The Classic Machinery Network

Anymore pics of your old MF40 Pete, i sold my one about 4 years ago it was a great little digger, had the instant reverse torque and diff lock on a long lever on the right and side of the gearox don't think the backhoe had ever een revode off it.

My downfall with the torque converter came with a 203 when I had to do a sudden stop on a wet concrete surface. After many years with a manual instinct caused me to hit the brakes and the clutch. Right? Wrong! Of course I got the throttle and at the same time left foot was hard on the left brake. The result was a sort of sideways slide and ending up wedged between two buildings. Couldn't extract it before it was noticed by which time everyone had seen it and the only thing I could do was a less than graceful dismount, take a bow, then keep a low profile while the owner and foreman tried to untangle it.

I should have posted this with the others. I still do not know, and sadly never will know, exactly what was expected to come out of that pipe!
This view does just about show the red 'frames' that dropped over the main rams to hold the loader up to allow access to the hydraulic pump etc.. If you do finish up splitting it, there is a drive plate on the front pulley and a shaft that runs through the rad to the Dowty pump. We had a spate of these plates stripping the lh thread and damaging the shaft. May be worth a look while it's in bits as if it fails with the loader down that's a whole new heap of hurt.

Great pictures there, i love those liitle diggers spent a lot of my childhood on them, The one in the pics is quite late on a V reg, my one was on a W reg so must have been one of the last, i am tempted to get myself another one to tidy up and keep for old times sake and maybe take to the odd show, but trying to find a nice one now is pretty hard.

If you're slapping some lube around it, there is a grease nipple hidden behind the 'MF' plate on the back arm.
The pic in the field is an N reg. model, but I don't recall there being any differences between them. The later ones still had the same plastic work lights that got so hot after 5 mins use the solder holding the bulbs together melted! Oddly enough, the plastic didn't melt???

The 40 was not mine belonged to the farmers I worked for, although we were hiring it the photo above. The 4 in 1 made it a very useful piece of kit.
Torquing of the torque converter trans that made me look clumsy the first time i drove it. Press the forward pedal and it jumped forward so immediately took foot off so stop. Press again to repeat stop start!. Kangarooed down the yard like a proper novice.

So got out there yesterday & had a play with pedal adjsutment. Total PITA to get at but managed to depress pedal, hold with tommy bvar & then re-adjust pedal to effectively crack the clutch round a bit more. It's a crap design really as the shaft has no splines or anything so is prone to slipping, however ultimately it seemed to make zero difference & still wont enguage the clutch. It's definately all a bit odd as it happened from zero issue to failiure so quickly. Trying to get in there & take a better look is probably a job outside my skillset/toolbox but i have an old school agricultural engineer in the village who helped sovle some fuel pump issues on my old thwaites dumper so i might give him a tinkle this week & see if he has any bright ideas. I would imagine paying someone to do the work may be slightly uneconomical on such an old machine so we'll see what he says.

Here's mine.

1976 has a set of 4 backhoe nuckets & forks for loader. have replaced water pump and a loader ram seal, the cab is very tatty & TBH could do with being cut off in a couple more years. Starts & runs like a dream though, jsut can't drive it anywhere at the moment haha

That doesn't look too bad at all. Industrial type tyres on the back but the fronts look like 6 ply agri pattern, when you need to change them the originals would have been 8 or 10 ply commercial type 7-50x16. I wouldn't think there is much that is beyond repair. As to getting the clutch replaced if you need to, there's probably quite a bit you could do yourself before calling in assistance. That may save a bit.