“Well.”
“I found it.”
“You found a theory.”
Isaiah looked at him.
Reuben took off his coat.
“Now prove it.”
They spent the next three days proving it.
Pump housings were opened and seals measured. Old service records matched against serial ranges. Fluid residue samples from unopened donor components were compared by appearance and available specification data. Isaiah called a retired parts manager named Curtis Hale who remembered the manufacturer quietly changing service recommendations after field failures years earlier.
“Dealers hated it,” Curtis said. “Parts book stayed the same long enough to confuse everybody.”
“Why didn’t they change the casting?”
“Because the casting didn’t change.”
“So how were mechanics supposed to know?”
“Serial number.”
Isaiah closed his eyes.
Serial number.
The very thing he had been copying at Draymond before anyone knew why.
The answer had been in front of him from the first day.
He simply had not yet known which question to ask.
The new standard covered an entire wall.
Isaiah labeled it by production generation rather than by marketing model. Serial ranges ran down the left side. Across the top were approved fluid specification, seal family, pump revision, temperature range, pressure targets, and notes from load testing.
Reuben read the finished chart once.
“You planning to frame it?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He picked up a wrench.
“Then let’s earn it.”
The rebuild took three weeks.
Every hydraulic component already in finished inventory came back off the shelf. Pumps were opened, cleaned, inspected, and assigned to a generation. Seal kits that could not be positively matched were discarded even when they were technically new. Finished tractors were drained, flushed, rebuilt, and filled again according to verified specifications.
The amount of usable inventory shrank.
That hurt.
A shelf full of pump assemblies that had looked valuable on Monday became a shelf of questionable cores by Wednesday. Isaiah had money tied up in components he no longer trusted enough to sell. He could have moved them to customers who would never know the difference until a hot day and a heavy load exposed the problem.
He did not.
Reuben watched Isaiah load several questionable components into the CORE bin.
“You know what those are worth if you call them good used?”
“Yes.”
“You tempted?”
“Yes.”
Reuben nodded. “Better answer than no.”
Cash became tight enough that Isaiah delayed paying himself entirely.
Denise noticed because his checking account, which she still saw when helping him organize tax records, had stopped receiving transfers from the business.
“You buying groceries?”
“I eat here.”
“That was not the question.”
“I’m fine.”
“You have eleven dollars again?”
“More than eleven.”
“How much more?”