Need some weights for the front of my tractor

[Al_Smith]

I suppose it's like most of them with a double clutch deal,the main and the hydraulics / pto .Two clutch plates in the same housing connected to two shafts,one inside the other .Double position pedal and a true pain in the behind to align the discs if they need replaced which thank heavens is only rarely.

I've got a 1954 JD 70 gasser which uses an over center clutch deal on the pto .It carries hydraulics but I've never used them .The old gal ,424 cubic inches really likes gasoline,lots of it .They say 35 drawbar HP but the old popper will walk circles around a Massey 65 .

The only three point hitchs I've ever paid attention to on the tricycle type JD's I think were add ons .They had external cylinders with a standard hydraulic valve so they would stay where you put them .Some of them had so much power you could raise the front of the tractor if the the load were heavy enough .

Rambling on one of my A JD's has a contraption they call a "powertrol " which I think works like draft control .I've never used it and really have no idea how it works ,fact I think the 70 might have something like that too .Lawdy it's been 20 plus years since I've had the green tractors even started .

[chevytaHOE5674]

On an 8n the position/draft lever is under the seat behind the quadrant right up right to the hydraulic top cover.

As for the double clutch setup to get a "live" pto or hydraulics, just hope you don't have to replace one. Last one I did was the terrible trying to get everything all lined up and back together. Split a much larger tractor with a cab for a clutch job in less time than that little to-35.

As for JD and powr-trol I'm not sure what it actually is. Never been a JD guy as they are relatively more expensive compared to other brands with no real gains.

[Al_Smith]

I bought those old JD's before the country went nuts restoring old tractors .I think I got 125 in the A and 450 in the 70 .70-75 bucks in another A I robbed parts from that some  dummy pulled down the road to un stick and bent a rod .

I've only done two that I can remember double clutch deals .The first was Massey 35 I swore I'd never do again .The second was a Ford Dextra diesel that I just let a local clutch rebuilder reline and align before it ever got put back in the tractor .It was certainly worth the extra 50-60 bucks over doing it myself for half a day .

[Al_Smith]

More ramblings !This gentlemans 620 will probabley last forever unless it sits in a fence row and rusts up .I mean they were made to last forever .

Old tractors though get like old chainsaws ,the price goes up and down .If there's a bunch of money floating around they go up .Then when things get tight the bottom falls out .

I look at some of the prices people pay for old saws and just shake my head .You'd about think they were buying Rolex watches .

[Okrafarmer]

Al, the first hydraulic lifts on JD tractors came with the very first model A's built in 1933. They remained essentially the same until 1947. Those ones have a rockshaft at the back of the tractor, and you can build a 3ph for them, but they ONLY go up and down, you can't stop them in the middle anywhere, for love or for money. In 1947, JD revised the models A, B, and G, and one of the several improvements they made was the introduction of Powr-Trol. This optional feature made it so you could indeed stop the rockshaft at any position in between up and down. My dad's 1948 B had this. He designed a 3-point to add on to the B (also works for the A, 50, and 60). The PTO has to be running for the hydraulics to work, and of course neither the PTO nor the hydraulics is live on an A, B, or G. The other feature with the Powr-Trol is that it (usually at least) includes, for the first time on John Deere, a remote hydraulic outlet.

JD's original intent was that the rockshaft be used primarily with cultivators, but as the Ford-Ferguson 3ph gained popularity, the positioning of the JD rockshaft was perfect for use with a 3ph.  Eventually, over the course of the A-B-G, 50-60-70, and then the 520-620-720, JD went from no thought about a 3ph, to making an add-on unit (model 801 hitch, I think it was called), to eventually integrating it into the tractor design by the time the X20 models were offered. Each new model introduction, as well as the 1947 upgrade, brought improvements in the design, and a tendency toward mainstreaming of what had been optional features before. By the time the X20's were introduced, Independent PTO was standard, hydraulics were fully independent (also on X0 tractors), and 3ph was expected (although it could be deleted if the customer didn't want it). Basically, in 10 years, from 1946 to 1956, hydraulics were introduced to the farm and mainstreamed. Yes, they were around before that, especially on the power lifts and 3ph of John Deere, Ford, and others, but they really took off and matured after WWII.

Are you keeping those old tractors just because, or are you planning to tinker with them? I'm sure you could sell them if you wanted.  ;D

[Al_Smith]

The old tractors .Well it's basically the residue of a nasty divorce .Plus   couble of dozers and 50 tons of junk .I'll keep them because they will always be worth at least as  much as I paid for them and I certainly don't need the money .

I've seen the rock shaft deal on the old pre war years unstyled JD's just never paid much attention to them .They didn't all come so equipted .

I have the bones of a 1940 numbered A that didn't have the rock shafts .On the 1946 style but 1947 serial number A it has the rock shaft powertrol .There was about part of a year in '47 where they sold both welded steel frame A's plus newer stamped steel types .It was the remains of left over stock from WW2 they never sold .

