Broken equipment is a constant feature of life on the farm. And of course, equipment only breaks when we need to use it. Today the starter on our big 40-year-old tractor broke just as I was beginning to mow hay - hay that was already way late in being harvested and way over-ripe due to all the rain recently. You've heard the saying, "Make hay while the sun shines." We've had a lot of clouds lately. But all clouds have a silver lining, and this particular one was no exception.
The first thing I do when a tractor breaks is to call Zip's Repair Shop in Zeeland. Jason, the owner, asked me to describe the noises I heard when I tried to start the tractor. He suggested I remove the starter from the tractor and take it to Floyd's Electric Motor Repair in Grand Rapids. When I pulled the starter off the tractor, I found that the housing had broken and the teeth on the starter gear were mangled.
That starter was a sorry sight (see photo)! Fortunately, I was able to remove the pieces of the broken starter housing so they wouldn't jam up the flywheel. I turned the motor over by hand using a large screwdriver to inspect the ring gear one tooth at a time. I was lucky again - no broken teeth. Broken teeth on the ring gear would have required pulling the engine out of the tractor - a major expense.
I took the starter to Floyd's Electric at 8:30 am. The technicians immediately dropped what they were doing to check out the broken starter while I waited. They looked up part numbers on the computer and found that it would take at least a week to order another housing to replace the broken one. To save time, they sent me to Wayland to the tractor bone yard (salvage facility) to see if they had a similar tractor out back with an intact starter. As luck would have it, the bone yard had no similar tractor from which to scrounge parts.
The technicians at Floyd's Electric then went upstairs and looked through rows and rows of old starters they had saved, until they found one with an intact housing similar to the broken housing on my starter. The main difference was that the number of screw holes and the locations of those holes were different than the screw holes in the housing of my broken starter. The technicians machined new screw holes in the old housing to make an exact fit for my starter. Then they replaced the gear and spring on my broken starter. Finally, they put my old starter on the test bench to be sure it had a lot of life in it yet before giving it back to me.
At 2:30 pm Floyd's Electric's technicians called me to say my starter was repaired and ready to pick up. They even gave it a new coat of paint. They had me back in the field 6 hours after I took the starter in, and they charged me only half what I expected to pay.
Who knew such a business existed any more? Floyd's Electric in Grand Rapids is definitely the kind of business we all want to do business with!
