1950 John Deere B carb adjustment issues.

[Case930ck]

I bought my John Deere B a year ago for $800. It was rebuilt around 1980, painted pretty near 2000 and has seen little use since rebuild, never parked outside. I started the 6 mile drive home in perfect running condition. Half way home the points fouled and we pulled it the rest of the way. It ran pretty good after that except for a few times having no power pulling a heavy load. I drove it a mile to a garden, plowed it, then drove home. after that it plowed snow and would start first crank, no choke in -15 degree weather. No problems. This spring I drove 1/2 mile down the road with a full load of manure in 4th gear then turned around and hardly made it back in 1st. It has sat in the garage all summer. An old timer from church came and helped me time it to 25' over. Now I am trying to get the carburetor set. It will die right away with the settings I read in an A manual. It will run with both needles 3/4 to full, but it blows black smoke enough to fill a garage and get yelled at by the mom. sometimes the settings I have is lacking fuel and sometimes its backfiring from too much. It runs differently every time I start it and changes as it's running. The other problem is that something is out of balance. My dad and I made sure the flywheel and belt pully were 180' off. Different settings on the carburetor makes the steering shake to the point its a pain to hold on. Some settings it hardly vibrates, but the tractor doesn't run well. It has vibrated to the point the hole in the column is an 1/8 too big in diameter.
If you can make sense of this and think of a solution, please let me know.

Thank you, Oliver.

 

[greenmech]

I bought my John Deere B a year ago for $800. It was rebuilt around 1980, painted pretty near 2000 and has seen little use since rebuild, never parked outside. I started the 6 mile drive home in perfect running condition. Half way home the points fouled and we pulled it the rest of the way. It ran pretty good after that except for a few times having no power pulling a heavy load. I drove it a mile to a garden, plowed it, then drove home. after that it plowed snow and would start first crank, no choke in -15 degree weather. No problems. This spring I drove 1/2 mile down the road with a full load of manure in 4th gear then turned around and hardly made it back in 1st. It has sat in the garage all summer. An old timer from church came and helped me time it to 25' over. Now I am trying to get the carburetor set. It will die right away with the settings I read in an A manual. It will run with both needles 3/4 to full, but it blows black smoke enough to fill a garage and get yelled at by the mom. sometimes the settings I have is lacking fuel and sometimes its backfiring from too much. It runs differently every time I start it and changes as it's running. The other problem is that something is out of balance. My dad and I made sure the flywheel and belt pully were 180' off. Different settings on the carburetor makes the steering shake to the point its a pain to hold on. Some settings it hardly vibrates, but the tractor doesn't run well. It has vibrated to the point the hole in the column is an 1/8 too big in diameter.
If you can make sense of this and think of a solution, please let me know.

Thank you, Oliver.

Sounds like the carb needs a good cleaning using the correct drill bits to clean all the ports. Make sure the flywheel is on left hand impulse when left piston is at top dead center too. Ron MN

 

[Loosehandle]

I bought my John Deere B a year ago for $800. It was rebuilt around 1980, painted pretty near 2000 and has seen little use since rebuild, never parked outside. I started the 6 mile drive home in perfect running condition. Half way home the points fouled and we pulled it the rest of the way. It ran pretty good after that except for a few times having no power pulling a heavy load. I drove it a mile to a garden, plowed it, then drove home. after that it plowed snow and would start first crank, no choke in -15 degree weather. No problems. This spring I drove 1/2 mile down the road with a full load of manure in 4th gear then turned around and hardly made it back in 1st. It has sat in the garage all summer. An old timer from church came and helped me time it to 25' over. Now I am trying to get the carburetor set. It will die right away with the settings I read in an A manual. It will run with both needles 3/4 to full, but it blows black smoke enough to fill a garage and get yelled at by the mom. sometimes the settings I have is lacking fuel and sometimes its backfiring from too much. It runs differently every time I start it and changes as it's running. The other problem is that something is out of balance. My dad and I made sure the flywheel and belt pully were 180' off. Different settings on the carburetor makes the steering shake to the point its a pain to hold on. Some settings it hardly vibrates, but the tractor doesn't run well. It has vibrated to the point the hole in the column is an 1/8 too big in diameter.
If you can make sense of this and think of a solution, please let me know.

Thank you, Oliver.

Do you have a distributor or magneto? Sounds like the spark could be weak and its only running on 1 cylinder part of the time.

 

[Gene Davis(Ga.)]

If you are experiencing that kind of vibration, it sounds like the flywheel, and/ or the clutch drive disk may not be correctly matched to the balance marks on the cranshaft ends This is usually a "V" and is matched to a similar mark on the flywheel and also one on the clutch drive disk. I worked for a Deere dealer in the 1950's when the B was still being sold and one day we had one come to the shop that the steering wheel was movin up and down in an arc and the tractor would actually move around on the concrete floor from the vibrations at full throttle. The flywheel and clutch drive disk were both installed without lining up match marks.

