What to Look For When Buying a Used Tractor

hi i'm pete and welcome to just a few acres farm this is my barn full of tractors and after that last video i did where i talked about what to look for in an old tractor for a small farm i got so many great ideas you guys were awesome i i could probably make 50 videos out of the comments i got from that video alone so i looked through the comments and i think that the most recurring one i saw is what to look for when buying an old tractor so in this video i'm going to go through a kind of basic check out and walk around say you're buying a tractor at an auction or from a private owner things you want to look for i have a bunch of tractors here in the barn and i thought i should introduce the tractor family to you before going through them i'm going to use various tractors from this collection to show you what to look for so first tractor that i ever bought to restore is this 39 f-20 and went all the way through it this is a 1924 mccormick deering 1020 oldest tractor i have this is a farm all cub smallest tractor i have built in the 40s and the 50s actually the cub had a real long production run i can't remember the exact manufacture date of this this tractor stuck doesn't run it's a future project our h here in 1940 which i showed in the last video uh farm all 504 with loader on it farmall 656 with a loader on it our principal tractor for making hay and doing loading loader work farm all super a with snow plow in front i use for plowing driveways farmall superc here which use gets used probably more than any other tractor on the farm we use it daily in the summertime for towing wagons around to doing odd jobs real handy tractor now none of these tractors were here when we started the farm i picked them up one by one over many years from both auctions and private sellers and for each one that i bought i had to go around and evaluate what it needed in its condition so let's start with that the first thing you want to do is just a general walk around of the tractor and i'll use this little cub as an example i bought this from a private seller and it came with a whole bunch of implements it was a it was a great buy um you can tell just looking at this tractor and walking around it that it's been well cared for it's not all rusty it hasn't been stored outside for too long it's not all dented up the general appearance of the tractor can tell you a lot about how it was cared for if somebody didn't care for the tractor ran it into trees and dented it all up and was hard on it you'll see it and of course the first things to look at is the paint you can often find areas if you do a little research on the specific model you're looking for that are subject to excessive stress and those areas will get welded up and cobbled on if the tractor has been mistreated like on a tractor like this and on larger wide front tractors you always look at the front axle here because quite often those have been broken and welded up you look at the top of the spindles here where the steering arms come into them and they'll be welded up and you can tell if the tractor has been really rode hard that way the other stress points on this model tractor are the front casting the steering comes into the front casting here and the steering box is integrated in the front casting and you'll see welds there if the tractor has been overloaded say with a bucket loader i'm using a small tractor as an example but you'll see this on larger tractors too you want to look at the back end of the tractor tractors with three-point hitches quite often you'll find one or another rod has been broken and welded up this one's in pretty pristine condition you'll find lift arms that have been welded up sometimes you'll find where the balls have been worn on the three-point hitch attachment and they'll weld around that to tighten up the ball so those are all things they aren't deal breakers but they tell you how well the tractor's been cared for and how rough of a life of the that it's had and while you're doing that walk through pay particular attention to the condition of the tires and the rims you can spend more on a new set of tires for a tractor like this than the expense of the tractor at auction and a rear set of tires like these these these were original when i bought the tractor you can spend easily a thousand dollars just on the two rear tires alone front tires aren't so bad and when you're looking at the tires you don't want to only look at how much tread is left on them but commonly these tractor tires get so old they may still have good tread on them but they'll be cracked weather just takes away from the pliability of the rubber and you start to get cracked rubber like you see on this and that tells you that that tire may not have 20 years left in it you may be able to get by for a while with it the other thing to look for with rear tires is quite often on old tractors the tires are what's called loaded they're loaded with a calcium chloride and water solution to add a lot of weight in the rear tires and the reason it's calcium chloride is so it doesn't freeze when it gets cold out the problem with calcium chloride is very corrosive so you'll see a lot of rust on this rim but the rust is really concentrated down where the valve stem is quite commonly if you have a tire that leaks a little bit and