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Welcome to my Farmall Cub restoration page
You are visitor
since I first published
this page, which was at
7615 hits since November of 1997 when I moved it here November 15th, 1999
This page is for the restoration of my 1949 Farmall cub. This started as a living document which followed the work as it was completed. I started work on this tractor in October 1997. For significance, this is the tractor on which I learned to plow, disk, and in general, Drive, so needless to say I will be giving it a lot of love.
The final running counter as of May 10th, 1998, 185 hours 600 dollars and finally Finished
Here she is just arrived at my place from Dad's. I had just dropped the 8N off and had the transport with me.
He was so happy that (again) the tractor was in great shape that He ask me to fix this one
up to. Since it is about 2 hours each way, of course I brought it back with me that day
since it made sense to do so. I will be getting photos showing just how bad she is in a
few weeks, but suffice it to say, Major cancer, no breaks and no generator.
This next shot
shows the Original Equipment spark plug wires still on the tractor. Needless to say they
were replaced. As best as I was able to determine the unit was operating on about 2 1/2
cylinders when I brought it home since 3 plugs were hand tight and two out of four wires
were loose.
This is a picture of the
fuel line, such as it was when I pulled it off the unit. Guess it needs a little TLC.
In this shot, you have a
close up of the right hand side with the extreme rust showing. Cleanup of the drive tube
alone took 3 days including repair and excluding rust correction.
In this shot, you see the
same as the previous, along with a look at the actual seal area from under the left hand
Final Drive. All of the grease is from the small seal in the center hole on the left hand
side.
Here we have come to my
greatest surprise in the project. I had drained the tans/diff a couple of days before, and
opened up to inspect the differential. I was more that a little shocked to find this much
water in the casing (the muck is ICE). This explained why Dad had not been able to get the
unit to operate correctly in cold weather for years, but ... Just for the record, it was
27 F when this shot was taken, and I got about 1.2 gallons of water out of the cover a
couple of days later when it warmed up to about 40 F. The source of the water would seem
to be the shifter which dad had replace about 15 years earlier, but had not put the wear
caps or spring back in place.
Hot new infomation 5-7-1998
As of today, the farmall is finshed, and has worked its' first small field. At approximatly 6:12 pm EDT I drove the unit out of the paint area of my shop. Since I pushed the unit in last fall this is a major point. All that remains at this point is a few moments of detail paint and decals.
Well, it has taken a while to get these up but here goes.
Here
is a prime example of Finshed as addressed above and ready to come out. The next shot is
the same thing but from the side. These photos were taken in the paint bay area of my
shop, and if you look closely you can still see some of the parts it took to get the job
done on the floor behind the tractor.
In
this shot you see the tractor about 10 minutes before I drove it out of the bay the first
time. I have the original Flashing on the unit, but had not yet mounted the resin McCormic
Farmall above it.
In the next couple of shots, I am finally driving the finished tractor out of the rebuild bay. It felt great considering I had to push it in.
Dont tell my boss, but I still had my work shirt on. As you can see from the grin, I felt pretty good at this point, and the boss felt even better as shown in the next shot.
A few days went by, and my spring vaction arrived. I took the finished tractor to my farm where my dad got his first look at the finished product. I was woke up that first morning by my 5 year old nephew exceitedly yelling "Look grandpa, it's just like a brand new tractor" as he looked at the transport trailer. After I got the unit off, dad put himself to work shifting the drawbar back around to the rear which is what this next shot shows.
After he had a few minutes, he decided to try out the newlly repaired disc also, and that is this last photo for now.
Well, now that I am at projects end, it is time for the question I always end up asking myself. Was it worth it? 185 hours of time, 2 full bottles of gas and O2, 1/2 pound of welding rod, $75 in sheetmetal, $500 in parts. Of course it was, Dad loves it and can cultivate the farm with it now, and the looks I get when I pull it down the road.
For now, that is the story of this one.
Thanks for looking
don
I have placed a series of links on my restoration links page to help you find some of the hard to locate parts. Check it out and let me know if it was any help or additional links I should include.
Please forgive the shameless plug but, check out some of my commercial pages from the
links below. If you see anything you want just drop me a line and we will get together on
it. As I am sure you are well aware, restorations are not cheap :-), and these are one of
the ways I try to pay for them.
Please feel free to email us with any questions you might have
HOME This page designed and maintained by DJ Hilliker, Intricate Articles All information © 1997 - 1998 DJ Hilliker. Please contact us for requests to use any of our photos in any way