FORGOTTEN 1969 Melroe/Bobcat Skidsteer - WILL IT RUN?

i'm out on the family farm here and that's where my 1969 melrose kept later on known as a bobcat or skid steer this one here has been in the family for 51 years and worked in this very barn for almost all of those it hasn't run in many many years i'm gonna try to fire it up today and clean this thing out just one more time [Music] [Applause] i figured he'd learn you up on the history of the unit here real quick before we dig in my late grandfather bought this in 69 brand new rat for many years and then my uncle mike actually restored this thing for i think it was a high school shop project back then and then years down the road my older brother chris ended up putting not one but two engines in this with my grandfather and the second one actually came out of a swather it's a wisconsin four-cylinder and that's what's in it now we haven't found many parts actually nothing uh in the last few days so we're going to try to get it running with what we have here and i do know that there are some known issues with this thing when i parked it here uh carburetor mainly it's just she it's not good and you have to play with the choke and it's just not happy but we'll see if we can get that off and clean it up so i think what i want to do to start there's some chickens over here when did those come in here anyway is we should get this out of here and over into the main shop there's no lights in here outlets or anything like that so we're going to try to find something that runs around here and drag this over to there and then we can dig right into that carburetor there is another gale skid loader on the property and i'm hoping i could just get it in here and hook a chain on it and we'll drag it out and then we don't have too far to go basically right across the yard here over to that shop that's where we got tools and electricity and whatnot and there's that old gale sitting right there so we'll go over and see if we could fire that up i did have that running oh five months ago i think so this guy here just needed a different ground setup down to the engine and that did it it used to float over here and well that really didn't do much she's got a new battery now and all that and then we had lost the key and we put a new ignition in it and now that key is gone so i don't think this is going to be an option so we'll have to use some other tractors maybe the new holland will get in there with some chains or something so this rig's my cousin tommy's and uh we're not able to get it started there's wires hanging out everywhere and none of them are sparkling but we're thinking we can get this freightliner out of here it's leaked about 74 gallons of oil on the ground but it doesn't eat all of it of course the battery was dead so we're boiling those right now uh maybe a few more minutes and then we get this out of the shop we figure we can get that melrow in this area and have some pretty decent lights put those overheads in geez 10 years ago maybe i don't know [Music] it's going to be a little tight but i think we can i think we could freeze it out [Music] there this will give us plenty of space to work so we decided not to go out this door because there's a pretty good hill there and she's just gonna take off so we did the right thing and hooked a bunch of miscellaneous chains and straps and all sorts of stuff i got it rigged onto the duramax because the bi-directional has a flat tire and the ford won't start and the duals are off of the 1086 over there and the john deere's hooked on the baler there's just you know we're just running out of options we're just gonna hope that we don't clip all these posts down and everything else and drag her out it should freewheel and hope it goes good i guess [Music] i didn't get to see it but it sounded pretty not good were the wheels turning at least yeah she just swung over the front all right we'll give her another go the game come unhooked wow what's going on [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] well my cousin called back we think we know how to hot wire this board now so we'll try to get that out and then we'll just we're gonna just push this in the rest of the way so [Music] [Music] so [Music] give you a little closer look at this old girl these are not fun to work on i mean it is just jammed in here yeah my grandpa actually did eventually sell this and it ended up being to one of my older brother's friends so i did the right thing and bought it back for way too much money and he did some work to it he got the high low working and he put a new rim on it it was just rotted out and i'll never forget the day i brought this back i was excited because my grandpa and i always used to work on old tractors together and stuff and i said hey i got an old piece of equipment we can restore and he says he did and then i showed him the melrose and he kind of chuckled and then he said i hate that thing i'm not gonna get rid of it too much history so i think where we're gonna start is just see if we can get it to make some smoke and maybe fire a little bit the batteries underneath the seat here so i got on both all this stuff i think i put a never start in it like six or seven years ago something like that and air cleaners up here i'll shoot some ether down here and see what happens but the carburetor down here it's a pain to get to and there's a bunch of different linkages and the governor and the throttle and i know the carburetor needs a ton of work because i've seen that thing beat on with every tool you could imagine including angle iron and pry bars and that was the fix you know you just get back here and tickle on the fuel make it happener and then she'd run and i think we'll eventually have to just take all this mess off pull this unit out as a hole and then it would be easier to pop the carburetor off which is these two bolts there but first we'll get the seat off and