If I recall correctly the true 1947 style had a low hole granny gear where the prior did not at least that was so on the B's .Fact the "war years "weren't that great of pullers like the unstyled or for that matter stamped frame models .

[Al_Smith]

While rambling on .In that pile of junk I have a couple D4 Cats .The 2T series is 1943 ,war years .It has a steel core radiator and steel bushings on the cylinders .The 1946 5T model has went back to copper cored rad.,brass bushings .During the big one all that brass was needed for shell casings .--Trivia --

Almost forgot ,also have a 1940 model 7 J series I think .Ag tractor ,pulled a 4 bottom plow in Indiana,low hours,cracked head which I have a replacement .It also because of prior to WW2 has a lot of copper and brass .

[beenthere]

Al
Seems like a few pictures of your collection would make some very interesting walks down memory lane.  8)

Would you do that for us?

[Al_Smith]

I've got few of pulling the antiques a long time ago .The rest are someplace on film not down loaded .Give me a tad to find them .

[Al_Smith]

Here a few of what I got .

 

This is purely an exibition pull with a 1954 Oliver Oc-6 crawler .It's kinda unfair advantage pulling a crawler against a wheel tractor .The sled operator tried to stall me out but he didn't have enough weight to do it .He did stall a couple JD 820's though .

[Al_Smith]

One more .This is a dead weight pull .On dead weight the way we do it is like a horse pull,ten feet .There's about 5,000 pounds on that sled with wheel weights and a 1934-1935 JD B ,brass tag by the way .
I might have gotten 5 feet .
This was sometime in 1991

   I think and the last I ever pulled antiques . Sure was fun though . ;D

[beenthere]

I was thinking pics of the stash as it sits now, not yesteryear pics. ;)

You made it sound pretty interesting.

[gspren]

  Enjoying all this old tractor talk, I really need to learn how to get the pictures off my camera and on here. My 620 has live PTO and live hydraulics and that means you don't need to engage the main drive clutch, also power steering which I didn't need with that load on the rear! The 620 also has factory 3 point hitch and is quite powerfull. My Farmall H and 140 don't have live PTO so when the Tractors stop so do their mowers. One of the reasons I got the 620 was it acts and works mostly modern except for the hand clutch but it looks and sounds like an antique. The whole idea of moving wood with the 620 instead of the bigger 2355 was just to use it more, and it will move some wood!

[Al_Smith]

Oh I'm just full of storys .My favorite 620 story involves pulling a 24 by 24 foot machinery shed on dollies down an 18 feet wide country road with no permits .

We had road guards on all the intersections and only had to remove two mail boxes in three milles .Following behind on every little rise in the road  Mr Deere's  boy John would kick in the governor and the putt putt was transfered clear through that shed and rattled boards on the back everytime it fired .I laughed so hard I nearly wrecked my truck .

[Lud]

I was prepared when I ordered some concrete as you always get a bit extra.  5 gallon bucketswere filled and I pushed inch and a half plastic pipe taped closed in the middle.  After it set up and popped out of the bucket, it was easy to wire two of them on the front of my 57' Ford 841 PowerMaster tractor.

They've been a good counterweight for my lifts off the back end.

[Al_Smith]

I have an entire 55 gallon drum full of concrete on the tail end of one of my Fergesons .It has a Davis industrial loader which really is too much for that size of a tractor and will dead lift 2500 pounds .Without that counter weight ,what ever it might weight it would stand the tractor right up on its nose because I've done it .Not good at all .

Fact I did once of what the original poster did only in reverse .Uphill run ,load on front ,bounced the front end rear end up ,down the hill on the front wheels ,bailed off .The tractor turned upside down .My ex wife came down the road ,saw the tractor all 4 wheels in the air and thought I was under it .Not good .

[Okrafarmer]

I guess in the heat of the moment you didn't think of putting the loader down.  :-\ Or maybe it wouldn't have helped much by that point.

[Al_Smith]

That's what started the bounce.I let off the load and up came the rear end and down the hill we went .Myself for short time and the poor old Fergy for a long time .I was the proverbial rat leaving the proverbial sinking ship ,which did in effect sink ,in a manner of speaking .Stuff happens real fast at times .  ;)

That ain't nothing .I rolled a big old oak up over the top of a D4 cat and the only thing that saved me was it crushed the intake pipe and stalled the dozer engine .I'm blessed ,seems I have a guardian angel .

[Okrafarmer]

Yeah, I nearly flipped my Allis Chalmers CA over backwards once. In my subconscious desperation my right hand went back to an ancient instinct and tried to reach for the hand clutch of the John Deere B I used to drive. Of course the CA didn't have a hand clutch, but my hand found the throttle instead (my conscious brain not knowing what I was grabbing), and pulled the throttle back, stalling the engine. The front wheels were way up in the air, another foot or two and I probably would have gone right over.

God is good. I should have been killed 50 or 60 times by now!