leaks some of that calcium chloride out it gets into the back side of the rim and it leaks out through where the valve stem hole is and you start to rust out the rim during your walk around you also want to look for leaks what's leaking because something's always leaking on these old tractors and you want to concentrate that around the engine and the transmission quite commonly you'll find engines that are covered with kind of baked on oil and usually the culprit is the valve cover gasket way up in here has just leaked over time and it's leaked oil down over the engine then the hot hotness of the head has kind of fried that oil on the engine that's really not a big deal valve cover gaskets are easy to change there's more troublesome signs when you see leaks elsewhere if you see leaks coming down at the bottom of the head which is hard to see but there is a seam between the head here and the engine block here that's covered by this rod there it is right there if you see seepage along that seam it means you've probably got head gasket problems and so you're into more money than just simply replacing the valve cover gasket up here it's also quite common to see leaks around the oil pan here again like the valve cover gasket that's really not a big deal it's pretty easy to change out the pan gasket and you'll often see leaks around the transmission final drive housings it's not uncommon to see oil on the bottom of the bull gear case which is in back there the seals start leaking on these old tractors hector seals maybe 50 60 70 years old commonly there's seals where the brake shafts come out here between the transmission and the brake they'll leak their seals on the end of the axles they'll leak there's a seal on the end of the pto shaft here the power takeoff shaft these almost always are leaking and it winds up accumulating on the bottom of the case these kinds of leaks aren't things to be real concerned about they're just a simple replacement of seals and quite often they're slow leaks so don't worry too much about them continuing on leaks the next thing to look at is the radiators handy if you bring a flashlight with you and you look down at the bottom of the radiator in here just in front of the fan and you look for moisture or antifreeze that's seeping from the bottom of the radiator because that's where it'll collect is down in here while you're up front at the radiator you want to look at the radiator hoses and you want to look at the belts again these are small things but it helps to know what you're getting into so with hoses it's a visual inspection you don't need to be a mechanic to tell if a hose is bad you'll see an old cracked hose it'll obviously be about ready to leak same with fan belts if the fan belts are cracked if they look old and weathered they're going to need replacement and the same thing with the fuel tank you want to look at the underside of the fuel tank make sure that there's no wetness or fuel collecting on the bottom of the fuel tank it means you might have a leaky fuel tank and finally on leaks the hydraulic system now with bigger tractors like the 656 you've got hydraulic lines running all over the place and you've got the actuators the remote valves back here this tractor can leak in any place of a hundred spots on it and it does leak some i got to take care of it it's a never-ending battle with old tractors to catch all the leaks especially on these more complicated ones like the the valve cover the oil pan a general kind of wetness around certain areas of the hydraulic system isn't a deal breaker it may just be a slow leak and the only way you can tell how bad it is is when you run the tractor take a look at the tractor's wiring and i'm sorry i don't have an example of bad tractor wiring but if you go to an auction you'll see plenty of examples usually the original wiring has been cobbled up so you'll see electrical tape and splices in it and wires hanging down it'll be just a general mess wiring attractor is not hard but if you have a cobbled up old wired tractor chances are you're gonna have to do some wiring work because those fixes never last very long with these old tractors it's real hard to tell how much use they've had most of the older ones don't have an hour meter on them and even the ones that are new and new enough to have an hour meter on them often that hour meter isn't working anymore so there are some ways you can tell how much the tractor's been used and the first simple one is to look at the clutch pedal and the brake pedals most clutch and brake pedals have this corrugation on them for slip resistance and when this is worn where the foot rode you know that tractor's been used a lot here's a tractor that i know has been used a lot this f20 and the brake pedals on it the pattern is actually worn right off of this one there's a couple internal engine checks you want to do while the tractor is not running and they actually are best if the tractor hasn't run for a while and the first is you want to crack open the oil drain and see what the oil looks like quite often on these old tractors you don't have a dipstick you've got a set of petcocks in the bottom here and you crack open the top one and if oil runs out of it then you know you've got the proper amount of oil in the tractor this oil that dripped out of here is one of the things that you want to look