i'm sure we're going to have to get the old charger later on i can't see nothing got the right one where should we lose all these at now i used to set them on the tire and then [Music] all right close your eyelids [Music] so much bird poop just everywhere you said battery acid dust in your mouth yeah it's it's barely that'll make it a little easier on guy we're just kind of trying to swallow all the battery acid dust we just consumed here's what we got what's the smallest battery you can get some zip ties fuel hose oh the rubbage you know you got to keep that down charging whirler which i think has a belt that runs to the shaft and then this shaft runs up to this looks like a snowmobile clutch basically and then this is just jammed you know so far in there you can't even work on it basically so we'll put a charger i'm sure this is dead that was years ago i put that in and i'll get this off as well to get some laughing gas down in there this is kind of neat this whole bank here this part is actually the fuel tank which you feel up here and then comes out right there and then if i remember correctly this side's the oil yeah so then that there should be a line yeah it's down there well let's just see i'm not even gonna pull sparklaters out let's just see if it makes noise before we get too far here we got the good charger on it and after 20 minutes making the actual clamp do something this one turns red when we start turning the key so i think we're getting close we decided to open up the back here and take a look at the distributor and oh this seems fine got a coil down here somewhere ballast resistor we'll clean this up a little bit and see if these wires are eaten by mice or anything this must have been the last time they dropped the engine and they got the firing order on here just throw a little masking tape on there i don't think it's going to have a spark issue but just in case we got this out anyway needed this model number and i spent probably 20 minutes yesterday trying to look through the counterweight to see that instead of just taking this off and swinging the door open so that was that was nice still don't remember where the dipstick is on this we'll find it eventually it's kind of a really odd engine well we found it finally it's this piece of hose clamped into this thing with this right here i thought was a vent but rip it up here and yeah she's got oil that's probably from the 70s so we'll pretend we didn't see that and just put it back in here i'm positive this has probably never been checked because you can't see how to put it back in unless you go through the trouble of opening this up and come to think of it in all the years that i've owned it i've never changed the filter or i think put engine oil on it to be honest did you ever do anything no i just i'm gonna try to clean these batteries up a little bit we've had it boiling for about 20 minutes and we're just it's not working so maybe a connection issue nope battery's bad i can't believe i didn't disconnect it but i think when i stored this it was really windy and snowy that day and i just wanted to get it over with i think they were really dirty i just been in your juice and on all the stuff kind of in preparation of taking it off but noticing that a lot of the carburetor linkages are really just stuck and probably could have contributed to a lot of the issues in the past especially this governor rod is locked up but it could have worked before i just can't quite remember fuel filter looks fairly clean i know that i put that in this is the filter that i always use but i'll probably bust some of this stuff loose too here in a second see all the batteries doing nope still nothing it's a really skinny one i got some in the truck but they're going to be too big for that unfortunately i thought maybe this little one would fit but it's still too big well maybe i should take a measure stick across that actually i don't have one though anybody got a tape measure around this place we're gonna forward this fastly this battery just it's doing nothing but boiling and not turning so we're gonna do the right thing and put the wrong battery in and just bend all the brackets all the way and take off everything that holds it in and then just jam it in there the cables are really short so we can't just prop it up and then we'll see what happens since these super start batteries don't last that one looks fairly new i'm going to put a super start battery on it not even close to the grinders bubba go grab that boat battery on there the one that i thought wasn't gonna fit cause it's not fitting no you gotta keep jamming yeah uh that's a premium power that wouldn't even turn over a buick keep jamming jam down oh it seems to be the primary hydraulic system we need to bend all the way i'll go get a pry bar so we just did the battery mod where you get a flap disc in here and just slim them up a little bit now we'll get it in maybe oh it's hitting the there's a is it fine it's good enough to test on it maybe yeah it's dead get the turd drill where's that going on i got updates we're uh print near two hours into this and we're you know nothing's done well the new bad battery is boiling the second one i think i'm just gonna skip the hole can we make it make smoke kind of bark off because pretty positive it will that is getting really bad audacity smell well but i think what i'm going to do is just jump right in and get this carburetor off somehow i'm gonna try to get it out underneath the bottom of the manifold so that if not we'll just take the whole thing off gotta eventually get to there anyway so i just feel like you know i just we gotta get something done you guys gotta get this mufflator just out of the way so i can see what's going on yes that broke it right off broke right off but loose on here so that's just the pipe nipple just jammed into the manifold and then was clamped on you know whatever works works