Restoring old zetor tractors .............

greendragon3

hi all , Ive been active on here for a good while but mostly on the classic car side of things , we have a few other projects on the go as well and i just thought id share some of our vintage tractor restos with ye ,

first up is a zetor 2511 we dragged out of slurry pit in three bits a few years ago , it was seized solid and well beyond repair but we stuck into it regardless and i think she came out rather well for our first major project , here are a few before and after pics ,

greendragon3

few more pics of the restoration , we had an awfull job to get parts for this particular model as they were only two cylinder and rare enough around this neck of the woods .

greendragon3

as you can see the side panels had to be altered as had the bonnet and we got replica fiberglass mudgaurds from a lad in clare .

few more pics .

Man of Aran

Good job, nice work. Remember the 2511 ,,, that must be late 70's era.

The Red Ace

Great restoration there, it did look down on its luck on the trailer but well worth the effort when it all comes together,intresting that you say you sourced parts in clare as whelans of kilrush must have sold hundreds of the 11series all over the west of Irl,, if you read irish vintage scene a friend of mine Joe was featured about a year ago having restored most of the 11s. I am sure the 35 in the background is next on the list

greendragon3

hi lads thanks for the comments , yeah she is 1972 ,

Ive spoken to that Joe lad by telephone before , and i did see the article in Irish vintage , very interesting reading indeed

well the saga continues with us as like you said there was a 3511 lurking in the background and when we finished the 2511 we set to the 3511 straight away ,

we were a bit lucky with this one though as she had been owned by two brothers in longford who only used it for light work and going to the shops and mass so it really only needed a good service strip down and repaint ,

few pics ,

greendragon3

and a few of her with a fresh lick of paint,

greendragon3

so now the bug had really bitten so we had to go on the hunt for the elusive 4511 , these turned out to be scarce enough and we hunted around for a good while before coming across one in galway for sale , she needed a nice bit of work too , brakes , steering , lift , front axle all needed attention but never the less we got there , few pics of before and after .

greendragon3

sorry fotobucket is on its time of the month or something tonight its not loading the pics in the right order for me ,
few more

greendragon3

grrrrrr , computers , i swear i don't know what we did when we didn't have them !!!!!!!!!!!

anyway you get my drift , hopefully you can see the pics ,

so now we have just acquired the last in the series the 5511 and like them all it needs a fair bit of work etc but sure what else would ya be at ??

few pics of how she landed to us after spending a good few years in a field in roscommon ,

we will be staring work on it soon so i will keep you posted ,

The Red Ace

Great stuff, a serious amt of work done there, even what looks like a nice zephyr lurking in the background, had one back in the day when i could barely afford petrol for a 2cv

greendragon3

thanks , yeah the ould fella has two of them a 65' and a 64 , both in great nick he just never has the time to drive them !!!!

Lurching

Great work. My Grandad's old Zetor was scrapped around 5 years ago. I'm sure it would have helped you for parts, as I'm fairly sure it was a 4511.

Love how there are various other vintage bits and pieces poking out of your sheds awaiting similar attention!

greendragon3

ha ha yeah like i said its a disease , couple of other projects that are awaiting resto are ,

sierra van , one of only two believed to be left in existence anywhere ( only three ever made )

greendragon3

that's how we found it , abandoned in a field for over ten years , as bad as it looks i put a battery on it , heated it and it feckin started !

it awaits a full resto but i got it cleaned up a good bit and put a new power steering rack into and it drives like new now , just needs a bit of welding to finish it , heres how it looks now ,

Thelostcountry

Top work there!

Keep the pics coming lad :-)

greendragon3

then there is the hearse !!!!!!!!

found rotting in a shed for over twenty years , seized solid but all there ,

its a 49' dodge b2b pick up , brought from the states in 51' converted to right hand drive and made into a hearse ,

it has a flat 6 petrol engine and a three speed box and very little in the way of brakes even when it was new !!!!!!

here is how we found it ,

greendragon3

we managed to get the engine freed out but with huge difficulty , it involved stripping her right down and filling the bores with a mixture of WD 40 and paraffin and leaving her to stand for a couple of months !!!! , then we removed the sump and tried to jack one of the piston whilst rocking her in gear and another one of us trying to move the ring gear with a pry bar , lots of stripped knuckles , sweating , cursing and swearing later and she let a big " crack " out of her and i thought that's it she's ****ed now but lucky enough she let go and it seems to be free now , we haven't done much more with it since except wash it but it awaits a resto too , some more pics ,

