Locked up!!

[Dusty B]

Bought a B sight unseen (actually 2!) w 72" woods belly mower. Friends picked it up - discovered it is "locked up"!! ( I'm still in FL!) Trying to plan ahead - any suggestions on where to start looking?? My fist thought is jammed starter, next is jammed gears in transmission! Anyone delt w/this before? What did you find? Hoping it is not in the engine! Ready to be home twisting wrenches! LOL!!
Dusty B

[SamsFarm]

Try to turn the engine over with the crank!

I bought a BN years and years ago that I could not turn over with the crank.

The woman selling it said it was rebuilt, and I think it might have been. But the exhaust was exposed to the rain!

She was cleaning up "grampa's farm" and said if I wanted anything else go ahead and take it.

There was a lot of goodies to load, and I am a sucker for free, plus I only wanted to make one trip.

Sooooo..... We put the tractor on trailer, put it in gear and proceeded to load the rest up, driving the truck and trailer back and forth to strategically load up. Before leaving we tied everything down, headed for home.

Got home and unloaded enough to get to the tractor and rolled it off the trailer.

Funny, I dont know what possesed me to try the crank again, but I did and this time it was free.

A little fresh gas and around 10 tries on the crank and she was running!

I hope you have such luck too!!!

I got lucky on that one, but my current C, not so lucky!!!

The BN has been under roof ever since!

[arlen]

I can only speak to my limited experience with my locked up B.
When I pulled it from one machine shed to another, about 3 years ago, I remember letting the clutch out, and the motor was turning over at that point. A couple months ago, it was locked up. I dumped PB blaster down the plug holes, rocked it back and forth, pried on the ring gear, tried the hand crank, put a big wrench on the PTO...wouldn't budge. I played with it like that for a couple weeks, then just ripped it apart. 3 out 4 pistons were stuck. They weren't stuck too bad, as I was able to drive them out once I had the rods disconnected.
In the end, I was glad to tear it apart, since all the gaskets and seals were leaking, there was antifreeze in the oil, 5 valves were stuck open, and everything was just generally wore out.
You should be able to put it in neutral and/or disengage the clutch to rule out the tranny.
Also, when I decided to bring mine in the shop, it wouldn't pull...one wheel would try to turn backwards. That turned out to be ice in the rear end preventing the differential from working properly.
If it were me, I would judge the overall condition, and decide how long to play around with non invasive means of unsticking it vs tearing into it. It's pretty easy to take off the head and/or the oil pan to take a peek.