frost shields installed on the inside of the windows to keep at least a partial view through the frosted glass. Times have changed.

60 Year Mercury

Tomorrow, October 16th, will be the 60th anniversary of my dad buying the 52 Mercury that shows up so often in my videos. Guess I was too young to remember the day but I certainly remember the many trips in the ensuing ten years that it was the main transportation for the family. Year round through mud and snow the old Merc always got us where we needed to be. Finally in October of 69 it became impossible to start. The accumulated miles and years had dropped the compression on the old flathead so low that it would not fire up. Being an automatic transmission we did not have the time honoured method of pull  starting with a tractor. So it sat for another decade or so until my brother took on the project of getting it running again. New pistons and a valve grind put it back in great running order. Only a few miles were put on it before it was parked again as other interests came along. It was moved from one parking spot to another to eventually a spot in the woods where it was in danger of being overgrown by poplars. Finally by 2014 my interest revived in seeing if it would still run. It did! With a little work.
Got some video put together of mostly still photos from the 1960s. Including the original bill of sale.

Short Drive In the Merc Fall 19

Though I've lived in this country all my life it still amazes me the extremes we get in weather. Last week so cold I needed jacket, toque, coveralls working outside. Even had the furnace running in the mornings and evenings. Now today it was almost too hot to work. Temp well over 80 degrees by noon. We sure need the heat though. That oat hay I cut the end of August is still absolutely soaked. The ground under it is mud and in places there is water standing. True its a creek but it was dry enough to seed this spring. I need to turn those swaths or the under side will never dry. But that ground won't support a tractor. Canola swaths are still wet and showing mold inside from all the rain they've had on them. Standing wheat looks almost harvest ready until you look closer and see the green heads. By this date last year most of that wheat was in the bin and dry. No green.

Oats I have only observed from a distance but they are sure to be too green to  harvest yet. Lucky I didn't swath them or they would be soaked like the hay swaths.

Much as I don't like the heat, we need another week or two of it if there is any hope for harvesting. Sounds like we only get a few days before the next rain.

On the positive side, here is a couple of minutes of rear bumper video on my old favourite 52 Mercury from yesterday. Autumn colours are starting to show.

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52 Years Ago

This old Atlas oil change sticker is still on the driver's door frame of the 52 Mercury, Maybe it is my imagination but I seem to remember putting it there in 1967, being a helpful kid while my dad changed motor oil in the Merc . Printed in pencil I think it says July 7 1967. Oil was BA 10w-30.

I doubt I could have looked 52 years into the future and seen myself driving that car today. But here I am.
In other news, typing has become difficult and annoying since I spilled  a cup o water on my keyboard. I bought this keyboard  a few years ago because my laptop had lost function of the "r" and "d" keys. Well now the replacement keyboard has lost function of the "a,f,j, as well as the comma and period keys. No doubt due to water spill. So I am constantly shifting back and forth between keyboards to type anything. Very frustrating as I am used to rattling away full speed with all fingers and thumbs on the keyboard Typing class was one of the few useful skills that I retained from high school days
I see  a new keyboard (or laptop) in my future.

Cold

No, not the weather, just  a lousy head cold that hit me a couple of days ago.  I've had worse but its still miserable enough. Glad it waited til I finished the grain trucking. Although I 've got a bin of canola I need to transfer this week, weather permitting. I'll try not to think about that $1.50 or so per bushel I have lost on it since this time last year. Thanks to the political problems with China
So heres the latest video showing my Rube Goldberg repair on the rear axle of the 52 Merc. Its a nice new bearing but the problem was the housing that the bearing sits in had a bit of wear so the bearing was not tight in it. I used my old standby, J.B. Weld to build up the worn area. A different formulation this time. It did not look too inspiring as I applied it and bolted it all together. But I guess time will tell how well it worked. Its entirely possible the new bearing might have worked just fine without any assistance from me.

Roosty6 Works On The Merc

Doing a little more cooling system maintenance while the weather stays mild enough to work in the workshop without turning on the furnace. Its still plenty cold on bare hands touching cold cast iron but could be a whole lot worse this time of year.