 

[55 50 Ron]

I bought my John Deere B a year ago for $800. It was rebuilt around 1980, painted pretty near 2000 and has seen little use since rebuild, never parked outside. I started the 6 mile drive home in perfect running condition. Half way home the points fouled and we pulled it the rest of the way. It ran pretty good after that except for a few times having no power pulling a heavy load. I drove it a mile to a garden, plowed it, then drove home. after that it plowed snow and would start first crank, no choke in -15 degree weather. No problems. This spring I drove 1/2 mile down the road with a full load of manure in 4th gear then turned around and hardly made it back in 1st. It has sat in the garage all summer. An old timer from church came and helped me time it to 25' over. Now I am trying to get the carburetor set. It will die right away with the settings I read in an A manual. It will run with both needles 3/4 to full, but it blows black smoke enough to fill a garage and get yelled at by the mom. sometimes the settings I have is lacking fuel and sometimes its backfiring from too much. It runs differently every time I start it and changes as it's running. The other problem is that something is out of balance. My dad and I made sure the flywheel and belt pully were 180' off. Different settings on the carburetor makes the steering shake to the point its a pain to hold on. Some settings it hardly vibrates, but the tractor doesn't run well. It has vibrated to the point the hole in the column is an 1/8 too big in diameter.
If you can make sense of this and think of a solution, please let me know.

Thank you, Oliver.

I agree with greenmech. Time for another carb rework. Are you using ethanol flavored gas? If you are, that is a recipe for trouble when the tractor sets as you said it sat in the garage all summer. There are fuel additives that should be used with ethanol gas when engines set more than they are run.

I recently did maintenance on a "B" carb DLTX 34 that had a bad float. It was running poorly and flooded gas into the crankcase. The old float didn't look bad but it wouldn't float in gas, was slightly heavier than the new float and the new one did float in gas.


What are the settings you are using from the "A" manual? Typical correct settings are 1 1/2 turns out for the IDLE screw and 3/4 to 1 turn out on the LOAD screw. IDLE screw is set for smooth running at full throttle, no load. LOAD screw is set when pulling a load and is obviously harder to do. John Deeres with their belt pulleys make the load test somewhat easier.

 

[Case930ck]

The carburetor was rebuilt only a couple years ago and I did clean it with the drill bits. That was the first thing I did, but I don't know if I did a good enough job. It has a distributor with new plugs and new wires. Next thing I will do is clean the points and plugs. I do know it is running on both cylinders, because I pulled one wire at a time as it run running and it didn't die. I had it out the other day doing road gear in the yard and I thought I had it set, but things changed the next time it ran. The flywheel is timed to left hand exhaust open. There is no left hand impulse on the flywheel, but the gentleman that was helping me out, made a mark. He is a Farmall guy, but he knows a lot more about engines than a 14 year old. It is running non-ethanol gas on hardened heads. The manual I was looking at had idle screw at 1 1/2 and load at 1. I will look for the V mark on the flywheel. I noticed it on the crankshaft, but the only thing on the flywheel was a very faint LHEO. The V marks on the right side of the crank shaft and the clutch are 180 degrees off. It's screwy how different adjustments to the load and idle needles will make the shaking go away, but it either doesn't stay, or I cant find those settings again. I'm a John Deere fan, but I don't understand how those old two cylinders ever sold. I'd take my great-grandpas H over that old B any day. I work for a dairy farm who ran a John Deere dealer. One of the owners has a 1935 A that was the first tractor his grampa sold. The dealer ship was a dairy that got turned into a John Deere dealer/chicken farm. It is now a Scag and Toro dealer, but they still work on tractors. They have 30 by 10 foot wall full of John Deere manuals and parts catalogs. They still have parts catalogs under the sales counter, as well. My boss let me take a catalog for my B and it has the owners name and serial number of tractors that got worked on. One section of the shop has a wall of parts hanging up from the New Generation days. The loft of the oldest part of the barn has every sales receipt from the early 1900s-2000 dumped in a pile on the floor. The room has brand new connecting rods hanging up with the tags still on them from the 50s. The coolest thing is the plow frame for the front of an late style A or B hanging up with the tag still on it.

