Franklin 170

[just farming]

My tired 170 Franklin showed up yesterday. It looks like I'll be doing an engine swap. Pulled the blower off and along with pieces of the blower there was what appeared to pieces of piston rings in the block. Checked the turbo and it is stuck as well. After some quick math I would be at  4K to rebuild and replace blower and turbo. Cost of replacement is $0000.00 just the elbow grease and time of changing them out. To nasty to go to the woods anyway.
Now for the questions, Do you have to pull the torque converter and engine as an assembly or can you separate them and leave the torque converter in place?

[Southside]

Just asking as I don't know how difficult it would be but for that money why not look at swapping in a Cummins 6BT?  That was the next engine in them. 

[just farming]

You are absolutely right Southside Logger, if this was going to be a production machine I would go the Cummins route. This will be a farm/hobby machine. I had a Case 450C dozer that had a 4T3.9. I was very happy with the engine. I replaced the water pump one time and changed the oil every 200 hours and that was all I ever did to it.
The Detroit will get me by considering what I have in mind to do with it.....for a lot less money. The replacement engine is a lower hour engine coming out of a paver that will be scrapped out. I know it hasn't been exposed the abuse of logging.
I was expecting to do the engine swap when I made the deal on this machine. I was hoping I might get by with a few minor repairs to the blower and be ready but that didn't happen.
One use I have in mind for this machine is mounting my sprayer on it. Here in the Appalachian mountains the soil doesn't drain well so the Good Lord propped it up so it would drain. In other word steep and rough. I built a sprayer to run on my 550G Deere. I have been in places that have never been sprayed before. Places I wouldn't dream of taking a farm tractor. The dozer is unforgiving making turns on pastures not mention wear on the machine. When they delivered the Franklin they said there's to many hills and to many turns. They liked the flat lands of Petersburg.

[Southside]

Did that machine come from Petersburg? If so I have seen it. Funny about your sprayer idea, I use mine to pull a 5 bottom sub soiler, best tillage machine around.

[just farming]

Yes it did come from Petersburg, if you have seen it you know the old girl has been rode hard. I started to see if you would look at and give you opinion. The way I look at it I can adapt the winch to fit my dozer and take the rest to the scrap yard and re-coop my money if all else fails. I figure if I can get it in the woods for <5K total it will do what I need it for.
My imagination is always outside of the box, being a machinist I have access to a wide variety of machines to aide in making my wild ideas come to life.
When I started talking about a dozer mounted sprayer people looked at me funny. After the idea sunk in I got a lot of that is a good idea. I built it to withstand the abuse of rough terrain and it also works well on a tractor with 3 point hitch. I have used it for 2 seasons now and only had 2 problems. Got a boom into a tree while I had it in the transport/storage position and the pump engine had a low oil shut down switch. If you made a right turn going down a steep hill the low oil shut down would shut it down.

[woodmaker]

I don't know about a 170,but with a q80,there is a plug on the left side ,front of the converter housing that allows access to the converter to flex plate bolts so you can remove just the engine(as long as the engine isn't seized like mine is)

[just farming]

The engine will rotate, I have turned it several times. I have all of the bolts out of the bellhousing and motor mounts. I was unsure about the torque converter. I'll check for access ports tomorrow.

[Southside]

I think you will be OK with that machine, I actually considered buying it, putting some sweat equity into it and selling it but right now I don't need another project.  When you first mentioned looking at one that one came back to mind but it had been a while since I had seen it on CL so I figured it was probably not the same one.  You should see some of the ground that is farmed in Oregon along the Columbia river using dozers to plant wheat with.  Those guys plant right to the edge of the cliff, and I mean right to the edge. 

[just farming]

I drove cross country for 8 years and was an owner operator for the last 5 of the 8. I wouldn't want to do it again but it was a good way to see the country. I remember the first time I went to the pacific northwest. I couldn't figure for the life of be how they clear cut the sides of those mountains. The same with farming, I was born and raised on a farm. I didn't have a clue until I became a professional tourist.

[mike_belben]

What made you hang up the spurs on trucking? 

[just farming]

Burned out!!!!!! To much crap. If I want to be reminded of all of the head aches I climb into my old Superliner and go to the quarry and get a load of stone. I often wonder how I did it for so long. It was like having a bungee cord attached to my belt. I ran my tail off but never got anywhere, 250K mile per year. 1990 was a good year. I sold my truck and got divorced all with in 6 months.