Tackled the monster today. Surprising results. Took an old belt along to fabricate friction washers, also a ..."cloth"... anyway those woven things we all wore in the military as it had good thickness and I ain't going to be using a 26" belt in the near future....:-) Disassembled the unit. Consisted of a coil spring, hollow metal tube with a 9/16" (nut size) bolt through it, and a thick plastic washer against a thick ...waxed cardboard....(like the stuff gaskets in carbs etc. are made of) washer. The metal tube was obviously to control how much the spring could be tightened. The plastic and cardboard washers were pristine, no wear, no deformation that I could see. HOWEVER, someone had oiled them previously. CUDOS TO "JUSTALURKER" who suspected this. I cleaned them up, per his suggestion. I then took the metal tube to my grinder and removed about 1/16" from each end. I did this as I could easily compress the spring against the tube and there was a lot of space between the coils. Also, since the unit is 20+ years old there has got to be wear that I couldn't see. Reassembled and tried it, works fine, motion control lever stays where it's put now. Still have some more to tighten if I need to. So happy ending to the story, thanks for all the good input. Left the belts in the barn as I have another need for a friction washer. Thanks again, Ev

I picked up a light/moisture/ph meter pretty cheap at my local hardware store. Inside my gh, light levels are only half of direct sun. I feel most things are growing fine full-term in this environment. Outdoor stuff is not growing at twice the rate, for example. Except maybe with the corn, where the gh plants are definitely smaller and wimpier, but it doesn't look like I will see many ears this year, no matter where they were planted. My feelings are that the somewhat shaded covering will help your seedlings. Keep in mind you'll need to harden them off to plant in direct sun if the shade is too heavy where they are started. Venting is important, also how you anchor your structure. I'd wonder how long-lived the covering is in direct sun, or how much of a snow load it could take over the course of several years. Do you plan to remove the cover and store it after your seedlings are planted out? For 300 bucks, I ordered enough twinwall poly from FarmTek to cover my home-built 2x4 gh frame. Year two and it's working great, handles a 12" snow load no problem and shades just about right to avoid baking plants in the gh too much. I've actually left my door open this year. Nuisance bugs got in anyway, even with the door closed, so now at least the bees help pollinate my squashes. At least one commercial grower I know leaves both ends open on the gh she uses to sell plants. I grow full-season in mine. I start seedlings indoors under lights, but I did start some things directly in the gh this year. $300 ain't bad for a 10x20, but at the same time, I'd have to think it's probably kinda "cheap" in construction, so be prepared to have to spend more to seal, anchor or beef it up to make it more reliable or suitable for your seedlings or environment. I also needed to add things like inside watering, screened roof vents and windows, electricity on a GFI circuit, plus timers and thermostats to operate fans and heaters. And I spent major effort sealing out the critters who loved to burrow in from below. I just don't think the setup you mention will last more than a few years unless you take it down and store it out of the weather once the seedlings are establshed. At that point, perhaps a simple hoophouse is more appropriate and less expensive. For not much more than your $300, you could upgrade to some other more-durable options that could be left assembled year-round. In my own book, the maintenance issues when I was using a cheaper covering just got to be too much. It's so much nicer not to have to deal with stripping it all down and storing or replacing it once or twice per year. -Ed

Machiem, I'm very politely going to ask you to go back and read all the other threads I posted on this Hydrostat from the beginning. Reason I ask that is cause I don't want to repeat everything I put in them. For crying out loud, I ain't no typist, I'm a one fingered hunter & pecker. Having said that, this GT has linkage hooked to the foot pedal to move the forward/reverse lever toward neutral when you step on it. The further down you push the pedal, the closer it moves the "shift lever toward neutral. Push it ALL the way down and it is in neutral......but at that point is when it seems like the brakes go away. Now that I have "practiced" a little driving....... aw, what the heck. Now that I have been using it yesterday and today pulling cart loads of dirt, I can say that it DOES HAVE good dynamic braking when you step on the pedal just a little, or move the trans selector toward neutral (but not into neutral). However poor my description of the brakes was when I started THIS thread yesterday, I am a lot more satisfied with the machine today. But....and that's a big but.......I DO NOT HAVE a working parking brake. If you set the parking brake on any incline, the machine starts creeping (engine on or off). So I guess my big question for today is: How do I get a parking brake to function on this machine?

I think this is a toughy, BlueBars....not a lot of fabrics to go on and, of course, pictures don't show the 'quality' of the fabrics, or how thick/thin they are, all of which enter into the dating of things. The red is brighter than earlier reds...even 1910.....so I'd think it would be mid to late 20s, and the black and white with the tiny print goes along with that. Pokadots were used forever, so that's no help. Generally, earlier fabrics were on thinner woven cotton, and if the white is 'thicker', could it be from feed sacks? If so, that would move it into the early 30s. Fabrics were saved by women, and bags of pieces were even passed along from mothers to daughters, so lots of quilts have fabrics from many different timeframes...even different generations. Usually the 'kicker' is at least one fabric that is very evocative on a certain time, and, at least for me, yours doesn't have anything of that ilk....but, then, I'm no pro at this. Most of my quilts are purchased ones, and in particular I like to buy pieced tops and then 'finish' them into quilts....or, random blocks into tops, etc. These are still readily available many places, and pretty cheap. I generally find mine at flea markets and antique malls, in boxes, stuck under tables. I'm including one prize quilt....made by my family when my great great grandfather's sister married, and moved west....it's an album quilt with most of my family included...great great great grandparents, born in the late 1700s) and all their children, plus the family of the groom. I've included a couple closeups of the inked names..... As an avid genealogist I was contacted by the woman who bought it at a farm auction, in Colorado. She was curious about the names and wanted to find out who they were, and in surfing the internet, found me......I could tell her ALL about the bride's side of the family and found out the grooms info, too. She let me buy it, and I have a provision in my will that leaves it to the Chester County Historical Society, in PA.....I love it that it'll go back to where it started out, so VERY long ago.