What to watch out for on a 1950s John Deere crawler/loader?

[CliffordK]

Oh, another thing to keep in mind. The Dozer probably is supposed to have a 6V battery (you can still buy them). Mine came with a 12V battery. It would run, but the gages were all bananas, and I think it damaged the pull contact on the starter.

One can officially "convert" to 12V.

I'm not quite sure how you would differentiate. However, if it has a generator, it is probably 6V. If it has an alternator, it may be 12V.

Anyway, I decided it was safer to put a 6V battery back on it.'

On mine, the 6V battery sits on the running board, although I think it is supposed to have a battery box under the rear portion of the hood.

 

[Fallon]

$2,400 brought it home. Fired right up from cold. Everything operates as it should. No wear on the track bushings. Sprockets look to be in great shape & aren't sharp. Judging by the brighter paint, I expect a vaguely recent rebuild of the undercarrige, or at least the sprockets. Hydraulics leak a touch & one of the glands on a curl cylinder dribbles a lot. Hoses are are old, but not super suspicious.

It came with a pile of spare fluids, some filters & the origional manual.

I'll need to pull the curl cylinder, probably all of them & get those rebuilt. Hopefully that will be it for a few years.

 

[bcp]

The one I once used had weak brakes. They seemed to be OK on flat ground, but on a sidehill it would not turn uphill.

Bruce

 

[Sonny580]

Got one here, just bought it this spring, motor stuck,--got that running, now the engine clutch is junk, gotta pull motor and put in new clutch, then on to steering units which probably dont work either! Nice tight little unit. They had just spent $10,000 on the undercarriage and motor rebuild, so I dont know why they didnt put in a clutch! oh well! lol!

 

[Fallon]

Mine ran great for an hour. Then it died, gas started pouring out of the carb. Waiting for the carb rebuild kit to show up, but have the carb fully disassembled & cleaned. Foat needle didn't look to be in good shape. Tore a gasket pulling it apart.

Kind of what I was expecting with an antique.

 

[Vigo327]

$2400 for one in that condition sounds great to me!!

 

[Fallon]

Carb rebuild got it running again. Could have used a bit more tuning, but it ran pretty decent. Busted out the new hot pressure washer & cleaned all the machines & cars off. As I half expected, that killed it again. Pulled the cap & rotor. Cleaned them up with some emmery paper as they were looking a bit crusty. Plug wires ends were a bit rusty as well. Had to grind off one of the fasseners holding the hood on as it wouldn't come out after loosening.

Spent a few hours scraping & chissling mud off the rear end & under the hood. I started clearing/cleaning my way to the spark plugs & got distracted. 50 years of dirt, oil & grease is apparently about like JB weld or old chewing gum. Several inches thick under the hood ontop of the engine. Most of it is finally gone & I need to bust out the steam cleaner again. But highs for the next week are under 50 & that doesn't sound fun.

Havent bothered diagnosing things or even pulling the plugs yet, much less seeing if it actually has spark. Waiting on tuneup parts it really needs anyway. And to finish cleaning it so I dont get dirt in the distributer or cylinders. Then onto rebuilding the cylinders & probably replacing hoses.

 

[ddgood]

Dad has a JD 350C that broke the reverser 15 years ago and we finally got it worked on and repaired 2 years ago. Not sure if outside links are allowed but JDCrawlers.com is a great resource for these machines. Hope you get some service out of the crawler.

 

[Fallon]

Dad has a JD 350C that broke the reverser 15 years ago and we finally got it worked on and repaired 2 years ago. Not sure if outside links are allowed but JDCrawlers.com is a great resource for these machines. Hope you get some service out of the crawler.

I've been reading through their archives for a few months now. Definitely the TBN equivalent for old JD tracked machines.

I'll definitely get it back up & running soon. All the internals are fine. Just relatively easy to access electrical stuff. Not hard to figure out with maybe a dozen wires total in the machine. My main holdup has been freezing weather & wanting to steam clean it again before moving forward.

Tuneup parts showed up yesterday.