for now this tractor has been run cold a lot lately so the oil is a little bit milky you want to smell the oil if you smell antifreeze in it or if you smell something other than what motor oil should smell like there's something going on if the oil is excessively white and foamy it may be that the tractor has just been run cold a lot like this one or it may be that you have a crack or a leaky head gasket in the engine that's letting cooling into the oil so that is a big test and it's quite simple to do this tractor has a dipstick on the engine so we can tell more really from looking at a dipstick then running oil out of petcock see oil on the bottom you see it's not all foamy and white there is some foamy white up at the top that's just condensation from the engine running if you see real thin oil if you see jet black oil and it's really sludgy well you know that tractor hasn't had the oil changed in a while and that's probably symptomatic of not very good care and problems down the road also if the tractor has a dipstick in the transmission and quite often old tractors don't they just have a level check plug some of the more modern ones will have a dipstick like this 656. pull the dipstick and take a look at the transmission oil see that's nice and clean and clear again just like the engine if you find black oil you're going to wind up with a tractor that probably wasn't cared for as well as it should have been if you find water in the oil it's not uncommon at all for old tractor transmissions it's condensation or rain water that leaks into the case usually it's not a deal breaker with the older tractors that have not very complicated transmissions you can crack the drain plug in the bottom of the transmission after the tractor set for a while and usually drain any accumulated water off as well as changing the oil another pre-start check is the radiator radiator can tell you a lot by the quality of the fluid just like the engine oil so if you crack open the radiator cap and you look inside that green stuff is the coolant now if you see oil floating on the top of the coolant if you stick your finger in and you draw it out and you see an oil film that's not good that's just like seeing water in the engine oil it's symptomatic of a blown head gasket a crack in the head or the block so then you want to go looking further here's one thing to check that can drive you nuts later on that's the fuel tank to open it up and if you bring your flashlight and you shine it down in there this is a good looking fuel tank see how shiny it is in there that's an extremely good example i've run into tanks that were so rusty the rust was just flaking off the inside and it wreaks havoc with the fuel system it can clog up the outlet pipe in the bottom of the tank clog up the sediment bowl if it gets down the fuel line to the carburetor it's just never ending headaches so if you find one and everything's good except it's got a rusty tank it can be fixed you can clean them out and i have some other videos about how to do that and you can also put in a liner if you're comfortable with that to seal off all that rust once you do clean it out and make sure that it doesn't happen again rusty fuel tanks are a pain in the butt that finishes the sort of pre-start checklist the next thing you want to do if it will is start the tractor and then you can tell a whole lot more the first thing to look at when you start the tractor is the exhaust so let me start this let me start it again with some choke this time i don't know if you can see it on the camera but this tractor smokes a little bit mainly on startup exhaust smoke can tell you so much this tractor smokes on startup and then the smoke clears after a few minutes that tells me two things a it could be that the valve seals which are in the top of the engine where the valves go down through the head are a little bit leaky and when oil accumulates on the top of the head where the rocker arms are when you start up the tractor that oil seeps down and makes a little bit of whitish smoke when the tractor is warming up until that oil is drained down the other thing it can tell you if you get a lot of light colored smoke when it starts up is you're burning off some moisture and that's normal for old engines even cars do that if the tractor smokes after continued running and you've warmed it up a little bit it tells you that probably the engine is getting tired the valves aren't seeding all the way and more so even the piston rings are probably getting worn out the piston rings make the seal between the piston and the cylinder walls as the pistons go up and down if you get a little bit of oil that's getting through the rings and up into the combustion chamber then you wind up burning that oil and you get smoke out the exhaust the next thing is to just listen to the tractor run do you hear any ticks do you hear any knocks those are symptomatic of something wrong in the engine of course doesn't sound smooth run it through its idle positions does it rev up smoothly does it stumble you should have a smooth running engine it shouldn't miss cylinders i mean a skipping engine can be as simple as a fouled spark plug but it can be a lot more than that so a smooth running engine is nice the engine in this one is as i got it pretty much i put a new set of bearings in the bottom of it but that's