17 Seventh Street Surf City, New Jersey 08008.
This is the story of an old tractor brought back to life. I
belong to a trapshooting club in the Jersey pinelands near Forked
River, New Jersey. We have about 8 acres of cleared land and we
were looking for a used tractor to do our mowing and
maintenance.
Time went by without finding a tractor within our means, money
wise. Finally one of our members whose name is Russell Algor spoke
up and said that he had an old tractor sitting in a field in back
of his house. He went on to say that it had been given to him by an
old farmer who had used it for about 20 years and that it had
finally stopped running and had been sitting for quite a few
years.
I asked Russell what make of tractor it was and he said he
thought it was a Ford but wasn’t sure.
One day I took time to go and see what it was like and found it
to be in sad shape.
The lower sheet metal and crank bracket were off and lying in
the weeds, the radiator had been frozen and was in bad shape, the
engine block had a large crack in the water jacket, the tires were
flat and rotted, and the hood and other sheet metal were bent up
and rusted.
The tractor seemed about hopeless and I was ready to forget
about it.
Several weeks later I went to the club and saw the tractor and
plow and cultivator parts dumped by one of our storage sheds.
Russell had brought it there on a flat trailer.
I turned the belt pulley by hand and to my surprise the motor
was free! I could hear the impulse coupling click in the magneto
but there was no spark so I cleaned up the points in the magneto
and we had spark. We put some gas in the tank and some oil in the
cylinder to build up compression and turned it over a few times and
to our surprise it started and ran with the old ‘putt-putt’
of the John Deeres.
The end result can be seen in the picture. It took about six
weeks to do the job.
That is Russell Algor in the driver’s seat and me (Gus
Montrey) standing in back. We now have a self powered rotary mower
to pull behind the tractor.
I have been restoring old gas engines and antique machinery for
many years. I’ve subscribed to Gas Engine Magazine for some
time and have found it very interesting and a good source of
information and suggestions as to locating parts.
The tractor is a John Deere, Model L; Serial #L63113, year made
unknown, engine is Hercules NXB, 3? x4’bore and stroke.