First Time Fiddling With The 1950 John Deere BN - It's Not Gonna Be Easy But It Could Be Worse

My newly acquired tractor made it home yesterday afternoon. The person I got it from owns a tractor rental company and he kindly delivered the tractor to me on his mighty-nice roll-back hauler. It was a big rig to fit down my cramped driveway. As you may or may not have noticed, the Massey Harris Pony hasn't been unloaded from my dump trailer yet.

What a beaut! But I suppose beauty is in the eye of the slightly delirious beholder.

You can kind of see how tall this tractor is when it's compared to the M-H Pony that's still in the trailer.

There are issues going on with this tractor. As is good practice (but not always followed), I decided to check the oil. I cracked the oil level plug open and....... water came out (JD didn't use dipsticks back then, they used an oil level plug - if oil came out the hole when opened, it was full, if no oil came out, put some in). Next step was to drain the crankcase. A couple gallons of water came out, then maybe a quart of oil. Good thing I checked. I'd hate to have started the tractor with all that water in it.

I put in seven quarts of used engine oil out of my pickup truck for the time being. Once I get the engine running well, I'll change the oil and filter.

Now that the tractor has fresh oil in it (!?), let's go through the little tool bin on the tractor... Ok, so nothing really interesting was found. The two combination wrenches weren't part of the stash either. The nails on the right are a bit strange. Several of them have been flattened on the end. Some farmer-fix for something but I wonder what they were for.

Oh, look, bailing wire. Something every tractor should have in its arsenal.

I tried pushing down on the starter button on the top of the flywheel cover but I realized it wasn't connected to anything, so I pulled the cover off. I wondered what I would find. No starter? No flywheel? Something else missing? Fortunately the starter and flywheel are still there and there doesn't appear to be anything missing.

I was able to rotate the flywheel ever so slightly in both directions, so I then hooked up a battery and engaged the starter (after pulling the spark plugs and squirting some oil in the cylinders). The starter actually worked, and with some coaxing from me tugging on the flywheel, the engine started turning over faster and faster.

 I couldn't get a spark from a plug wire so off came the magneto cap. Hmm, I wonder what that small washer sitting in the bottom of the cap is for? And look, a bit of crud.

It's a bit nasty inside the magneto but I've seen much worse.

And just look at them points. Quite the hairy growth. A 2 thousandths feeler gauge was tight. The gap should be 15 thousandths, according to the small cast-in words under the points. How convenient.

Mm-mm good.

After filing the points clean, the gap was back to what it should be. I didn't have to adjust them at all. And do you see that new little hairpin clip, kind of to the right of center in the photo below? That is holding on that washer I found in the cap. It also holds the points arm onto its post. I didn't find the little bitty retaining ring that should be there. I didn't have one that small in my stash of small parts, thus the small hairpin clip.

When I put the rotor back on, it was very loose. I then realized there was a small flat spring clip that was missing from inside of the rotor which holds the rotor onto the magneto shaft. I cut a piece of sheet metal to fit. It was barely too thick so I hammered it flatter with a ball peen hammer.

Once the magneto's cap and rotor were back together, I got spark from a plug. Woohoo!

The throttle and shutter levers are rusted solid. They're the two handles in the upper center of the photo below. The shutter lever does nothing since the shutters are missing so that's not a big deal, but I do need to get the throttle lever unstuck. The choke is also stuck. I tried to free it up and ended up snapping off the small choke rod poking out of the carburetor. So now the carb has to come off. Just as well, it probably has gunk in it.

I whacked lightly on the throttle and shutter levers with a 2x4, but to no avail, so I took a look at the parts breakdown and noticed both levers have a friction cone on the bottom end of the vertical portion of the contraptions, to give some friction so the levers don't move around while the tractor is running. I got a pry bar and gently pried up on the throttle lever coming out the bottom of the vertical pedestal and that freed up the throttle assembly. I then pried down on the shutter lever, which freed up that assembly. There's a spring between the two levers coming out the bottom of the pedestal that forces the cones into mating cones in the pedestal, so that's why one lever had to be pried up and the other pried down to free them up.

The carburetor is a DLTX10, which is for an early unstyled B tractor with a 149 cu-in engine. The correct carb for this tractor with a 190 cu-in engine would be a DLTX67. I don't know how well this engine will run with the smaller carb.

Right in the center of the photo below is the broken brass choke rod. That's casualty numero uno.

This dry powdery substance came out of the carb bowl. I imagine it's just from dirty gas in years gone by.

The bottom of the main body is a bit rusty.

