Spent most of yesterday taking the hood down to bare metal. Found three layers of paint on it which surprised me since nothing else had been repainted on the tractor, but the factory coat was white, then someone had painted it black, then later someone else had repainted it white again. The worst part was the decal removal. It ground off with the wire brush easy enuff but left a sticky residue which was a pain to get off, wire brush, then clean with paint thinner, wire brush again, then paint thinner, repeat and repeat.But finally got it all clean but waited till this morning to prime it.
Painted the trans yesterday and it's ready to go back in except that I need to change the oil yet.
Trying to free up the throttle cable which is froze up, may end up having to replace that but may have one out in the junk yard that'll fit if I need it.
Accidentally knocked one of the rubber engine mounts off the work bench a couple days ago and I couldn't find it so thought it must have bounced under the bench into a jumbled mess of scrap metal that has been accumulating under there for years. Little bit of everything in that pile, short ends of pipe, channel iron, angle iron, box tubing, etc, anytime I cut something off it's where I toss what ever's left, my go to scrap pile when I needed a short piece of whatever. Comes in real handy when you live forty miles from the nearest steel yard.
Anyway, I'd been meaning to clean/organize it for a long time and loosing that part made me finally take the time to do it, and I did. But you guessed it, after all that, the part wasn't in there. My wife found it in one of the bolt bins that same afternoon. How it managed to end up in there is a mystery.
I have one more body part to prep and prime, the instrument panel, then I'll be ready to start painting. Can't get hold of the sign painter to find out if she can make the decals so still don't know what color it's gonna be yet. I think she must be on vacation or something. Hopefully she'll pick up her phone Monday.
In the meantime I've been photoshopping the pics I took of all the decals, cleaning them up, enhancing the faded colors, taking measurements, etc, so that should make it easy for her to duplicate them, I think. I took off a vinyl trim strip on the hood and found some unfaded colors underneath it and using that for a color guide. Think they're pretty accurate.
After working for a dealership, I understand the policy.
Just continued with the beatings and it finally budged. Once it did, it came off with just a few more hits. What a relief to get that thing off. I drilled out the 5/16 center bolt that I had twisted off and retapped it for 3/8 so everythings ready to go back together when the time comes. 