Radiator Switch

It sounds simple enough but this radiator swap on the 52 Merc is testing my patience and endurance. The only thing that saved me today was that the temp was just above the  freezing point so I could work with bare hands. Even  though the 2 cars and radiators are identical, the mounting holes are just a shade off lining up and  required some persuasion. Then the top hoses would not seal up. Even tightening  the clamps to the point of twisting off, there is still anti-freeze seeping out. Chipping off corrosion  and emery cloth on the outlets has not cured it yet.
It would have been a nice day for a test drive but I did not get to that point.
Worst of all is tightening the fan and generator belts. I remembered from the spring of 2015 it was a miserable job that involved some loss of blood and many curse words. At least this time there was no blood loss, but then I am not finished either. I finally threw down  the tools and shut off the lights a half hour past supper time. Better luck tomorrow.

Overheating In Winter

Someone commented many years ago that if you can keep a Ford cool in summer and warm in winter you are doing good. The old 52 Merc did ok on the  hot summer days I drove it recently but today it boiled the radiator with the temp in the teens and snow on the ground. Of course I had covered the radiator to help bring it up to normal operating temp. The heat gauge was starting to show a bit above normal but when I felt the hoses on the engine it did not seem too hot so I continued driving. It did ok until I got a bit stuck in snow and was doing some forward/reverse rocking to get moving again. Steam from under the hood told me it was time to shut down. Anti freeze was spraying like a fountain from a previously undetected hole in the radiator top tank. This soaked the distributor and coil, further complicating re-starting. I had to "macgyver" up a replacement coil wire after I damaged the original trying pull it out of the coil.
So I got a little exercise walking home for the Massey to pull the Merc out of the slightly stuck situation. Then walk back to bring the tractor home after getting the Merc safely back in it's shed. The sun was down but not fully dark by the time I closed the doors for the day. Overall a pretty good day.
Oh yes, I also became a great uncle for the second time as of early this morning.

59 Years Ago

This week in 1959, my dad brought the "new to him" 52 Mercury home. Wish I could say I remember the day but I was just a kid and a car was just a means of dad getting us from point a to point b. It took a few years for me to get hooked on flathead Fords and just anything with wheels in general.
That old Merc took us everywhere we needed to go for the next ten years. Seemed like a long time in those days but really ten years does not seem like much now.
By the fall of 69 the old flathead V8 became inpossible to start and it was relegated to retirement. After about ten years rest it got a new lease on life when my brother removed and rebuilt the engine. Then it had another even longer retirement until the fall of 2014 when I got inspired to see if it would still run. 30+ years of outdoor storage took their toll on the body but the old flathead was soon running smooth as ever. And I was hooked on flatheads all over again.
The original bill of sale.

Calves, Checking Crops and Fixing

The title almost says it all. Just discovered the last of the 2018 calf crop arrived this evening. The cattle had not been back to the yard in a few days but did turn up this evening when they saw me out there with a pail of oat chop for them. Surprisingly a little new born calf was galloping along with the other bigger calves. I had almost given up on that last red cow having a calf this year.
I finished putting around $300 worth of new parts into the 41 year old haybine to get it working again. A few new sprockets and a bearing should (hopefully) be all it needs to cut the rest of the hay crop. Nine head of cattle don't need a lot of hay for the winter but they do need some.
Crops are looking pretty good and really advancing. We've been getting some "just in time" rains to keep them growing.
Here is some video of a crop tour from last week as seen from the top of the 52 Mercury. Driving by oats, canola and wheat.

Here is another photo from the weekend activities. It was quite a workout but many hands make light work as they say. Thats about all I can say about it for now. 

If I'm Here It Must Be Raining

And it is raining pretty good today. I've been busy as usual trying to keep up but its a struggle. One job not finished and the next one needing to be done.  This was a week of grain hauling. I'd built up quite an inventory and suddenly decided it was time for it to go. With the uncertainty of grain markets due to tariff wars, GMOs, etc and other excuses, I was pretty sure prices were headed even lower. Thanks to the 108 horsepower vacuum cleaner we loaded a good many semi loads from Monday to Thursday and emptied at least 12 bins if I recall right. No grain dust to breathe and less back strain compared to the old fashioned  way of moving grain.
Crops looking pretty good thanks to the rain that finally showed up just in time. Patchy canola fields due to some poor emergence but they are filling  in and will make a decent  crop.
I need to be hitched onto the haybine cutting hay as it matured a bit early due to lack of spring rains. Although with today's soaker it is just as well to be still standing and not rotting in the swath.
Weed spraying is late of course. My canola will only get one application of Roundup but it was not bad for weeds compared to some years. Still got a field or two of oats need spraying for broad leaf weeds but that won't likely happen for a couple of days now as it is mud everywhere. I saw 20 mm in the gauge this morning but have not checked it since this afternoon's downpour. Got to be well over an inch now I'd guess.
Somehow I managed to work in a short crop tour to the hundred acre woods with the Merc last weekend. Got a bit of drone video of it.