Most of the carb is apart, and I finally got the choke rod out. That wasn't without a big struggle. First, I snapped off a small bolt that keeps spring tension on the choke rod lever. That was casualty number two. The choke rod was so stuck in the carb casting that the only option I had (after trying heat) was to pry the choke plate out of the choke rod, then I could use a drift and hammer to whack out the choke shaft. The bent choke plate was casualty number 2-1/2. The choke plate is to the right of center in the photo below. It looks like a potato chip. I was able to hammer it flat again though, so all is not lost. The idle and load needles (two long rods lower center) were also rusted tight but with heat and a light tapping, they finally came out.

Next was to tackle the broken bolt in the carb. I drilled a small hole in the center of the piece of bolt. Little did I know that the tiny drill bit I was using snapped off when the drill bit pierced the end of the bolt. I didn't realize it and just thought I'd hit a hardened part of the bolt. I put a larger drill bit in the drill press and drilled the hole out further. That bit also hit the hard area and messed up the end of the bit. Only later did I realize it was the previous bit's broken end.

After ruining the large drill bit's end, I decided to use a hammer and drift punch to knock the end of the bolt piece out of the carburetor. That's when I found the broken drill bit end. That's a 3/64-inch drill bit. A 1/16-inch drill bit is larger than this one.

I didn't know the thread pitch of the broken bolt but it doesn't really matter, as I can make it anything I want since I'm making a new bolt. I decided on 12-24 thread size. I think the old bolt was 10-32 or 10-24, so a larger thread pitch will be better anyway. I found a large bolt with the same shank OD as the broken bolt, then turned down the part that needs to be threaded.

Below shows the new bolt.

Ok, so the new bolt isn't a cute little thing like the old one. Maybe someday I'll pare down the awkwardly large hex head. It's just a big job of setting up the dividing head on the mill to do something like that. I suppose I could just use a grinder and hacksaw, but that wouldn't have a very nice looking finish to it.

I'm not so sure this next fix is going to work, which is to build up the end of the broken choke shaft with brazing rod, then turning it down to size on the lathe. After that, I'll file down the end in the shape of a rectangle to fit into the slot in the choke lever. I just don't know how well brazing rod filler will peen over. Stay tuned....

The above photo was my first attempt, and the below photo is the final product. It was difficult to do because the base metal (brass) melts at pretty much the same temperature as the brass filler rod. It was hard to not just melt down the original choke rod.

I turned down the excess filler material on the lathe.

This next photo shows the rod filed down to fit the choke lever.

And here's the rod peened in place. So far the fix seems to be working.

Next step on the tractor was to delve into the fuel tank. The photo below shows the sediment bowl. There's a fine mesh filter sitting on top. It looks like it did its job......

..... until I took off the mesh filter and noticed all the junk in the glass bowl. Wow, some farmer way back when used really dirty gasoline.

Sigh..... Why is there so much water in places it shouldn't be. That's the fuel tank, and water is running out of it.

This next photo below is the underside of the sediment bowl valve. It's a bit crusty but I think it will work OK. I've seen worse.

Yeah, this is the top side of the sediment bowl, the part that screws into the tank.

The tank has new gas in it, the sediment bowl is back in place, and the carburetor is back on the tractor.

Next is to un-stick the stuck clutch. Yes, that is water RUNNING out of the bottom of the clutch/belt pulley. How on earth didn't the water just seep out past the end cover? There isn't a seal there. Well, maybe there was so much rust that the water couldn't get past it.

This first driven disk (left) was fairly easy to get out. The drive disk on the right took some heat and light tapping to break free of the center splined hub.

The next driven disk also came off fairly easily. as it was just a slip fit on the three studs.

The main drive disk is on a tapered and splined shaft so it needs a puller. The plate I used is 3/8 inch thick. It was bending a little but the disk came off after several raps of a small sledge hammer and repeated tightening of the two bolts.

I took a wire wheel to all that gunk in the clutch/belt pulley interior.

And these parts needed a lot of scraping to get looking halfway decent. It all cleaned up well enough to reuse.

Getting the flywheel cover back on and the starter rod re-threaded into the starter motor yoke was a challenge. Zip ties are good for so many oddball things.

A week after getting this tractor (and getting a cold in there somewhere), it is running and driving. The video is very poor quality, as Blogger only allows 100mb videos. The tractor still needs some work but the big question of wondering if it runs is now answered. The tractor has no coolant in the system so I couldn't run it very long.

The tractor lights off around the 55 second mark in the video. I wasn't really expecting it to, as I'd heard little pops here and there for very long time during the multitude of times holding down the starter button. You can tell I was a bit surprised when it came to life. Right after it started, I could hear something rubbing but didn't know what it was. I finally found out the starter motor yoke was rubbing on the flywheel. I had to hold up the starter rod so things wouldn't rub.