 

[greenmech]

The carburetor was rebuilt only a couple years ago and I did clean it with the drill bits. That was the first thing I did, but I don't know if I did a good enough job. It has a distributor with new plugs and new wires. Next thing I will do is clean the points and plugs. I do know it is running on both cylinders, because I pulled one wire at a time as it run running and it didn't die. I had it out the other day doing road gear in the yard and I thought I had it set, but things changed the next time it ran. The flywheel is timed to left hand exhaust open. There is no left hand impulse on the flywheel, but the gentleman that was helping me out, made a mark. He is a Farmall guy, but he knows a lot more about engines than a 14 year old. It is running non-ethanol gas on hardened heads. The manual I was looking at had idle screw at 1 1/2 and load at 1. I will look for the V mark on the flywheel. I noticed it on the crankshaft, but the only thing on the flywheel was a very faint LHEO. The V marks on the right side of the crank shaft and the clutch are 180 degrees off. It's screwy how different adjustments to the load and idle needles will make the shaking go away, but it either doesn't stay, or I cant find those settings again. I'm a John Deere fan, but I don't understand how those old two cylinders ever sold. I'd take my great-grandpas H over that old B any day. I work for a dairy farm who ran a John Deere dealer. One of the owners has a 1935 A that was the first tractor his grampa sold. The dealer ship was a dairy that got turned into a John Deere dealer/chicken farm. It is now a Scag and Toro dealer, but they still work on tractors. They have 30 by 10 foot wall full of John Deere manuals and parts catalogs. They still have parts catalogs under the sales counter, as well. My boss let me take a catalog for my B and it has the owners name and serial number of tractors that got worked on. One section of the shop has a wall of parts hanging up from the New Generation days. The loft of the oldest part of the barn has every sales receipt from the early 1900s-2000 dumped in a pile on the floor. The room has brand new connecting rods hanging up with the tags still on them from the 50s. The coolest thing is the plow frame for the front of an late style A or B hanging up with the tag still on it.

Your flywheel will have a left hand impulse on the outer ring. May have to take the cover of flywheel. By the way what year is the tractor? Ron MN

 

[Case930ck]

It is a 1950. I have cleaned it up and looked it over several times. I could not find any mark for left hand impulse. The only mark is a LHEO stamped in on the outer ring.

 

[Mike(NEOhio)]

"made sure the flywheel and belt pully were 180' off" puzzles me. Or did I misunderstand? You said th e V is on the flywheel but there should be one on the crankshaft at both ends. If the clutch disc is off it will shake like crazy and if the flywheel is off you'll never get it timed right. Also look for a V mark on the edge of the hole for the center cover on the flywheel housing. You should see a dimple on the flywheel clamp to line up with the V for ignition timing. Picture in from my 51 A. The W29 appears on the flywheel and clutch disc which leads me to think they are balanced as a unit. The V is not real visible but is at 3:00. The timing dot is out of the frame.

 

[Ozlander]

Running good, then running out of power sounds like running out of fuel to me.
Check fuel flow.

 

[NoDakInMN]

Ignore everything else and focus on ensuring that the flywheel and clutch driver are properly installed first. That is essential to getting the tractor to run right. Then get the ignition timing correct and insure you have good spark. You cannot properly diagnose carb issues if those things are not correct.

 

[Case930ck]

When I said 180 off, I meant the weights were 180 degrees from each other. When the weighted part of the flywheel is at 3:00, so is the weighted part of the clutch driver. Although, the V marks on the crankshaft and the Clutch driver are opposite of what it should be. The Vs don't point at each other, they point the same direction.

 

[greenmech]

When I said 180 off, I meant the weights were 180 degrees from each other. When the weighted part of the flywheel is at 3:00, so is the weighted part of the clutch driver. Although, the V marks on the crankshaft and the Clutch driver are opposite of what it should be. The Vs don't point at each other, they point the same direction.

When the left hand piston is coming up on compression and reaches top dead center the weight end of flywheel should be at 3 o'clock. Then the distributor connection should be horizontal Ron MN

 

[Mark-Ia]

When I said 180 off, I meant the weights were 180 degrees from each other. When the weighted part of the flywheel is at 3:00, so is the weighted part of the clutch driver. Although, the V marks on the crankshaft and the Clutch driver are opposite of what it should be. The Vs don't point at each other, they point the same direction.

The weighted part of the flywheel should be 180 degrees opposite the weighted part on the clutch driver, not both at 3 o'clock.

 

[Case930ck]

Ron, we have done everything you have said already and it still vibrates. The flywheel is cracked on both sides all the way to the rim. I'm wondering if maybe it is warped. I will be looking for a new one. Right now I have the carburetor adjusted so it has power in all gears and the steering wheel doesn't shake, just the tires. It wont idle all the way down, but that isn't a huge problem. I think it may have a weak spark and will address that. I sure appreciate you guys responding with good advice.

Thank you, Oliver.

 

[Steven Allen]

The Vs must point at each other. If the flywheel is cracked, replace before all else. It can come apart.