Yeah, yeah, I just recently brought home the little bitty homemade tractor, but for some odd reason I couldn't pass this one up. It's part of my affliction of browsing the local online sale venues. This tractor is in need of a bit of work (no, really?), just the way I like them. It's a 1986 John Deere 650 tractor with a two-cylinder diesel engine and front end loader. It's got quite an impressive list of things going on: diesel engine, model 67 front loader, 4-wheel-drive, rear differential lock, 4-speed transmission with hi-lo auxiliary transmission (giving 8 forward speeds and two reverse), power steering, 3-point hitch, PTO. As the below photo shows (kinda), it's not currently running, so the previous owner is pulling it onto my trailer with his tired mini excavator.
The non-running status of the tractor meant that I didn't know if anything actually works on this thing, as the starter motor was dead, so I couldn't even crank it over. So, what could go wrong? Plenty. But that didn't deter me. Oh, and it is showing 4,900 hours on the hour meter, and that's assuming the meter is hooked up (more about that later). No big deal. In car speak, that might equate to somewhere around 250,000 miles.
The previous owner/flipper mentioned in his Facebook Marketplace ad that the person he got the tractor from had taken out a shift fork and had it repaired but then had heart issues, so it never got put back together. He also mentioned the starter didn't work. Sounds like a very simple fix to get the tractor running. Oh, but wait. When I got the tractor home, I delved into the several boxes of parts and noticed a shaft with splines on one end, but the splines were only 1/8-inch long, meaning the remainder of the splined shaft was broken off. Later I found out this shaft drives the front drive shaft, so the 4WD certainly didn't work when the shift fork issue was dealt with. I'm guessing the broken shaft was the main reason the tractor was in pieces. This next photo is of the broken shaft, with the left end being a bit on the short side.
In the above photo, the astute observer may notice that the transmission has been open to the weather for a bit of time. I also found out that the tractor had been split apart to get said broken shaft out, and that a number of other things were going on with the transmission. Not to fear though, I will do my best to rectify all these problems.
Oh, here's another minor (not!) issue. The drive shaft yoke that fits onto the (broken) splined shaft is really hammered. Literally. Not sure how that happened. Maybe someone kept driving this tractor when the splines broke and the drive shaft whipped around a bunch.
First things first, let's see if this engine even runs. I took the starter out and fully disassembled it to see what was wrong. The starter solenoid appeared to be weak and there was no way to remove it from the case, that I could see, so I put it all back together.
Guess what. The starter now worked. There must have been a high resistance terminal somewhere that was now making good contact, although I didn't see anything like that. I put the starter back into the tractor and the engine turned over fine. I fiddled with it a bit but didn't get it to start. The next step was to bleed the fuel system. One nice thing, the fuel tank was 1/2 full of diesel, although I have no idea how old it is. Another nice thing is, diesel takes quite a while to go bad, if ever.
The key didn't work to engage the starter, maybe because there was a mouse condo in the dash amongst the wires. Several wires were either chewed through, or their insulation was gnawed off, leaving bare wires. These next photos show a very small portion of the nest I removed.
To engage the starter, I jumped a hot wire to the starter solenoid. Several attempts failed to get the engine going. I then found out that this tractor has something called Thermo-Start, for cold-weather starting. It is a heating element and valve assembly in the intake manifold that is connected to a small diesel fuel bottle. When the element heats up, diesel fuel drips onto the red-hot element. The fuel is then supposed to ignite (yes, a flame) so the engine can then ingest the flame and hot air to assist in starting. My thermo-start element never did ignite the fuel but it did give enough heat so as to vaporize fuel to get the engine to actually start. So, yes, the engine runs. That's a relief. Next step? Maybe tackle the broken transmission shaft.
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