now i can get in and break these bolts off here into the head which will probably be not repairable and then i'm hoping that this whole thing might come out or we can whale it around enough to get the choke cable and whatever all these levers and springs do that's never coming back well 76 months later i think we're gaining on her a little bit got this choke cable back here it's just hanging on get this off and then i think we can just lift this out there we go how did i never unhook the throttle i just found the issue with the carburetor i'll show you here in a second so this is what it looks like out of the rig and it was sitting in like that and these are the two bolts to get it out i just thought we'd take the whole unit off but already you can see the throttle shaft coming across and there's just a tremendous amount of play in that thing so that's why you had to just modulate on the choke a bunch most likely but i'm still going to take it apart and clean it up and see if i can maybe rebushing that probably not or find another one of these fuel make it happeners on the interwebs it's probably going to be the best bet took the air hose to her cleaned her up just a little bit see how bad this is they even move side to side in here but that's pretty excessive there is another engine like this that used to sit against the wall somewhere in here but we can't find it might be down on the junk row i'm gonna try to clean this up and then we might go look at that one i gotta be really careful though i don't actually have a carb kit so if i mess this gasket up that also has rtv sealant and jb weld and stuff around it then i'm really in trouble by the way i wasn't joking when i said this thing's been beat on more than a cabin screen door look at this i can just hear the pliers bouncing off of this at 6 30 in the morning right now you know trying to get it to come back [Music] [Applause] around [Music] well i use this excellent knife in china that's how you know they're good and split these two apart this one's clearly a new one and i i don't know why they were stacked but if they're stacked the bowl is going to hang lower than it should so then the floats are not going to be set correctly from what i can tell someone came in and just put a needle and seat down and just kind of uh threw everything else together it's still very dirty in there i'm gonna try to back that piece out and then same on this piece i think i'm going to get that little guy out of there not a well yeah that's pretty bad actually but this is bone dry there wasn't a drop of fuel in the thing clean this up as much as we can pretend we didn't see this issue put it all back together and then i think we're gonna go scrape through the junk pile and see if somehow we can find another bendix carburetor nope that won't happen well i think i got this put back together about as good as she's gonna get i also cleaned this up and it just dawned on me there was no intake gasket whatsoever here so we're gonna run the town we gotta get a bite to eat anyway but i'm going to get some of that high temp stuff for now and just just gobber in there let that set up i'm going to have to take it apart again eventually to do the carburetor right so i'll try to source those gaskets up i also need to put a washer on the inside of this there's just a little plastic thing in there now and this clearly is not working very well chris found this pretty neat i don't know when my grandpa did it but it was a piece of plywood that actually shimmed out the throttle who knows how many years that's been there oh yeah i also dropped a nut into the engine we're never ever going to get back that's a fine thread one of these so we're gonna do that while we're in town too guys got the high temp copper in there i'm just going to let her sit for about 17 and a half minutes then i'll come back and torque these down to world status hook up the fuel line after this gets down and then we'll start twisting on it battery's been boiling for about four hours now so i think it should be good i think we pretty well got her together here gotta find a pen that will never locate to go in there and hold that into place i might just throw a vice grip on it or something we're gonna leave this off so we can choke it and we'll just uh put some laughing gas down here see what happens the wind is just it's starting to come in a little bit this time i'm going to leave the pump hooked up to the tank i put non ethanol gas in here and it doesn't look that bad in the filter i did find a little cotter key for that so i think we're all set to rip test the throttle out here a little bit of choke you i'll spray it a little bit just to touch the throttle see what happens [Music] which way is the throttle isn't forward full blast i don't know the other way all right let's try it again okay [Music] that sounds really horribly bad did it pump anything it didn't pump any fuel either did it all right we're gonna look this over for a minute see if we can figure out what that knocking sound was yeah we might try to prime the paint a little bit i think chris is on to something i can't remember but i think this might be throttled down which i thought was throttled up this hose is leaking severely that's good i'll just pretend we didn't see that but hey it fired it's gonna run well i mean it definitely sounds bottom end-ish and not good at all i'm sure it needs to build oil pressure but we're having an issue with the pump not pumping too so we're gonna throw it down on this jerry can here and i got an electro digital pump i think a wire in a battery so we can at least get it primed and get that diaphragm wet again so we can start pumping on its own and then hopefully we don't have to spray it so it doesn't run at 13 912 rpm immediately after a decade because that would be probably more ideal well no expense was spared in this restoration as you can see by our setup here we're