It's been how long since I bought a tractor? Six days? Yup. And I just bought another one? Yup. But there were extenuating circumstances. Really. I got in touch with the previous owner of the 1936 BO tractor I'd just bought last week to line up a time to pick up a few spare parts he had. He said to come on over. I did, and after he showed me the parts, I asked if I could see his other tractors. He's got only John Deeres, an AR, an LA, and a B. He said he really needed to get rid of the LA, and he said these grave words, "It would make a great parts tractor for someone." Huh? Parts tractor? It's way too nice to be a parts tractor. So I asked what he wanted for it. Five hundred bucks. Huh?.... I'll take it! So I went home, hooked up the trailer, and went back to pick it up.
As the title states, this was made in 1941, the first year for the LA. It's sibling, the model L, came out in 1937. Tires and battery are new on this tractor and the paint is very nice in most places.
The engine does need some work but it ran well enough to drive onto the trailer. Barely. It was belching smoke out the exhaust and engine oil was almost blubbering out of the exhaust manifold. Oh yeah, and there's a stripped threaded hole in the engine block for one of the manifold studs. Hopefully that's a fairly easy fix with a threaded insert.
Someone also welded a small weight block onto the front ends of the frame bars where a decorative chin sheet metal piece is supposed to reside. I'm sure there are other issues with the tractor but those are the ones I know of. Oh, wait, one more thing, the charging system and light aren't hooked up.
In this next photo below you can see the solid round bars used as a longitudinal "frame" for the tractor. The LA's are solid (except really early ones that were thick-walled tubes), whereas the lighter-duty model L had thin-wall tubes as a frame. The solid bars supposedly add an extra 700 pounds to the weight of the tractor over that of an L, and the engine of an LA is larger and has more horsepower (13hp versus 9hp). The L and LA are roughly the same physical size though.
This photo also shows the aluminum serial number tag (silver rectangle) on the right axle housing. A lot of L's and LA's are missing the tag because farmers would wrap a chain around the housing to pull stuff and the tag would get chewed to smithereens or ripped off. This tag is beat up but fortunately is still readable.
There is a nice view of the crops (or gravel in this case) while seated on the tractor. And look at that steering wheel. Wow. Most of my tractors have less than stellar steering wheels.
The tractor came with the rear tires set very wide compared to the front tires, and it was almost a problem for the trailer ramps. The fronts rode up the insides of the ramps and the rears rode up on the outer edges of the ramps. I just prayed it would make it without falling off one side.
The photo below shows the front of the drawbar. See that shiny new hairpin clip? It was missing and the drawbar pin was starting to come out. Glad I noticed it.
If you read my previous posting on the BO, you'll know it was missing a cotter pin in the steering rod to keep the adjusting nut from coming out and causing loss of steering. Well, guess what? This tractor is no different. It is missing a cotter pin from both ends of the rod. It's an easily rectified problem. Just tighten up the slotted nuts, line up the slot to a set of holes, then slip in the cotter pins.
The astute observer will have noticed there weren't rear fenders on the photos above. After finishing the above repairs, I moved the rear wheels to the insides of the cast iron center hubs, to make the rear tire width line up with the front tires (I also found that all the wheel fasteners were loose). I then mounted the fenders. It looks so much better with the narrow width and the fenders. This surely ain't no parts tractor. Something interesting about this tractor is it doesn't have an adjustable front axle assembly, it's fixed width, whereas my previous LA had an adjustable front axle.
7/30/2024 update: The tractor never has run very well when trying to regulate engine speed. It's like the governor doesn't work at all, or very little, which made it difficult to drive around. I'd have to rev the engine way up so it didn't stall on hills, then put the throttle back to idle going downhill. That was unacceptable. So today I tried to find out what was wrong. I pulled the front grill off to get access to the governor area. In the photo below, the green rod goes from the carburetor to the governor behind the grill.
I messed around with the throttle cable a lot, and finally came to the conclusion the throttle rod from the governor to the carburetor wasn't long enough. I took the rod off the carb, then unthreaded it from the ball joint that was connected to the governor lever. The end of the rod looked broken off, so I figured I'd weld in a 1/2"-long section of rod and hope it was enough to solve the problem. Below are a couple of photos before welding.
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