Farmall Cub

As you may remember my poor ol Cub has had a radiator leak. Well I broke down and bought a new radiator, one of those really nice ones from Ireland. So I'm all set to replace it and I notice several spots of brass on my radiator lower tank/steering gear casting. I examine it a little closer and I can see some other kind of filler right where the radiator bolts on, as well as a hair line crack, and to top it off (so to speak) the casting around the drain plug at the bottom is partly broken out!! I could probably repair the drain by grinding off what is left of the threads and brazing a new bung into it, and I could probably redo the the old brazing job on the top side, but... I have a bad feeling it may not have been the best casting to start with. So with that in mind I'm hoping one of you guys has a donor/parts F-Cub with a good lower radiator/steering gear casting on it. ...or any other good ideas. Thanks in advance for any help!

You should have no problem finding a replacement casting. Place a want ad in the For Sale/Wanted forum.

I've been working on ol' Smokey, it's been a slow process. I got the "new" lower radiator housing and it's generally in good shape but not without a problem. It seems the PO wad issues with the coolant drain plug as well, the head was rounded off. I squared it up so I could get a bite with a 3/8" square socket. I twisted the nub right off even with heat and Blaster, to no avail I tried to spin it out with a blunt chisel, stuck solid. I thought - , I really didn't want to drill it out, but that's what I ended up doing. I had to drill it out to nearly the size of the tap drill size before it budged.

To repeat myself from an earlier post... This all started out because I needed to replace the radiator on my Cub. A number of months ago I found and ordered a new radiator, made in Ireland, and looks real nice for $180.00. I took the hood off ond proceeded to drain the radiator (I haven't done that since I've had the tractor) and found a chunk of wood jambed into the drain hole with a bunch of sealer gobbed around it! The casting was broken out where the plug should screw in. Up to that point I thought it was just covered in grease and grime. Upon further inspection, the top of the housing had a bunch of braze and filler as well as a number of hairline cracks where the radiator bolts on. I attemped to clean the brass off to get an idea of how bad it really was, I ended up with a few pieces of the casting in my hand. To my amazement that particular area never leaked.
The area around the shiny spot had several hairline cracks which were brazed and liquid weld as a filler.

The new casting is from a newer Cub and has the reinforcing rib behind the tank.
I scrounged up a 3/8" brass plug so hopefully the next time I won't have these issues.
Now I'm on to replacing the front seal with a speedy sleeve.