That was the argument he made every time Clara suggested replacing it.
"It runs."
"So does Uncle Ray's refrigerator from 1954."
"Does it keep food cold?"
"Mostly."
"Then Ray's smarter than people buying new refrigerators."
Clara loved her father.
She also knew exactly how broke he was.
Replacing the tractor was impossible.
Major engine repair would be difficult.
A cracked block could end spring before it began.
That possibility had started Clara's obsession.
Not the block itself.
The cost.
She had been reviewing repair invoices from the previous five years when she noticed something.
Cast iron failures appeared everywhere.
Engine blocks.
Heads.
Pump housings.
Transmission cases.
Manifolds.
Mounting brackets.
Once cracked, many parts became economically dead long before they became physically useless.
Some could be welded successfully.
Others could not.
Traditional cast-iron repair required experience, careful heat control, correct materials, and patience.
Too much heat created distortion.
Bad cooling created new cracks.
Poor technique turned one failure into several.
Walter had taught Clara some of this.
He had also shown her something else when she was twelve.
Cold metal stitching.
Not welding.
A mechanical repair method using drilled holes, pins, locks, and carefully controlled cuts to stabilize cracks without heating large sections of cast iron.
Walter had repaired a pump housing that way.
Clara remembered watching him.
No sparks.
No glowing metal.
Just measurements.
Drilling.
Fitting.
Patience.
At the time she thought it was boring.
At twenty-nine, boring looked valuable.
But Clara had a larger idea.
The traditional method worked.
The problem was consistency.
Walter had known where to drill because he had decades of feel.
Most farmers did not.
Most small repair shops did not specialize in cast iron.
What if the process could be guided?
What if a fixture could help position drill locations along irregular cracks?
What if interchangeable plates could keep spacing consistent?
What if a portable frame could clamp to a block, head, or housing and allow a mechanic to perform a repeatable mechanical repair without trying to invent each step?
The idea sounded simple.
Simple ideas become complicated the moment steel is cut.
Clara needed failures.
Many failures.
Different thicknesses.
Different crack shapes.
Different casting geometries.
That was why she wanted garbage.
Every broken part taught her something different.
The first prototype looked terrible.
It used angle iron, two salvaged clamps, a sliding drill guide, and a bracket Clara fabricated from part of an old cultivator.
It weighed too much.
The alignment shifted under load.
The clamp interfered with the drill on curved surfaces.
Clara hated it.
That made it useful.
She wrote:
Prototype 1.
Too heavy.
Guide flex.
Clamp geometry bad.
Start over.
She did.
Prototype 2 was lighter.
It was also weaker.
The guide plate twisted.
Prototype 3 clamped beautifully and failed to accommodate fractures near corners.
Prototype 4 worked well on flat housings and poorly on engine blocks.
Prototype 5 slipped halfway through a repair and ruined the test casting.
Clara threw a wrench across the shop.
It struck a wooden cabinet.
A socket fell off the shelf.
She stood perfectly still.
Then she picked up the wrench.
Picked up the socket.
Wrote:
Prototype 5. Clamp force inadequate when drilling overlapping holes.
Then continued.
Failure angered her less after she wrote it down.
Once recorded, it became information.
Information felt less personal.
By February, everybody knew Clara was collecting broken cast iron.
Nobody knew why.
That created stories.
According to one version, she intended to melt the blocks.
According to another, she was building a homemade furnace.
Someone told Thomas that Clara planned to create decorative garden furniture from tractor engines.
Thomas came into the shop one evening.
"Are you making lawn ornaments?"