it and it's always run nice like this these engines will run for thousands and thousands of hours without a rebuild but you can tell they're getting tired when they start smoking when they start knocking and when they start running rough next walk around the tractor with your flashlight again and see if anything started leaking while it's running you're gonna have to look all up in here is there anything coming out of the radiator or the coolant hoses is there any oil dripping out of anywhere is there any coolant dripping out around the head gasket or in the block and sometimes you'll see things that you didn't notice before the engine was running do the same thing with the hydraulic lines now this one's got a remote valve that leaks a little bit and i got to take care of that if you see oil squirting out of any of these when you have started the tractor then you've got a big problem to fix could be as easy as replacing a hose could be as complicated as rebuilding a remote valve and of course you want to look at the gauges and probably most important for engine health is looking at the oil pressure gauge which on this tractor is right down here you should start the tractor and see that gauge come up to a good pressure and a good pressure is going to vary based on what tractor you're looking at because the gauges especially the ones without numbers on it like this you generally want to look for oil pressure in the upper half of the gauge especially when the tractor is cold and started up and the oil is more viscous now you want to keep watching that gauge as the tractor warms up and see if the oil pressure drops if the oil pressure drops significantly when the tractor is warmed up again that's symptomatic of a worn engine what happens is the bearings in the engine get worn out and there's more clearance for oil to escape that's meant to lubricate those bearings and then the tractor has a harder time keeping good oil pressure you should run the tractor up and down in this throttle and see what it does to oil pressure so as i throttle this tractor up the gauge is staying in about the same spot that means that the tractor is generating its maximum amount of oil pressure it's dumping excess oil pressure through a relief valve in the engine so that means from an oil pressure standpoint this engine is healthy the other gauges to look at are the charge gauge now this could be a an ammeter or a volt meter ammeter measures current flow volt meter measures total voltage coming out of the battery if you've got an engine that's charging correctly a tractor that's charging correctly and it has a volt meter you should see that volt meter for a 12 volt tractor up around 14 14 and a half volts um you won't find a volt meter on old six volt tractors like this i've gone looking for them they don't make a six volt volt meter that i've found so these have an ammeter instead that measures charge coming off the generator this tractor doesn't charge properly and it's a constant issue with the generator and regular regulator on this engine but normally when you start this tractor you'll see this gauge jump up as the generator charges and then gradually come back down as the battery reaches its full capacity the other gauge is the coolant temperature gauge on old tractors you often won't see these come up very far unless you're working them hard they were just meant to work hard all day long and so they run cool if they're not the next thing you want to do is drive the tractor and here's where you make sure that everything works drivewise so you want to run it through all of its gears every single gear and when you're doing that you want to listen to the transmission when i bought my old h the transmission had a tick in it whenever you put it in reverse it would go tick tick tick tick so we knew something was wrong when i tore the transmission apart one gear on the reverse gear train was missing a tooth and that's what made the tick tick tick so you want to listen for things like that you also want to check the clutch and the way to check the clutch let me back up here a little bit the way to check the clutch and see if the clutch is clapped out is idle it down run it into low gear press on the brake the engine should strain down because you're putting stress on the clutch and therefore to the engine if you put the brake down and the tractor stops you know the clutch is slipping badly it's going to need some attention now replacing the clutches in these old tractors is a pretty complicated job you basically have to split the tractor in half because the clutch is right in the middle of the two halves and then replace the clutch when i put the brakes on on the tractor hopefully you heard the engine grunt a little bit and what happens is tractor rpms are controlled by the governor and the governor is this thing right here and what it does it runs off the internal engine gears and there's a set of weights that fly outward and the faster the engine is turning the more they want to fly outward and that's used to control how much fuel is going into the carburetor so when you hit the brakes on a tractor you should hear it grunt you should hear that tractor start to strain and the governor starts to pick up rpms how fast that response is is a measure of the governor's health if it's slow to respond the tractor almost stalls out the