Lurching

Jasus, where do you fit them all?!

greendragon3

ha ha yeah i know , the ould fella is going off the head , he had to build a new shed this year to house it all !

greendragon3

oh i forgot about the white van , i remember this van in sligo when i was younger , i didn't really pass much heed of it back then but in the last few years i decided to try and find the whereabouts of it , took a bout three years and lots of dead ends but we finally tracked it down in a field in a very very bad state , a farmer had it and blew the engine in it so parked it in the field and started keeping lambs in it , he then partitioned off the front and put dogs in there ( queer mixture i know ) ,

anyway the dogs flittered the front out of it and you can imagine what the lambs did to the back of it over the years ,

heres how we found it ,

greendragon3

few more pics of the " clean up " ....

we had to evict about ten rats nests and i couldn't get the back door open so i had to crawl in through the front and shimmy through all the gunk to chisel the rear door open !!!!!!!!

we also took four heaped wheelbarrows of ****e out of the front and back of it .not good .:(:eek:

greendragon3

like the red one she needs a good bit of welding to the floor , sills etc but its well worth doing and they are as rare as rocking horse poo !!!!

we then set about gutting it and found out that the furry lads had ate there way through all the wiring !!

i managed to source a donor engine and got her running again ,

few more pics ,

greendragon3

again she is still waiting on the welding etc but its all time and money !!!

i got her running well and threw an interior back into it and here's how she looks now ,

paulmclaughlin

I love restoration threads! This is a work of art!

NuckingFacker

Great work and brilliant photos - thanks for sharing. Fascinating to watch lads who don't fear diving in! How the heck do ye find the time to be at it though!

greendragon3

thanks lads , ah sure time is not a problem its the dollars that cause the problem lol .

greendragon3

:up: nice wee machine that Sean , thanks for sharing ,

well here is another update , i finally got the 4511 running after some fetling , the pressure was on as there was a local tractor run on last Sunday and seeing as the weather was so good we decided to take the three zetors on the run ,

now bear in mind the 4511 had never ran since we bought it over two years ago , i managed to get her going but she was pissing out oil and water from loads of different places , this was on Friday night and the run was on Sunday , next morning myself and the ould fella headed off early to AGRIGEAR in cavan for two new sets of front tyres ,

he has a massive set up there and i would highly recommend them for any tyre or rim needs you might have , when we got there one of the rims we had was rotten and low and behold he had one brand new , it had turned a bit rusty over the years but he ran out the back and put it into a massive shot blaster and brought it up like new , the stud holes were slightly smaller too so he stuck them in the machine and drilled them out then stuck on the new tyre , he couldn't have been more helpful , well worth the trip .

big sprint home to try and get the tractor finished for Sunday , we managed to sort the oil leak handily enough just a few o-rings but the water leak was a different story , after a lot of head scratching it turned out that the next problem was the water pump ,

thank god my ould fella never throws anything away , four water pumps later and we managed to stem the leaking water but it was now 10 on Sunday morning and the run was at 11 ,

we got the three tractors ready and headed off only for the 4511 to airlock , would she hell bleed either , turned out the tap coming from the tank was blocked and the little pipe that sits in it had fallen off so all the crud in the tank was blocking the pipe ,

got that sorted and headed for kinlough with seconds to spare , the run was over 60 mile but all three tractors went well so we were chuffed ,

i have a few photos to share but i nearly ended up with none and a bill for a new I- PHONE !!!

when the 4511 was air locked and i was trying to bleed it i got a phone call , when i was finished i threw it on the step of the tractor and forgot about it , three mile up the road i reached for the phone only to remember where i had left it !!!!

the ould fella was behind us in the car so i ran him back to look for the phone and he found it in the middle of the main road with cars whizzing by but luckily it was not damaged phew .............

anyway enough raving form me here are the few pics i took .

101sean

Keep them coming, excellent write ups!

I did remove the text for you that you inserted twice though

iverjohnston

Fantastic work, really good to see something different to the usual 35/major being restored. Your 2511 might be a bit newer than 1972, as we had a Vauxhall Chevette ZID 806, and she was a 1976 registered model. Even in Cavan in the 1970's, I expect there were more than 100 new vehicles registered per year.

Did the Fords come from Hendersons of Sligo?

colm_mcm

So cool to see a load of old Zetors together, nice change from the usual.

Any plans to do a crystal?