Yes, it looks sad in places. It will never be a trailer queen bouncing from show to show. But, it is mine and does work on an eight-four acre farm in the hills of Western Pennsylvania.
For a brief history, the tractor was purchased by my grandfather on May 2, 1956. It replaced a David-Bradley Walk-behind tractor (which is also on the farm and may be a future project.) While the data plate is pretty well beat up, the owner's manual and paperwork I found in the basement lists her as a 1955 with serial number 192959. I found the receipt for the sale buried in boxes of old paperwork here on the farm. She was purchased from Luce Farm Equipment, Rt 51, in Perryopolis PA for $1540.00, which included the 2 way plow, disks, cultivator, and 2 section harrow. All of the implements are still up in the shed. After I finish rehabilitating the tractor, I'll be working on the implements to get everything back in working order. At some point in it's life, it also picked up a sickle-bar mower. That is pretty much how it looked when I first learned to drive the tractor on the farm at age 10. While I lived in Florida for twenty years after graduating school, the tractor remained on the farm. Being passed along to other family members until I moved back a few years ago.
This gives you an idea of what she looked like last year when I started cleaning her up.
The last work task she was doing before the tear-down was hauling firewood before winter set in. That is when I realized the left axle pan was leaking fluid badly, so I parked her in the garage and just started at the back end and worked towards the front.
Most of the winter has been spent dismantling the tractor, a section at a time. So far, I've managed to clean, repair, repaint, and reassemble everything from the floor pan back. I'm currently working on the front end and engine and expect to have her back in operation before September.
While working on the floorpan, I removed the wiring harness, only to find the insulation sluffing off the conductors in my hands. At this point I opted to convert the tractor from the 6V positive ground system to a 12V negative ground system, as well as using a solid state ignition. That makes the tractor compatible with all the others and gear around the farm that is 12V.
And that brings it up to today. Still scraping, scrubbing, and painting her. When I get through posting this, I'm heading back to the garage to start sanding down the instrument panel for a repaint.
I've been soaking the intake/exhaust/carb nuts with PB Blaster for days in anticipation of shearing off studs. They squeaked and groaned, but they all came off with the studs in place. Ran a 3/8-24 die over the manifold studs and called it a night. Today will be removing the seized clevis on the throttle and all the black gunk off the engine block. Carb is soaking in a pan of cleaner. Small victories.
