I did try to move it out away as far as possible when remounting it, to no effect. Will put some thought into your suggestion. Thanks.

Thanks Bob.  I'll check out some videos of flex plate ring gears to see what they're supposed to look like.

Another quick report back:

Scraped rust out of radiator cap neck.  Lovely.

Drained coolant.  Still green, but swampy green instead of fluorescent green.  Flushed with water.  Added EvapoRust product.  Topped up with water.  Ran for two hours no load at low-mid RPM.  Will run again twice a day for the next few days like this, as recommended on the product label.

After running, drained oil.  It looks about as you'd imagine an oil new in 2002 would look.  Extra black with lovely metallic sheen, almost like one of those fancy hot rod paints which changes reflective qualities based on the angle you're looking at it.

I'm going to run Rotella with some Lucas oil stabilizer in it unless anyone has other thoughts on the topic they'd like to share.

Any chance to get a link to the video, John?  Sounds like high quality entertainment to me.

Well I tried hard not to get into political nuance.  It's a topic which influences our current discussion, however.

Glort, you're very well informed about the history of diesels and other small engines.  Thanks for your input on that.  But please don't assume everyone from the U.S. is completely naive about global politics and how things work.  I've been to every continent save Antarctica, at last count 25 countries, and have personally been to China to do product and factory inspections when we were thinking about importing and selling evacuated tube solar water heaters.  To be told I need to open my eyes to the nuances of politics comes across as being a bit off key.  And I also have no idea where you got the idea that I think Yanmar is Chinese.  I never said or even implied that to be the case, and I already own one of their tractors.  Also a Kubota and a Mahindra.  Yes, I also know the Mahindra is Indian, not Japanese or Chinese.

Also, the reason I'm here on this forum with you guys in the first place is that this is an exceptional repository of knowledge by some fine folks who live and breathe internal combustion.  Twice now I've been told to "Google it" as if I haven't put in the homework before asking questions.  Yes, I could do all this on my own.  And usually I do it all by myself.  But what fun is that?  How would I get the viewpoints of others who already have been steeped in the lore for decades?  How would I learn about the questions I don't even know to ask?  And also by asking the seemingly simple questions and having them answered here, they're saved for posterity.  And I think you all can admit that it's at least a little bit fun to be able to show off your hard-won knowledge to the newbie and to each other.

To outsource the search for knowledge completely to Google while ignoring the people's knowledge is going to be one of the downfalls of civilization.  The Lore should be kept alive from person to person, not outsourced to our Silicon Valley overlords.

Thanks guys.  Good info.

I've put a lot of thought into the IP theft by Chinese companies.  It seems to be absolutely endemic to their nature to take without asking and claiming IP as their own.  This will need to be addressed before they can be taken seriously a true global power.

All those sticky political issues aside, does anyone know which particular model of Kubota they knocked off with this design?  Also, why would they have chosen this particular Kubota design vs. any other diesel design within this HP capability?

Granted, I've just discovered the world of large single-cylinder diesels, but I think I'm beginning to get a grip on how they got here.  The Chinese singles (Changfa/Changchai/Laidong/et al) seem to be knockoffs or were at least heavily influenced by an old Yanmar walking tractor design.  They seem to have been originally created for use on said walking tractors, hence the otherwise inexplicable headlight commonly found on them.

Yet I've seen so many claims that they are actually a German design.  Would that be a German design specifically created for the Chinese makers, or would it be a patent-violating copy of a proven successful design?

And this leads me to another entire line of thought:  How did the Chinese choose which engines to copy?  Was it based on manufacturing ease, manufacturing cost, durability relative to cost, or fuel efficiency?  Is there a list somewhere of the "donor" engines which the knockoffs are based on?  For example, the 195 or 1115 design - is there a direct western or Japanese equivalent which was simply copied?

So many questions.  It really does fascinate me to try and figure this stuff out.

More pics

Great stuff, guys!  I was hoping for this type of commiseration with fellow diesel sufferers.  It was an engine which was so rare in these parts that I just had to have one in order to play with it, and to see if (more like WHEN) it conks out.

More background:

This unit was sold new by Hardy Diesel back in 2002.  It currently has 332 hours on the Hobbs meter.  I've tried to both call and email Hardy Diesel regarding info on this unit but have received no response at this point.  They seem to have disavowed its existence, or have gone out of business.  I'd have expected better service from someone who has Paul Teutel Sr. as their celebrity representative!

What shocked me about this motor is how solid it feels.  There's not much artwork used in reducing weight in the block casting, and it's so unexpectedly dense that I thought I might have missed lag bolts holding it down to the floor when I began to lift it with the boom pole on my tractor, a Mahindra 4505DI.  In retrospect I should have brought the Kubota M7040SU and had the extra lift capacity on the bucket loader with pallet forks.  The garage door at the seller's house was a bit low for that beastie, however.  But it all worked out in the end and without incident, so that's nice.

All in all, I thought the same thing as Glort - it should be a fun little unit to play with.  For the price, I have allowed it some mental wiggle room on the dependability factor.

Let's talk about rust in the cooling jacket.  How have folks successfully removed it without disassembling the entire engine and hot tanking?  I'm going to remove the radiator and have a pro give it a once-over.  Then it'll get all new fluids, belts, and hoses.  But from the look of the radiator I'm expecting some pretty significant rust in the jacket.  My normal rust removal techniques of electrolysis, muriatic acid, or purple power degreaser seem out of place here.