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Get it out in the field and work the heck out of it for a few days. Before you do that, though, make sure the ignition system is in top shape. My dad gave me a 4 cylinder 44 once that was running on only 2 or 3 cylinders. He said the engine was shot and he wasn't going to put any money in it. I coaxed it home a couple of miles away. I pulled the distributor cap and found the spring loaded carbon button was missing from inside the cap. I happened to have a VAC Case that took the same Delco Remy distributor cap, so I borrowed the cap from the Case and put it on the Massey. I then went out on the road in the opposite direction from my dad's place. When I hit full throttle in 5th gear, you would not believe the black carbon and junk that flew out of the exhaust. I ran it several miles down the road and returned home, all full throttle in 5th. By the time I got home, it was running like a top and the inside of the exhaust pipe was starting to turn a healthy white. I used the tractor regularly without doing anything else but springing for a new distributor cap. My dad never asked any questions, and I never volunteered anything. Also, per El Toro's post about the Mustang, I once bought a Chevy Caprice that was only getting about 200 miles to a quart of oil, and was priced accordingly. I went ahead and built up a fresh 305 engine and figured I'd do a swap some weekend. Meanwhile, my wife started driving it to work, 25 open road miles each way. Within a month the car quit using oil altogether. Some old guy had been putting around town with it, and it was so sooted up all it took was a few thousand miles of open road to clean itself out. We put 50,000 miles on it and I doubled my money when I got rid of it.
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