governor may be getting worn that stumbling or hesitation when you throttle the tractor up can also be indicative of carburetor problems the governor and the carburetor work together to supply the right amount of fuel to the tractor based on the load on the tractor so if you throttle the tractor up see how the tractor responds to equalize rpm every time and it throttles up and down without stumbling or skipping or sputtering or anything like that that tells you the carburetor is doing what it should now if you do have issues with that with those sorts of symptoms rebuilding a carburetor is pretty simple you can buy kits online for almost any tractor that's out there and they're pretty easy to rebuild with a a little bit of knowledge from youtube or from a friend while you have the tractor running work everything on the tractor including the hydraulics this tractor has a two-point hitch which is super handy for for picking up trailers around the farm if you want to work at all and as you're working it look for leaks make sure every all the hydraulics work listen for excessive noise in the hydraulic pump that again can be indicative of a hydraulic pump that needs attention you want to test the pto while you have the tractor running and an old tractor like this it doesn't have live you have to push in the clutch and then there will be a lever some place rounds right here to engage the pto let the clutch out pto should spin it's as simple as that there really isn't a lot more to these non-live gear driven ptos when you're dealing with live ptos like this tractor has you can get into more issues with the pto because there's a separate clutch that engages the pto distinct from the tractor clutch so if the pto doesn't work on these when you try them running if it's a live pto tractor chances are it needs new clutch pack or friction bands or things inside of the pto that'll require more to fix one of the other things you want to do when you're driving the tractor and putting it through its gears is to check the steering it is not uncommon at all for these old tractors to have loose steering where you can turn the steering wheel a half a turn before the wheels move and steering is again an indicator of how much the tractor's been used particularly with tractors that have loaders on the front of them where the front end of the tractor takes a lot of stress it's not uncommon for the steering to get real loose so turn the wheel and see how much play there is in the wheel this one has probably i don't know 8th or 16th of a turn that's acceptable if you're turning the wheel a half a turn you're going to have a lot of play in the front wheels and that's not good there's lots of points where these tractors can wear through the steering system the u-joints the knuckles where the steering shafts bend can get wear in them quite often the gearbox the steering gearbox the gears just get worn out they got a lot of play in them that makes the steering wheels feel loose and another big thing is the tie rods which are these things that connect the steering mechanism out to the wheels can become loose so there's ball joints inside here and they just loosen up over time as they wear out that could be a major part of looseness in the steering also at the top of these spindles here which are these shafts that come up through from the wheel this connection can loosen up and then you get play in the steering there so figure out where the steering has to play as best you can and then you'll know what needs to be attended to when you do buy the tractor quite often you'll run into issues with the ignition system on old tractors and this tractor's got a more modern distributor ignition called battery ignition sometimes regular distributor cap coil there are maintenance items in these things and if you find a tractor that runs rough sometimes it'll be as simple as replacing the components in these replacing the plug wires replacing the plugs sometimes the coil needs replacing although that's not usually a running rough symptom um the the points and the cap and the rotor in here those are all wear things easy to find easy to replace not expensive and you may even run into the older form of tractor ignition which was magnetos now all a magneto is is a distributor that generates its own spark it has a distributor cap just like a distributor plug wires it's got a coil up in here these generate a really hot spot spark for back in the days when people were hand cranking engines just as much as using electric starters or more these are all maintenance items too and there's no mystery to them you can send magnetos out and have them refurbished if you don't feel comfortable doing yourself the replacement parts the same thing the the breaker the points the rotor the distributor cap the coil they're all easy to find replaceable as well i have a special tractor inspector that's helping me out today this is doc and he spent a lot of time with these tractors hey buddy you want to play is that what you want to do i'll start up this h and you can see what a fresher engine sounds like than the super c this engine's only got i don't know three to five hundred hours on it the most since it was rebuilt with a freshly rebuilt engine like on the stage you can hear that snap to the exhaust you know valve seal well rings is seal tight it's snappy it doesn't