It will run until it doesn't : ) It is beyond the allowance as stated, but a ton of ponies are at that stage and still run, but yes, since you know about it now, you'll kick yourself if you don't take care of it. Some of us have applied the axial load to thrust bearings (non-standard) which gives a bit more comfort regarding longevity, but just replacing the dowels and drilling/reaming new dowel holes in the bearings will go a long way to reliability. Just make sure to have the crank centered relative to where the big end journals sit with respect to the cylinder bores. Set the crank there, then sneak the bearings in to the required clearance (aim for 007 on each end), then scribe, drill, ream, fit dowels and retest clearance. You can just rotate the bearings to find fresh material to drill, maybe turn them 90 or 180. They don't have any special orientation

Yeah I almost missed that when my machinist was setting it up. He was about to launch into when I noticed the crank wasn't centered and he didn't either. Where in NZ? I'm from Masterton originally and have my cousin's Twenty-Two there. What's your serial #? I have a printout of every tractor Gough's sold up through the Fifties. If you join up as a member, you'll find a tech library in here with the D2 parts catalog and such, but meantime we can supply part #s if you list what you are looking for. Your pony head gaskets are typically reusable after inspection. Pony top cover, front cover, rear cover, carb, exhaust, breather, base, and coolant top connection usually all need replacing if they've been on there a while, but if you need to pull covers after a few short hours, they usually come off again ok. I greased all of mine because I knew I'd be pulling it apart when I found some "spare parts" on the bench : )