1941 Ford 9N Tractor First Start

This blog posting is an update on the Ford 9N that came home with the Farmall C recently. I worked on this tractor for a few hours and got it running. There were a couple of things going on. First, the starter didn't work when I put in a battery. Second, once I'd removed, tinkered, and reinstalled the starter a couple of times and got it going, there was no spark. I read online that the easiest way to fiddle with the points in the distributor is to pull the distributor..... What?! Ok, I kind of get it, as the distributor on the 9N, 2N, and early 8N is mounted on the front end of the engine, under the water pump. Yeah, Ford did not have a better idea that day, and they realized it and put the distributor on the side of the later 8N's engine. It's hard to see in the photo below but the distributor is in there somewhere. Super fun to get to. Yep.

Upon commencing to remove the distributor, I pulled the spark plug wires off the distributor cap. One, two, three, fo..... um, where's number four wire? Oh, there it is. In this photo below, kind of on the left side of the photo, my fingers are holding a spark plug wire that had been eaten by the fan belt. I wonder how long this engine has been running on three cylinders.

The cap got a little damaged from the spark plug wire being ripped out of the cap, but I think it's still usable.

Well there's your problem... The photo below is showing the *barely* 2-thousandths gap in the points. It's supposed to be around 15 to 17 thousandths.

It's also hard to see, but there is a 16-thousandths gap now.

I reinstalled the distributor, hit the starter button, and the engine lit off lickety-split. Cool! Here's a video of it starting and running for the second time.