sound loose looking in the radiator with your flashlight while the tractor is running is also a good thing to check take the cap off slowly especially if the tractor is hot see if anything's gonna escape and look down in there you can see there's no bubbles in the antifreeze now bubbles in the antifreeze are symptomatic of a leak somewhere where air is being pushed into the system and typically that can indicate a blown head gasket or a crack in the head in the block just like i talked about with the oil you'll see combustion gases escaping into the antifreeze and it'll make little bubbles that are coming up constantly that's not a good sign when you're running the tractor and you're driving it and running through its gears and i told you about checking the clutch by the brakes you also want to check the brakes too so put it in a a gear a higher gears better but press down on the brake the brakes killed the tractor that means you've got good brakes and the tractor was idling so it was fairly easy to kill it's not uncommon to have old tractors where the brakes work none you press on the brake and nothing happens or very little happens fortunately these old brakes are easy to work on on most tractors they're exposed there are these covers down here on either side you pull the cover off and you can replace the depending on the tractor the brake shoes if it's a drum brake tractor the brake bands like this tractor has or the brake discs on the more modern pharmals quite often the problem with the brakes is that the transmission seal has leaked behind the brake and it's coated the braking surface with oil so in those cases pretty much all you have to do is replace the seal and then clean up the brake wearing surfaces to get the oil off of them the nice thing about buying a tractor from a private owner versus an auction is you can hopefully learn from the owner what the history of the tractor was any mechanical issues it had what's been done to it recently mechanically and how the tractor spent its life was it pulling a plow all of its life was it doing light duty work pulling wagons around you can get some history on it that way an auction you just can't get that stuff and that makes it preferable to buy from a private owner if you're first starting out because when you go to auction all you have to go by is what's sitting in front of you nobody's going to tell you anything about it except for the auctioneer who's probably going to tell you what you want to hear about it so auctions are buyer beware territory you really need to do your homework probably go the day before the auction to check out the tractor on your own when you have time and then you can go back home and research that model of tractor hear what other people say about its reliability and its history find out what common problems are for before you go back to the auction next day as well as finding out what the worth of the tractor is you can look up comparable values on the internet then you can go back to the auction the next day well informed about what you want to buy some things to be aware of for both auction and private owners if you run into a tractor that's had a sloppy paint job put on it recently beware it's a pig and a poke somebody's trying to dress it up you don't know what it's like inside i've seen plenty of sloppy paint jobs at auction go for less than an original unpainted tractor paint job doesn't say anything about how the owners cared for it the single biggest thing when you're buying a tractor is will start up if the tractor won't run you have to assume it won't run you'll hear stuff at auction like the auctioneer saying oh it ran yesterday when we fired it up must be out of gas or something along those lines you have to take all that with a grain of salt if the tractor won't run usually its value is about half of what it would be if it would run because you just don't know what you're getting into and you really can't trust a stranger to tell you what the condition is without hearing it yourself there you have it my general tips for evaluating an old tractor and i've tried to stay non-brand specific even though i'm looking at international tractors if you have other tips if if you've done this before please feel free to add them in the comments below there's always something to learn and my advice i guess in the end is to do your model specific homework before you buy a tractor research the model like i said when you go to auction find out what its common weaknesses are so you know more exactly what to look for when you go to evaluate it i hope this was helpful this series has been really great for me to do i'm enjoying it and i hope you are too and i'll see you next time

Channel: Just a Few Acres Farm

Views: 145,188

Rating: 4.9728446 out of 5

Keywords: farm, farming, hobby farm, hobby farm guys, hobby farming for profit, homestead, how farms work, just a few acres farm, life on a farm, buying a tractor, small farm, buying an old tractor, selecting a tractor, shopping for an old tractor, old tractor hydraulics, what to look for when buying a tractor, what to ask when buying a tractor, buying a cheap tractor, farmall, international harvester, how to buy a used tractor, what to look for when buying a used tractor

Id: ZepJ3eSNyaM

Length: 32min 42sec (1962 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021