1942 Oliver 60 Standard - Installing an Air Cleaner

Here's another job on the old 60 Std, installing the oil bath air cleaner I removed from the parts 60. This should have taken a fraction of the time it took to do, but this time it isn't the factory's fault (the other "long" job was putting on the radiator and nose shell (link here)). This 15-minute job took three hours. The reason this time is because the carburetor is not correct for the engine. The carb is close to being correct but the real issue is that the lever for the throttle plate is on the wrong side of the carburetor (it's on the side of the carb facing out and is supposed to be on the side of the carb facing the engine). A previous owner had jury-rigged a piece of all-thread as linkage from the governor lever to the throttle lever. The setup looks very much kludged together but it works well. The problem is, the left part of the all-thread is taking up real estate that the air cleaner needs to occupy.

1942 Oliver 60 Standard - "New" Grilles and Radiator

It's been awhile since I did anything of significance on a tractor. Well, a few days ago I did get a guy's David Bradley garden tractor's engine running, but that doesn't really count. Today I decided to install an original Oliver radiator and grille halves on this tractor that I had gotten off somewhat of a parts tractor I'd bought six months ago. It should have been a simple process of swapping parts from one tractor to the other. Well, an hour job took four hours. The final product though is so nice.

Oliver 60 - Straightening Radiator Grilles and Nameplate

The grilles and radiator shroud are in OK condition but I really do need to try and straighten things out as much as possible.

1945 Oliver 60 Row Crop Tractor - New Acquisition

Yet another tractor followed me home, or that's the story us tractor hoarders always want everyone to think. I do acknowledge I'm the problem. That's the first step, or so they say. And to be fair, this tractor is just a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

This new tractor is a 60 Row Crop, meaning it has adjustable wheel width spacing for planting and cultivating crops planted in rows. The back story of this purchase is this. I needed some parts for my 1942 Oliver 60 Standard, things like grille halves, the all-important Oliver grille nameplate, oil bath air cleaner, correct carburetor, and a couple other little tidbits. I had contacted someone on Facebook in an Oliver tractor forum and he said he should have all the parts. I asked for photos and prices on what he had. Well, he just kept stringing me along for over a month, giving one excuse after another (including losing my messages - how does someone lose messages that are stored on Facebook Messenger?). The worst part was, during this time he kept putting up postings on the forum of other tractor parts for sale, so he certainly had time to do things he wanted to do. In the end however, it was all for the best, as this 1945 Oliver tractor popped up on Facebook Marketplace for $550, I'm guessing a number not too far off from what the Facebook guy probably would have wanted for the few parts I'd asked for.

1942 Oliver 60 Standard - Seat Repair

The wood seat bottom on the tractor has seen better days, and the first photo says it all. The vinyl looks great but the plywood base is rotting away to nothingness. Whenever the tractor is running, detrious flows out from under the seat. And by the way, the steel seat frame and square steel plate aren't original to the tractor.

1942 Oliver 60 Standard - "New" 75-Year-Old Carburetor

The carburetor that came on this ol' beauty was not correct for the tractor. It is a Zenith/Bendix that is supposedly for a Continental flathead engine of similar displacement to the Oliver's 120 cubic inches. This first photo is of the carb when I first got the tractor, along with the patched-together linkage setup and the choke cable's big loopty loop.

1942 Oliver 60 Standard - New Front Tires

With an old tractor, purt-near everything that needs fixin' is a chore. The tractor desperately needs new front tires. One is a retread and is part way through the delamination process, and the other tire is just plain old and cracked. Also, they are truck tires, not tractor tires (the horror). Below is a photo of the retread. You can kind of make out the separation between the layers.

1942 Oliver 60 Standard - New OIL/TEMP/AMPS Gauges and Clutch Adjustment

This old tractor still has one of its original gauges, the ammeter. I guess with maybe one moving part (the needle), there is little to go wrong. The replacement water temperature gauge doesn't work and the replacement 0-80 psi oil pressure gauge barely moves off the zero mark with the tractor engine's 20 psi operating pressure.

1942 Oliver 60 Standard - Radiator, Generator and Tach Updates, and New Side Panels (Again)

Radiator hoses showed up at my door so I spent the morning finishing up the radiator mounts for the new aluminum radiator.

1948 Oliver 60 "Standard" Tractor - New Acquisition

"Um, didn't you JUST TWO WEEKS AGO pick up an Oliver 60 Standard tractor?!"

Maybe..... but I did sell four tractors recently. Getting two new ones is a fair trade I think, and this tractor is fully restored. And you'll have to admit, my other 60 is at the complete opposite end of the restoration spectrum from this one.

1942 Oliver 60 Standard - Transmission Shifter: The Definition of Wallered-Out

"Well there's your problem. The parts are just wallered-out." This is the normal progression of fit between two tractor parts that rub against each other for decades on end in a farming environment. These first two photos are the offending shift tower and shift lever. Light should not be showing through the shift tower like it does. The wear is also shown in other photos below. It's quite impressive.

