1942 Oliver 60 Standard Generator, Radiator Shroud, Broken Bolts, Oil Filter, and Misc

This morning I thought I'd try to hook up the Motorcraft alternator that is on the tractor, just to see if it makes power. There are four connections, marked Bat, Fld, Sta, and Gnd. I did some checking online and it seems that if I hook the Sta terminal to the Bat terminal, then put 12 volts to the Fld terminal, I should be able to read something around 14.5 volts from the Bat terminal. I did just that, started the tractor, and read right around 15 volts. Cool, the alternator works. The next step was to semi-permanently run wiring to the Ammeter and battery.

After running a couple of wires, I started the tractor again and immediately heard a *thunk*. Not knowing what just happened, but not hearing anything bad going on with the engine, I didn't think much of it. But it was then that I noticed the alternator fan wasn't spinning anymore. Hmm, the V-belt is missing. I searched around the tractor but couldn't find it. At least I now knew what the thunk was. I then thought that maybe the belt got flung a ways away from the tractor so I increased my field of view. I happened to glance out in the lawn and saw something. Nah, that couldn't be the belt. I wandered over and yep, that's the belt. Forty feet from the tractor.

Ok, so now I need a new belt. The load from the alternator must have been the breaking point.

I then had the brilliant thought to put a generator back in the tractor, as that's what it had when new. I just happened to have a generator for a Ferguson TO-35 on the shelf in the garage so I pulled off the alternator and put in the generator. Sure is a nice fit, and a little bonus, the generator has a tachometer drive off the back that I might just have to utilize (I happen to have a spare TO-35 tach and drive cable as well).

I'm guessing most generators of the time had fairly standard mounting lugs. This wasn't a direct bolt-in process but I made a small bracket and used some washers as spacers to get its pulley to line up with the one on the engine. Now I just need to buy a new belt. I'm also going to order a new fan belt as the one on the tractor looks quite cracked, and that belt has to come off to get the generator belt on. (Side note, I was moving this tractor in the yard a bit later and the fan belt came apart also. I've run this tractor for maybe 20-30 minutes and both belts have broken.)

New louvered side panels showed up today also from Steiner. About $400 shipped to my door for the pair and a new shift knob. Unfortunately I won't be able to install the panels until I find a better fitting radiator. I also need to order the rear panels that go behind the louvered panels. They're about $175 shipped.

New shift knob...

Both belts showed up at my door, and also a "new" radiator shroud from eBay. The shroud has seen better days but it definitely could have been worse. A couple of areas need to be welded back together and some dents need pounding out. To install this thing, the too-large radiator needs to come out.

After pulling the radiator, I noticed the generator pulley was starting to wear thin and separate. Another small issue needing attention.

A bracket on the front of the tractor needed to come off and of course the two bolts snapped off. Great.

For the first bolt, it took four or five tries of welding a nut to the remains of the broken shank to get it out but finally there was success.

This is the second sheared off bolt. It didn't cooperate like the first one. After eight or ten nut-welding tries, I finally bit the bullet and drilled it out, then ran a tap through the hole. Oh yeah, I also broke a drill bit off in the bolt shank at some point....

Not to fear though, I was successful at getting the bolt holes cleared out and the shroud installed. Rear side panels also showed up, so the tractor is looking a whole lot better than when I first picked it up ($700 tied up just in those four side panels and the radiator shroud - yes, a hole in the ground to which you throw money). The below pics show before and after photos of the tractor.

Hmm, here's another issue, and a not-so-minor one at that. To get the right side panel to close, I needed to remove the too-long oil filter (that's not the issue). After getting it off, I took a look inside and it appeared that hardly any oil had ever been inside the filter. After some snooping around the net, I realized that the Oliver engine pumps oil into the filter through the center and it returns to the engine through the six holes around the periphery of the filter. That is backwards to pretty much every filter design out there. Filters have an anti-drain-back feature that only allows oil to flow in one direction, and this feature kept oil out of this filter for as long as this old filter has been on the engine. The engine has an adapter to allow for using a more readily available filter than the harder to find original design.

Below is the filter adapter. It is entirely too clean to have seen any oil in the last however many years.

This is a shot of the engine block where the adapter threads into. There's gunk in there from this being a low spot...

This next photo shows the filter adapter off the engine. Those large threads are what the original filter design had.

I took a Wix 51348 filter I had on the shelf, which happened to fit the threads of the filter adapter. I dug out the anti drain back rubber flapper (orange rubber bits) so that oil could flow the correct direction through the filter.

This short filter will not interfere with the side panel.

And both the fan and generator belts are in place. The fan belt is a generic 5L340 (5/8" x 34", two for ten bucks on Amazon), and the generator belt is a new-old-stock Gates 6825 (1/2" x 25", $8.75 on eBay).

A steering wheel popped up on eBay for an Oliver 60 and it was cheap enough that I bought it. It looks kind of like new old stock, as it has some shelf wear but it's really in pretty good shape for $37 delivered. The old tag on it was marked $55, then marked down to $50. A photo of the old one first, then the new one, then the tag.

I think that's enough photos for now. I'll post something when I get my new aluminum radiator installed on this tractor.