Houston, we have a problem

After coming home from a "sleepover" at the grandparents house and various errands in town, I spent most of the afternoon monkeying with the front end loader - trying to get it attached to and working with the tractor. It is a substantial piece of equipment and so it took a lot of time with the come-a-long, hi-lift jack, tow-strap, pry bars, hammers, chains, etc. to get it attached to the tractor. After all that, I got the hydraulic lines hooked up in what we think is the correct fashion (after a brief consultation with dad) and fired up the tractor for a test verification of the line routing. What a bummer. Nothing.....and I mean nothing. You can hold those levers in the up positition till the cows come home and they just don't move that front end loader. The only thing that did happen was a hemoraging of contaminated oil from around the seals on the hydraulic cylinders. Blegh!

I am consulting the folks on the tractor forums for professional opinions, but it is looking like those cylinders are going to need some attention.....and possibly a full rebuild. The good news is though that this is the first time I have had to examine the front end loader, and it appears to be in pretty good shape (aside from the cylinders.) I was half afraid it would have been all rusted out, but it appears solid. The other good news is that while runnaging through an old tool chest that the previous owners left in the shop, I found all the pins for mounting the loader. That means that we can take the $50.00-worth of pins that we bought at the Tractor Supply store back since we won't need them. That is always nice. Here's a pic of the assembled (and impotent) result of a half-day's work.