sure to clamp but we think it's going to hold got her dialed right into stock car racing mode she's primed so i think i'll probably have i'll just get some vice grips on the battery i think that way we can chocolate it and turn the key we'll run some fresh gas here there's some in the tank but it might be too low for it to pull out of there so that's why we decided to do it this way this was drained out of a snow blower i got for free on the side of the road should be fine we're going to grease this pulley up as much as you can try to take up some of that cushion but basically there's a ton of slop on this that rides on the crankshaft now and the movement on this is causing that knocking noise we'll finish the fuel system and then we'll go ahead and try to run the buckets we're going to have to hurry because we got a really bad hydraulic leak here let's just dump it on the floor that's what hose clamps do when you just tighten them down to 97 foot-pounds right into the jacketing of the hose apparently but this is feed operated so this is up and down this is auxiliary in the rear and then this is bucket you know tilt and fro but we got to hurry we're running on uh running a bottle of time here so all that oil is nice and clean too by the way okay so i think we're ready jason's gonna run the auxiliary electric system over here chris is gonna crank on it and then i'll try to run the throttle and choke we're not gonna run it that long if it keeps knocking like that obviously but i'm hoping it'll build some oil pressure but we're gonna find out here [Music] i'm gonna get the old carburetor adjuster in here and make sure that that needle isn't just stuck down actually let's put the intake tube on it's not pulling so much air where did that go anyway pump engaged i gotta find the right combination of throttle and chokeage and this power supreme battery is just boy is that a good one now we're gonna have to wait five days again for that to charge up they're clearly going to run but it's not sound and no it's great actually that's right so i'm monkeying around in here a little bit and there's a shaft that the governor rides back and forth on it's just it's not very smooth action but i got that bent and tweaked back so now the throttle and the governor aren't fighting each other oppositely is that a word anyway we're going to try it again and i think it should should come around [Applause] so the governor's still stuck and that's how i'm actually running the throttle but that's that's actually just how this runs it doesn't you don't want to rev it any higher than that it did get oil pressure definitely smells like burnt mouse droppings and just not good stuff uh but i think we'll try to get it thrown off with its own fuel system and then we're gonna go straight to work the belt drive pulley over here is making a racket like you can't believe i think there's a keeper pin or something in there my grapple was talking about i wish i could ask him but yeah we looked at it a couple times i don't know we just i just needed to get the rocks in the bucket that are in it outside and back drag a couple times and i'll be happy my gas is pretty clear actually for being found on the road so this is a loader up he's blown we got some clearance down here we got the bucket up so we're just going to ride like this i guess guy can do a lot of work just back dragging if he really wants to we just get some electric tape around that i think we got a game plan here we've got 419 hoses but they're all blown or cut or wrong size or missing ends also older than myself so we fixed this one as you can see and the plan is not to use any of the hydraulic equipment i'm just going to drive it around as much as i can and then back there up on the hill there's some bins i'm gonna sneak it around there there's an old flathead ford pickup back there too we gotta switch this battery around quick that way the seat can come on here without burning this thing down and we pounded this one on with a three pound sludge so that should be fun getting off and then we got a legend we went over to the napa store and they had one right there so basically we're gonna have a brand new battery and a semi kind of sort of running mellorow skid steer that's seems fine how much gas is in that jug you've been pouring for like 15 minutes that's good [Music] well i think that's pretty much buttoned down plan is just fired up and we're just i'm gonna go for it i got maybe 70 yards to make i think i think i can do it chris uh he really went to town and just buttoned this right down hopefully we can make it up there before the bucket just sinks but i could always go in reverse here we go [Music] [Music] [Music] so this is high low eye's not working but not enough [Music] poor thing got a leak here too [Music] [Music] well the poor old girl fought the whole way but she made it up there i was able to park it up in the trees and i got to where the engine's facing south so hopefully this winter doesn't get too too bad might even go up throw a tarp over it i do have plans to absolutely come and get the thing strip it down paint it rebuild it but if you know parts it would be really handy if you could put that down in the comments anything for a 69 melro 600 or a wisconsin engine vfd is the serial number on that it's a four cylinder bendix carburetor any of that would be super helpful just put it down in the comments for me thank you guys for watching appreciate it very much we'll see you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Vice Grip Garage

Views: 840,468

Keywords: motortrend, roadkill, vice grip garage, vise grip garage, vgg, bobcat, melroe, 600, wisconsin, farm, old, equipment, ranch, heavy equipment, antique equipment, skidsteer, will it run, will it start, abandoned, revival, rescue, forgotten, tractor, tractors

Id: R4-rWQ9pOVY

Length: 37min 35sec (2255 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021