So back to the tractor repairs, the first thing I needed to sort was the offside front wheel bearings, there was so much play in it and it was obvious one of the bearings had collapsed. So out with the jack and off with the wheel just to find the inner wheel bearing on the offside had totally collapsed, even to the point of breaking the inner track of the inner bearing into pieces.

I decided to strip the nearside wheel bearings down to see what state they were in, fortunately these were in a poor condition but if push came to shove, and considering Jack was only to be used as a hobby tractor, I could have got away with cleaning and re-packing them with clean grease. I decided to replace the bearings and using these bearing I headed off to a local bearing supplier for the parts. The guy at the bearing stockist was very helpful, he took time to examine the bearings and make several phone calls to local the parts but when he came back with a price, I got the impression he’d got his figures from a telephone book rather than a price list. I returned home to study the internet and found the parts from a supplier that I’d used before and had a current order with them. I phoned them up and they put the bearing kit in with the same order, the replacement parts arrived 9:30-am the next morning. With the wheels assembled with new bearings I took a ride around the field and immediately noticed an improvement to the steering.