1965 International 140 Industrial Tractor First Repairs

10/30/2023

As good as this tractor looks and runs, it still needs repairs right off the bat. Two issues that I found today are a non-operational hour meter and a broken seat track. The hour meter comes first.

I wonder how long the hour meter has been sitting at 1520.6 hours. I've never delved into an electro-mechanical hour meter, so I figured rather than buy a new meter, now is as good a time as any to see what's up inside this thing. First order of business is to figure out how it comes apart. These things weren't meant to be disassembled, so the metal bezel needs to be uncrimped around its perimeter. I think it's aluminum, since it was very easy to bend out the crimped part, seen below.

Once the bezel and glass is removed, the innards just pull out. There are two small springs poking out the back of the meter module that come in contact with the terminals in the rear of the plastic housing. I'd wondered how that part worked.

The meter uses a clockworks very similar to an automobile clock of the same vintage as this tractor. There's a solenoid that, when power is applied to the two terminals (polarity doesn't matter), the solenoid pulls a contact plate which slaps a small circular weight. The weight rotates and pulls a coil spring tight. The weight also has a ratcheting system that engages the clockworks, so the spring now puts a torque via the weight into the clock's gear train and starts the balance wheel ticking back and forth. It's not as complicated as it sounds.

The problem was that the gears, escape wheel and balance wheel needed oil, so I put some very light oil on all the pivots. I then helped the movement tick over for a while before it was able to run on its own.

Below is a short video of the clock ticking away. Every several seconds the solenoid clicks and re-tensions the clock's spring.

Once things were back together I took the tractor for a spin out on the local road for a while, and the hour meter is now up to 1521.2 hours. I could have reset the digits to zero but I preferred leaving it as-is.

The next job was fixing a broken seat track. I had tried to move the seat around but noticed a piece poking out the back of one track. I found my problem....

This next photo shows the track welded up. It wasn't an easy process getting the track halves back together, as there are two large steel balls between the top and bottom tracks to make things slide smoother, and the balls are captured by dimples at each end of the track. I had to use a center punch to flatten the dimples during disassembly, then when everything was back together, I had to re-dimple the tracks. I must not have made one dimple deep enough because one of the balls escaped when I was testing the seat's movement. I'll need to get it back in place somehow. The seat moves back and forth fine without the one ball but it would be nice to get it put back in place.

11/2/2023 update:

This next bit of damage was caused by me today. While dismounting the tractor, my coat pocket caught the bucket curl lever a couple of times. After that I tried to be more careful, but one time I was dismounting and my coat caught again, however this time it broke the welds. Sigh. It wasn't a big deal to re-weld it, maybe a 1/2 hour job.

The repaired lever arm had also been bent previously (I'm sure I wasn't the first to snag the lever) so I straightened it.

Below is a photo of the two bucket control levers prior to the repair and straightening. The one lever is encroaching into the space required for ingress/egress. With this tractor, any little bit of extra maneuvering room helps.

The previous owner mentioned that with a loader installed, the hydraulic system wasn't able to run both the loader and the Touch Control hydraulics. It was either one or the other. I thought that was strange so I did some searching and found that both systems should work together. I was able to locate a manual for the loader, and it outlined where the various hoses were supposed to go. One was routed incorrectly on this tractor. In the next photo, the hose runs from the loader controls to the top of the loader's supplemental hydraulic tank.

The hose is supposed to go from the loader controls to the bypass adapter block on the side of the Touch Control housing. I moved the hose to the proper location and the Touch Control hydraulics now work. Below is a photo of the correctly rerouted hose. I kinda wonder how long the hose has been in the wrong place. Maybe since new?

The next project was to clean the fuel sediment bowl. That was tougher than it should have been. The finger nut holding the bowl snug was nearly impossible to get loose. Once the bowl was off, I realized it hadn't been off in a very long time, but it was certainly doing its job.

11/3/2023 update:

I'm still messing with the loader. Last night I noticed the boom pivot pin was loose in its inboard bushing. This morning I took a look and realized the bushing was missing totally. I then inspected the outboard bushing and it appeared to be well worn. I took on the job of making new bushings today.

I got most of the weight off the boom pin and used a slide hammer to get it out. The piece of pipe in the photo below is threaded into the 1/8" NPT grease zerk hole.

See the groove in this next photo below? It's a grease channel (there's one on each end of the pin), to get the grease to flow all around the pin. That tidbit of information will come up later.

These next two photos show the outboard bushing pieces. There are two shells, one was inside the other. I don't think those are factory pieces.

Remember the grease groove photo above? A little ridge can be seen and felt in the frame bore. It was caused by the pin wearing against the loader frame for a long time without a bushing in place. The grease channel left a ridge where the bore didn't get worn. Come to find out, both bores have the ridge.

The next photo is a first look at the inboard hole's inner bore.

This next photo shows significant wear on the inboard bore from the pin wearing on the bore with no bushing for an extended period of time. This loader was well-used and not very well maintained.

I didn't have any bronze to make new bushings from so I used steel. This loader won't see hardly any use in my ownership so the steel should be fine.

This next photo shows a one inch drilled hole in the steel. The next step was to hit it with a boring bar.

This next photo below shows the first bushing completed. ID is a smidge over the pin's diameter of 1.125 inches and the OD is about 1.4 inches. It's not precise, as the bores in the loader frame are worn and not precisely round. If you notice a small step in the OD of the bushing, it is to compensate for the little ridge in the loader frame bore that was caused by the pivot pin's grease groove. Both bushings need the step.

The inboard bushing went in nicely. I used a 1-inch bolt laying around that was just about the perfect length. A 3/4-drive ratchet wrench made light work of getting the bushing pulled into place.

This next photo below shows the first test fit of the pin into the new inboard bushing.

This next photo is the outboard bushing going in.

Once I finagled the boom into position, the greased pin went in.

Everything is back together and the loader boom pivot is just like new with no slop.

One final little job I got done on the tractor was to install an OE-style fuse holder and put in a key ignition switch. The previous owner put in a blade style fuse where the original voltage regulator used to be mounted, and a push-pull switch in place of the broken ignition key switch.

Wanting to give the tractor a more original look, I found the correct items online and installed them.

For grins I decided to check top speed of the tractor, as this thing is supposed to go 12 MPH in fourth gear according to the all-knowing interweb (tractordata.com). According to my phone GPS app, I topped out at 13 MPH going up a slight incline. That's moving on an old tractor.

When going up a steeper part of the road, the engine would not pull the tractor up the hill in fourth gear, which I'm a little surprised at. I would have thought International would have given this tractor more than a 123 cubic inch, 28 horsepower engine. My 1955 Ferguson TO-35 has 35 horsepower (from 134 cubic inches).

I'll finish this rather lengthy blog post with another photo of the 140. You can barely make it out there amongst the maple tree leaves. It's just too cute, if a tractor can be considered cute... A beautiful November day in western Washington.