Some Welding

All this talk of wire welding and now, finally, I have some video showing the results. It turned out pretty well for an amateur I think.
Now that I have one solid corner on the body maybe I can use that as a base to continue along the entire rocker panel. And then the floor?

Rust Assessment

Shot some video yesterday showing the worst of the rust on the "new" 53 Merc. There is not much good steel left under the front floor mats. Nothing that I can't patch up though. Not many years ago a car this rusty would have been designated as a "parts car" and stripped down to pieces for other restorers. But as the supply of fifties Mercs dries up even an old sedan like this one is worth keeping intact I think.. No, its not going to be a restoration show car. Just patched up good enough to look good and keep my feet from hitting the ground as I drive. (Assuming I ever get the engine unseized and running.) Really, from the rocker panels up the car is pretty much rust free. Its just 3 years ago that I was working on the same problem on the 52 Merc. In fact it had worse rust than this one. And now its a driver! Amazing what some stove pipe metal and sheet metal screws can do. It gives me hope for this one.

Steel Wool and Determination

Continuing the clean up using steel wool and diesel fuel to remove the 60 odd years of lichen, rust and other accumulation on the trunk lid of the 53 Mercury. I'm taking advantage of the unseasonably mild weather as today is supposed to be the last nice day until next March.

Its almost exactly 3 years ago I started working on the 52. It had much worse floor rust than this 53 so I'm fairly confident I can repair this one. Not up to show standards of course but good enough that my feet won't hit the ground when I sit in the drivers seat.

Old Rusty Iron

I didn't want to post this on the Ford Barn forum or facebook where the experts will smile, laugh or ridicule my crude efforts at rust repair. But here I will just post it for my own reference.
That old 52 Merc looks good from a distance but, up close, it has some major rust damage. I'm talking holes you could put your hands through. I'm hoping to improve on that a bit with some patching. My 40+ year old Smith Roles arc welder is great for heavy metal but its very hard to make a decent weld on light steel like old car fenders, without burning right through it.
I've been researching different welders from the infinite wealth of knowledge on the net. Conclusion seems to be that the little low amp ac stick welders are a waste of money even as cheap as they are. Cheaper Mig welders might work for a while but likely won't be a good investment for long term use. Good mig welders are a LOT of money and more than I want to spend right now just to repair some rusty car body parts.
So I started out today with something very simple (I thought). Removing a rusted out support between the fender and radiator. Fabricating a replacement out of heavier metal and getting it fastened in place actually went well (for me). The heavier metal is easier to weld without burning through yet still light enough to bend into the shape I need.
Its far from "show quality" but it will be strong and with a little black paint should be fine.

Mercury Snow Drive 2017

I guess this makes it real winter as of November 4, 2017. The 52 Mercury needed a little exercise and the snow was dry enough that it wouldn't stick and make too much mess. Actually it did stick under the fenders and frame and I had to blow the snow off before parking it back under cover. Ran great and heated up just find as I had covered the radiator with a piece of cardboard. Only about 20 degrees so starting was not too difficult. Some drone video would have been great but just a little too much trouble to get it all set up and considering the sun was not at it's best I figured wait for another day.

I put the first hay bale out for the cattle yesterday evening. There is still some old dried grass in the pasture they were feeding on but I could tell they were looking for something better. Its almost 3 weeks earlier than I started feeding them last winter so hopefully I will have enough hay to last the winter.

Down The Highway and Through The Woods

Just some scenic video I put together from a couple of days ago. Leaf scenery is as good as I have ever seen it here. I've taken a lot of pictures of it over the years but never get tired of seeing it from new angles. Gopro on the sun visor of the old Merc as I cruised down the highway. Then some drone video as I drove the winding trail through the woods. Stopped for a photo re-enactment in the same spot as the Merc was parked in a 1961 photo by Grandpa's house. A lot of changes over the years but the old Merc continues to be a common thread.

We will likely lose a lot of those leaves if the winds get as strong as predicted.