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

This morning I thought I'd try to hook up the non-original Motorcraft alternator that is on the tractor, just to see if it makes power. There are four connections on the back of the alternator, marked Bat (battery), Fld (field), Sta (stator), and Gnd (ground). 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.

1942 Oliver 60 Standard - Miscellaneous Little Tasks

I'm sure I've said this before, but anytime someone gets a new project tractor, there are a myriad of piddly little things that need attention. For me, I start working on one thing, then something else catches my eye and I start on that too. At some point the several little things finally get done. Today was one of those days. I started by removing the beginnings of a home-built 3-point hitch the previous owner started. A lot of work went into the project up to this point but I don't see myself finishing it, so off it came. These first two photos show the thing still attached to the tractor, and the seat bracket bolted to the top of it. That's a 3" tall block of aluminum that was used for the main body, so the seat is sitting three inches higher than it should be.

1942 Oliver 60 Standard - Zenith Carburetor Cleaning

Yesterday I delved into the carburetor. In the title, I didn't say "carburetor rebuild" because I didn't buy any new parts for the project. I reused everything except the gasket between the two main halves. Usually a carburetor rebuild has new gaskets, new needle and seat, and maybe one or two other items.

The carburetor is not what came on the tractor. Oh, no, we can't be so fortunate to have the proper Marvel Schebler TSX-49. In fact, the more I work on this tractor, the more I think it was a parts tractor for someone's other Standard refurb. The tractor has wiring for lights, but there are no lights or brackets. The belt pulley is missing. The carburetor and linkage is wrong. There's no generator and an alternator that has never been hooked up is in its place. And the biggie, the radiator, radiator shell, and side panels are all missing. But in all fairness, this tractor was in this condition 30 or more years ago, when it was "only" a 50 year old tractor and probably not so desirable. Ok, so maybe it's still not that desirable but I'm sure it is more so now that it is 83 years old.

Whatever the case may be, I work with what I have. This Zenith carburetor, from what the all-knowing interweb says, is for a Towmotor Forklift with a Continental F-140 or F-162 flathead engine. Um, ok.

1942 Oliver 60 "Standard" Tractor - New Acquisition

I've actually pared down my hoard of tractors by three, so you know what that means. Buy more. Not really. I mean, it is always fun to look but my desire to thin the herd wasn't so I could buy more. It just so happened that we decided to get an Oliver tractor recently because we take care of a "church grandson" once a week named Oliver. It just seemed appropriate. This is one of the few times I've had an objective while looking for a tractor. Most of the tractors I buy just appear on my radar and I get tempted.

Here's the path I took to acquire an Oliver. Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace were the two places I looked but Craigslist seems to have dropped off the face of the earth in terms of number of tractors for sale, so it was mainly FB that I looked. And I also talked to a couple of guys in my tractor club. One guy, Fred, has probably 10 or more Olivers but wasn't interested in selling. The other guy, Bob, happened to know of one. He had given an Oliver 60 Standard to his brother Jim, and Jim happens to go to the same church we do. One problem, the tractor was missing the grill and engine side panels, and they are difficult and/or expensive to come by, so that prospect wasn't too promising.

I'd like to briefly explain what a "Standard" tractor is. Most tractors used to plant and cultivate crops were called "row crop" tractors, and they usually had a tricycle front end, which was two tires close together in front, then an adjustable rear track width so farmers could plant/cultivate/harvest a variety of crop's row spacings. Tractors that were used for things like orchards didn't need adjustable wheel width so companies made fixed-track-width tractors that were low to the ground and stable on hilly terrain. These were called "Standard" tractors usually, and this is what the Oliver 60 is that Jim has.

Enter FB Marketplace. Some guy put up an ad that showed seven fully restored tractors, with a very generic title (Antique Tractors For Sale), and very minimal wording saying they were $4500 each, or offer. One of the tractors happened to be another Oliver 60 Standard (same as Jim's). I then happened to run across the same group of tractors on Craigslist with two separate listings, both just as cryptic as FB, with one asking $3500 or offer each and the other asking $4500 or offer each. To make matters more confusing, at some point the FB ad price was lowered from $4500 to $3900 (meaning in my mind that all tractors were $3900 or less). I finally caved and called the guy. I said I was confused by all the different pricing, so asked what he wanted for the Oliver. He said it was the nicest of the lot, so he wanted $4500. So he advertises a group of tractors for as low as $3500 each but then wants $4500 for this one. That put a damper on things pretty fast. I was willing to pay $3200 for the tractor but he said $4200 was his lowest. Maybe the tractor is worth that to someone, but not me, especially with no concrete evidence of what was done during the restoration beyond a nice paint job and new tires.

It was back to searching. But the 60 owned by Jim was still in the back of my mind and old Oliver tractors are few and far between, so I finally called Jim and asked if his was for sale. Yes, it could be, he said. He lived only 20 minutes away so it was time for a little trip across town to go look. When we arrived and saw the thing, it looked pretty pathetic. Not only the grill and side panels were gone, but the whole radiator shell and original radiator were also missing (and a too-wide Jeep or Toyota radiator was cobbled in).

Are you ready for a photo? Yes, this is the face only a mother (or I) could love. A diamond in the rough, you might say.