ItsNotJunk: 1950 John Deere BN - Narrowing Rear Wheel Width

This tractor's rear wheel width is 74 inches, outside to outside. My little dump trailer is 72 inches in width between the sides. The more astute may see a problem there. I measured the wheel width before I bought the tractor, so I knew what I was getting myself into, although this job ended up being a huge endeavor. As I mentioned in the first blog posting of this tractor, the previous owner graciously offered to deliver the tractor to me, so I didn't have to do this painful job away from home. That would have been horrible, now that I know what it took to get the job done.

This first photo is of the left side. If you look closely at the nuts relative to the round opening, the nuts barely (if at all) have room to rotate, and there's a small lip that makes it so a socket can't get all the way onto the lug nuts. This may be a problem. [I later found out that this small inner lip is actually a register for the center splined hub to fit into - more on that later.]

This next photo is of the right side hub. For some reason, a piece of steel has been welded to the axle, I presume so the hub can't slide off. I wonder if this hub doesn't clamp tight on the axle. I'll find out when I do get to the right side.

Back to the left side. The first order of business was to get the get a collar loose from the hub. The collar and hub have a tapered interface. When the collar bolts are tightened, the collar taper forces the hub splines against the axle, which then keeps the hub from sliding on the axle. I loosened the three 3/4" collar bolts (1-1/16" socket and a 1/2" drive breaker bar). Normally the hub and collar are facing to the outside of the axle, and two of the three collar bolts can be threaded into some "jacking holes" in the collar to act as a sort-of puller to get the collar loose. With the hub facing inward and very close to the rear axle housing, that method couldn't be utilized. There are holes through the hub that allow a drift and hammer to be used to whack loose the collar, but that didn't work for me, so I drove in two tapered punches (seen in the photo below) and put heat to the collar, then beating the collar with the drift through the holes, but that also didn't work.

At a dead end, I searched through my old bolt hoard and happened to find one bolt that was the right thread pitch and almost the right length to get into one of the jacking holes. I did have to grind an 1/8" off the head so I could get it to fit past the axle housing. This next photo shows the bolt in one of the jacking holes. I tightened up the bolt, then used the drift and hammer again and the collar popped loose. Yay. Small successes are so satisfying.

Now on to getting the six lug bolts and nuts removed. I'd mentioned that a socket could only fit halfway or a little more onto the exposed nuts. The bolt heads on the inner side of the wheel are square and there's not much access so I had to loosen the nuts from the outside. I heated the nuts red hot, then was able to get them to turn. I don't quite know what happened but three of the bolts' threads got stripped when removing the nuts, so I decided to just use the hot wrench (oxy-acetylene cutting torch) to remove the remaining three nuts.

With the lug bolts out of the way, I could remove the very heavy wheel and tire assembly. I'm guessing it weighs around 400 pounds. I very carefully shimmied it off the end of the axle and leaned it against the tractor. Then it was on to getting the hub off the axle. I happened to have a very large three-arm puller that I'd gotten for a few bucks at a garage sale. It worked great for getting the hub off the axle. I did scrape the paint off the splines before using the puller. This next photo shows the hub going back on the splined shaft, although I had to take it off again to put the wheel and tire assembly on first to get things in the proper order.

I realized that the hub is supposed to mount to the large cast iron wheel on the convex side of the wheel. There is a hub register on this side of the cast wheel that centers the hub with the cast wheel such that all the load on the rear wheels is then transferred from the hub to the wheel via the register. This next sketch shows the improper way the hubs and wheels were assembled on the tractor. You can tell that the six (purple) bolts are the only thing supporting the tractor.

This next sketch shows the proper orientation between hub and cast wheel. The hub is a tight fit into the hub register, so there is no vertical load being held by the bolts, although they do provide lateral support.

Whoever put the hubs to the inside (concave side) of the wheels didn't know about the locating register and put things together wrong. As mentioned, the entire weight of the rear of the tractor was basically hanging from the six lug bolts because the hub wasn't properly located in the register of the cast wheel.

Below is the left side wheel and hub all back together. I had to buy six new Grade 5 bolts, nuts and lock washers for this side. Hopefully the right side will go smoother, although it is also put together incorrectly just like this side was.

Now it's time to tackle the right rear wheel. I can hardly wait. The bolt below is the jacking bolt I used on the left side to help get the collar loose. Threading it into the right side collar didn't go so well, as the threads in the collar were worse off than the left side collar. I used a cutoff saw to slice a slot in the threads of the bolt so it would act as a sort-of tap to clean the internal threads. It did work somewhat.

The technique I used on the left side collar didn't work on the right side (using one jacking bolt and whacking the collar). I was able to dig up another bolt to use as a jacking bolt. I threaded it in and tightened it down a little, then *snap*.... Great. That just made the job a lot more labor-intensive.

My next move was to remove the wheel and tire from the hub. It took a while.

With the wheel out of the way, I was able to really whack on the bolts to get the collar unstuck.

Here's a photo of the large puller I used to get the hubs off.

Yep, down in that thar hole is a broken-off 3/4" bolt.

I figured the first attempt would be the use of an Easy-Out. I know they rarely work but it's the easiest first option. Problem is, when you break off a drill bit, the job doesn't get any easier.

This first attempt didn't work. I then drilled out the end of the bolt to a larger diameter and welded up the inside, hoping that the welding would shrink the bolt by enough to make it loose. Nope.