1949 Allis Chalmers Model B - First Start in Ten Years

I'll say right off the bat, this was easier than I thought it would be. There's a video at the bottom that shows the steps I performed to get the tractor going, but I'll outline them here also. First thing I wanted to do was check spark. In order to do that, I'd need to be able to crank the engine over with the starter. Problem was, the starter didn't have enough oomph to do the task, so the first order of business was to check battery terminal connections.

In the above photo, the black battery cable is bolted to that vertical pipe that holds the steering shaft up. The battery cable terminal was originally under the nut on the other side of the pipe and the surface it was contacting was rusty and somewhat painted, so there was not a good connection. I moved the cable to the head side of the bolt shown above. One problem down, how many to go?

Next I checked for spark from the magneto, now that the engine would turn over. Yep, got good spark. Well, what's next? I guess we throw gas in the tank and see if the engine lights off. Sounds simple enough. I put in the gas, opened the new sediment bowl shutoff, and cranked the engine. And cranked, and cranked. Nothing.

At that point I wondered if gas was getting to the carburetor so I pulled off the fuel line. Nothing came out when I held the open fuel line at the level of the carb's inlet. I lowered the hose down maybe six inches and gas started flowing. Then I wondered if the inline filter was too much of a restriction for the small amount of head pressure between the tank and the carburetor inlet, so I took out the filter and put in a small brass pipe. That fixed the problem. These next two photos show the fuel line with the inline filter, then with no filter.

Once gas could actually make it to the carburetor, the tractor fired up lickety split. And it ran good. Really good. I was shocked. One thing I did notice though was that the oil filter sprung a couple of pinhole oil leaks, probably from moisture and rust inside the filter. I found a large hose clamp and cut some rubber patches, which solved that problem. Yes, I do have a new filter coming in a few days.

I wondered if the generator was working so I ran and got the Volt-Ohm meter and hooked it to the battery. It read 6.69 volts with the engine running. While that's not great, it is showing that the generator is putting out voltage/current, and probably just needs to have the regulator adjusted.

This video below chronicles the process to get the tractor running.