Ok. So in a nut shell bla bla bla standard disclaimer stuff. Anyway, I was bet that I could not turn a shop manual for a AC-B into a fic. HA! Yeah right like it couldn't be done. So here is my own personal disclaimer if you actually pick out the important specs within. I do in fact have a 1940 AC-B A lot of the problems that I mention in this fic is the same problems that mine had and I build it back to the specs that is listed in the copy of the original AC service department's manual. SO UNLESS YOU ARE ALREADY A EXPERIENCED MECHANIC DO NOT TRY TO USE THIS AS YOUR ONLY GUIDE I MEAN IT! I'm not going to be held responsible for someone blowing easily 600 dollars on a rebuild kit to screw it up because they didn't have the pictures. Sorry if that is harsh but that is how it is. It maybe a simple antique but if you need pictures looking online for a service manual will show up several different ones. The one I have is the copy That has a reddish orange cover. So enjoy I guess.

Ruby was thrilled. She loved to fix things now matter how big, small, new or old; it did not matter to her. This influenced her decision to open up her own machine shop that dabbles in a little bit of everything. One of her clients, an old man, had mentioned that he had a really really old tractor that was grown up in the bushes on his property that he was thinking of selling for scrap iron. Ruby hated the thought of something that could possibly be restored to be scrapped. So she kindly asked what he wanted for the old piece of iron. The man simply told her if she could get to the pile of scrap, it was hers if she wanted it. That brought her to where she was now standing on the edge of a thicket with a chainsaw, wondering just what she had gotten herself into.

Six hours later Ruby had finally managed to find the old tractor. It had trees growing up through the frame around the sides of the transmission and through the wishbone that made up the front axle. There was moss growing here and there all over it giving it a greenish tint. Ruby made her way back to her truck to grab the basic tools that she had brought with her to see just how bad a shape it was in. She first glanced at what size hand crank that the receiver on the crank pulley took, to see if the engine was stuck. She hoped that it obviously being a really old tractor with how when it was originally being over built to last for years that it would not be stuck. She found that one of the hand cranks that she had brought did indeed fit the pulley and inserted it in the pulley through the access hole that was in the center of the radiator support. She gave it a light tap with a hammer to make sure that the crank was fully seated and started to pull on the handle. It didn't budge she frowned and thought for a second decided to turn the handle around a hundred and eighty degrees so that the handle was at the top of its position to travel down and not up like it was when she pulled on it. Ruby made sure that the handle was firmly seated and stepped back. Taking a deep breath, she hiked her foot and threw her weight into the kick she aimed at the handle. Ruby smiled when she made contact with the handle but frowned when all she managed to do was shear the key in the pulley. Figuring it was indeed stuck since she had just triple checked that it was out of gear. She moved on to the next part she pulled out the dipstick to take a look at the oil if it still had any in it. Surprisingly enough the oil looked and smelled just like the thing had been running the day before and just parked where it was. Moving on she decided since that it was stuck she would try to see why by trying to remove the spark plugs. Walking around to the right hand side of it, Ruby made a note that it had been running a magneto not a distributor. Gently working the plug boots of the plugs after marking the order from the front of the block to the back to keep them in order. Ruby grabbed her plug sockets and ratchet, she had expected the plugs to take a ⅞ socket like the other old tractors that she had worked on before but it oddly took a ¾ socket to fit the plugs. She noted that they actually were not all that tight; she started to unscrew the plugs one at a time. Finding the number one cylinder plug looked good, there was nothing unusual about the amount of carbon on the plug she screwed it back in. She then went on to number two; she immediately noticed that it was harder to unscrew. As soon as she looked at the end of it, she knew what the problem was.

The end of the plug was caked in rust, breaking a tiny twig off one of the trees that had grown up around the old tractor. She poked it back into the cylinder to see if she could figure out where the piston was currently sitting. Guessing by the way, it felt she thought that the piston must have been around mid way of its travel. She pulled the stick back out and found that it was wet however she could not make out if it was water or what was on it. So she screwed the plug back in finger tight and checked number three only to find in a similar state. Finally moving on to four she found that it was like number one. Looking the rest of the tractor over she found that the PTO shaft seal and stuck to the shaft and spun in the housing and that one of the rear rims had rusted off of it while the other one looked salvageable. The seat was completely gone; she figured the way the seat frame was made; it must have been one of the bench type seats that a few of the older tractors used. She also made note that the original radiator was replaced with what looks like a car radiator that was way too big and someone had cobbled up the plumbing to make that work. Other than that, Ruby believed that she could fix it and turn it into a learning experience for someone that had been pestering her.

Ruby made her way out of the thicket and back to the old man's house to tell him she would take it out of his hands and to ask him if he knew what happened to the hood and grill. Lucky the old man knew where the hood and grill was and showed her that he had them lying in a pile in his barn. Ruby told him it would be a couple of days before she could come back to finish cutting it out that she had to get some help with that. The old man laughed and told her to take as long as she wanted. Ruby not being known for her patience came back two days later however this time with her sister Yang in tow.

"Ok Rube's where is this fascinating old tractor that you haven't shut up about for the last two days? All I see around here is old scrap"

"Uh Yang this is it."

"You've got to be joking Ruby. It's more tree than tractor at this point."

"Well as it is…. Yeah it kind of is, but I did find the serial number on it the other day and looked it up. It's an early B Atlas Yang; these things are actually worth something if you can get them to run."

"...Fine I'll never understand you and fixing things Ruby. Even if you say you are just doing it to sell them for profit which you rarely actually do. So what do you want me to do?"
"Its simple help me cut a path large enough for me to back the trailer back in here and cut the trees out of it."

"Alright but from the looks of things you're going to owe me big time before this is over with today."

Ruby just nodded and waved her sister off while starting her chainsaw and getting to work. Seven hours later, they had finally dragged it up on the trailer with the wench that Ruby had mounted on the trailer to make things like this easier. They eased their way back out of the thicket when they got near the barn Ruby hopped out and retrieved the hood and grill tossing them in the back of the truck she waved at the old man. They then started back toward Ruby's shop. A thought suddenly crossed Yang's mind. "So what are you going to do with this any way?"

"Well you know how Weiss has been badgering me about working on old stuff saying she just doesn't get it? Even though she went to a fancy high dollar school that was supposed to teach her all this stuff about modern engines and stuff. Well she is about to get a crash course on old school mechanicing with this thing."

Yang was snickering now thinking back to the day that Weiss had tried to start Ruby's truck. "This will be as good as the day she couldn't start Crescent Rose because of its carbureted won't it?

Ruby was laughing now "Way better trust me. This thing is simple as a push mower but way touchier I have actually worked on a C model Atlas before which has the exact same engine in it. She'll lose her mind before it's over with."

Yang suddenly had a perplexed look on her face. "You know it's funny, all these advances in modern engines yet they screw up all the time. While something seventy plus years old if regular maintenance is done right it can go like thirty plus years or longer at a time without any major problems."

Ruby gave her a knowing smile. "Which is why nobody can really work on them anymore. It isn't taught and the ones that did know how are dead."

Yang nodded that Ruby had a point there. Right about dark, they finally made it back to Ruby's shop and left it on the trailer for the night. Ruby had decided to call Weiss in the morning and tell her that she was about to begin work on a project that she thought that she would be interested in learning about.