Can We Bring a 73 Year Old Tractor Back to Life? 1949 John Deere B Forgotten in a Barn

[Music] the white knuckle towing service went back to school guess we're doing it ourselves [Music] all the power steering's broken all right you're not much help pub are you only working in a supervisory capacity typical boss always hounded me hurry up are you going tractor it's about as far as i can go without cleaning god knows we don't want to do that we've got a johnny popper to play with all right folks this is a john deere b it belongs to my neighbor he wants us to get it running it's been sitting for a few years whatever that means as far as i can tell it's a 1949 model and it appears to be in pretty good shape i mean for a 73 year old tractor this is not bad i think that's the original paint looks like it has the original fasteners check out these bolts they have this i think that's called a clutch head for a screwdriver as well as a wrench i'm not an expert about two cylinder john deere's i'll give you guys kind of the nickel tour the big feature on these is the two cylinder engine that's a horizontal two cylinder gasoline engine makes about 17 horsepower there's your carburetor right there the fuel is let's just say she's ripe probably use that to stain my deck under that cover is the engine flywheel the crankshaft runs this way that's your throttle this lever here controls some shutters up in the front of the grille six-speed transmission the other big thing with these is they have a hand clutch so that lever right there is your clutch that is for the pto i believe and then this tractor also has hydraulics so this lever here controls your hydraulics i guess they had a loader on it at one time belt pulley so that can run a flat belt to power some kind of implement magneto ignition it is six volt that's the original six volt generator tires are shot in the front at least the one is rear tires are they have good tread but they're they're in pretty bad shape i love the giant radiator cap this is not a pressurized cooling system so it's just a just a cover really yeah it's not bad the fuel shut off petcock is leaking a little bit i don't know if that means the carburetor's had fuel in it this whole time or not okay where do we want to start i guess let's go ahead and drain the fuel out it's not going to run on that and then we'll try to access the battery put a charger on it it's probably not going to work and i don't think i have a a 6 volt battery so we may have to obtain one of those [Music] there we go looks pretty puffy so it's probably been frozen we'll try that's not good not good at all fuel's turned on apparently and nothing's coming out of the pipe so so we've got a little bit of a blockage in the tank oh so how much is going to come running out of here right down my arm perfect there we go might be part of it [Music] yeah it's not able to push it push it into the carburetor so the float must be stuck or what if there's a filter underneath that screw either way nothing's making it to the bowl [Music] so that looks good yeah we might as well just pull that carburetor off there's no way it's going to work it's clear full of sludge there we go all right we'll let the carburetor soak in the ultrasonic cleaner for a wee bit let's get a look under this cover doesn't seem the greatest so we'll go ahead and clean those points i'm sure they're gonna need it this rotor is broken one of the little spring tabs is broken off so it's kind of wonky on there and we'll try it see if it works so these are the buttons over here [Music] man what is hammering away in there i don't know this stuff was nasty really nasty looks a whole lot better now cleaned up the sediment bowl cleaned up the the valve seat here so it'll actually shut off made a new cork gasket yeah that's ready to install this guy here it was pretty scuzzy this is a shoveler carburetor i don't know if this pre-dates the marvel shoveler anyway it's a a hefty chunk of cast iron i could not get any of these copper or brass plugs out the only things i could remove was the low speed and high speed jet [Applause] i'll feel a lot better if i can get this emulsion tube out oh yeah there it comes i guess [Applause] yeah i'm thinking that might need to be cleaned that looks much better much much better one two three seven eight now the high speed one two nine ten and the bowl was particularly disgusting the float was stuck there was a about a half inch of sludge in the bottom so again i can't get these copper screws out to take it all apart but the float holds and it moves so i think we're okay i can remember how it goes back together was it like that or was it the other way so i'm trying to reuse all these gaskets and seals i don't know how it's going to work okay ready to install how many shops do you know program a forward radar detect module on a 2019 gmc yukon and then rebuild a cast iron marvel shoveler carburetor in the same day probably not many well i switched around some clean gas inside the tank doesn't look too bad [Music] don't worry the bucket caught about a third of it anyway we're going to put this sediment bowl back on and we'll just run it off the tank there's no dipstick on this tractor the way you check the oil is with a check plug it's right underneath the belt pulley on this one there it is wow look at it this thing's making hole so as long as oil runs out of that check plug means it's full if we could get it to turn over i think it would start but that's not going to happen with that that battery all right just for experimental purposes we're gonna hook up a 12-volt jump pack see if she'll crank with that this is positive ground six volt so be careful huh pretty amazing they used to hand start these things all right i cleaned the plugs let's try this again [Laughter] okay that was better why wouldn't it stay running richen that up for a little bit so beautiful that's fantastic it runs good i don't know why it wouldn't start there i just turned this idle mixture a little bit and it fired right up so probably still just a little bit of crap in there and i broke it loose and i moved that we need a battery and then yeah we can go take this thing for a drive [Applause] so that's not bad usually they're going 70 and they're pulling three all right we got a new battery amazingly it seems to be charging i greased the wheel bearings i think we're good to go i tried to put some air in that one tire it pretty much leaks out as fast as you can stick it in there probably should grease this gen or oil this generator real quick just like the tin man i guess the other kind of weird thing about these tractors you uh you get on from the rear so somebody bolted up this two by four here makes a nice little step if it's not all rotted out there we go now the clutch is currently engaged i'm not sure on john deere's but i was always told with a hand clutch or any kind of over center clutch you want to you don't want to leave it disengaged for too long it's hard on the throw out bearing it's just like holding down the clutch pedal so let's see there and we got the requisite grease on our boot will it start is a little sticky yeah something in that low speed circuit all right we gotta clean that again yeah that's what she does runs pretty good and then it just kind of falls apart typically restarts though choke it a little bit what does mortsky say something about wanks and tanks yeah i ran out of gas so our road trip's not going it's not going very well i filled it up it still it runs for a little bit then it just stalls out yeah i think the problem is the more we run it the more crap breaks loose inside the fuel tank and it's plugging up the pickup here i wish i had a filter that would fit on top of that i wonder if i can find one so [Applause] there's some pretty big chunks i wonder if this tank's got a hole in it somewhere the bottom doesn't look that bad i think my suspicions of a hole in the tank are confirmed can you see that that's a big old rust hole in the top of that fuel tank that is right about here so i would guess that our little snack stealing friends have built a nest on top of the fuel tank underneath the hood and their indoor plumbing has rotted out that fuel tank so that explains why we keep getting junk in it it's falling in the top that's a bummer yeah it needs a fuel tank boy it's starting to leak pretty much everywhere too valve cover's leaking it's leaking right here whatever the top drive here that gasket's leaking looks like maybe the one of the main seals is leaking on the other side got a pretty good size puddle there and then some hydraulic leaks in the back and a leak from the axle huh who would have thought after 73 years that it would have some minor problems i just jammed a piece of nylon airline in the end of the pickup that'll force it to pick up fuel from higher off the bottom of the tank hopefully keep the big chunks out of it and then the sediment bowl will catch what that doesn't catch and then the screen in the carburetor will catch everything else hopefully all right folks that's going to do it for the john deere b we're not here to fix everything we towed it in and we drove it out can't complain about that it needs a fuel tank maybe a couple of tires possibly plug up some of the larger leaks otherwise it runs it drives it's a pretty sweet old tractor i wonder how many tractors built today will still be running in 73 years not too many i suspect thanks for watching

Channel: Watch Wes Work

Views: 565,934

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Id: 6SOEWU1KjNk

Length: 29min 46sec (1786 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 20 2022