It's been ridiculously cold out the past couple weeks. Today the temperature finally went above freezing for a little while this afternoon so I figured it was a good day to go out to the garage and spend some time with the tractor. I had tried to start it a few days ago but the battery was as dead as could be. From the looks of it I'd say it's been in the tractor for quite some time and doesn't really owe me anything. I don't really like to let engines sit idle for too long. I make an effort to start and let idle all my gas engines every few weeks just to keep all the moving parts moving. I've had pretty good luck with this method. I'll have to go pick up a battery maybe next weekend.

Once I had the battery out I realized that its been resting on a broken piece of plywood. I've seen lots of other jacobsens with a similar plywood battery shelf. I will have to cut a new piece to replace the old one.

I pulled off the hood to make the engine easier to get to. I'll just leave it off until I sand and paint it once the weather warms up in the spring. I changed out the spark plug and the very, very, very old air filter. I was really pleased to see that both the spark plug and the air filter were so easy to find at an auto pars store.

The gasket between the air cleaner and the carb was looking pretty worn and cracked so I managed fabricate a replacement out of gasket paper. Here is a picture of the original gasket the new one came out looking identical minus the cracks and tears.

Well that's it for now. I have a lot of work left on this project so I hope to get some more warm days.