Low oil pressure, '51 A

Mike(NEOhio)

Well-known Member
Location
Newbury, Ohio
I may have found the reason. I've been working on it for several years and got to where I could take it out some. After two or three short rides around the place and back in the garage to investigate the oil pressure I had the crankcase cover off and it seemed like it should have had more oil in it. I found I had left the plug out of the reduction gear cover. I put over a gallon back in.
 
Nice, had a hard time finding that plug and fill area on my 730. Some said that it will splash in, but not in this case.................
 
Nice, had a hard time finding that plug and fill area on my 730. Some said that it will splash in, but not in this case.................
Nice, had a hard time finding that plug and fill area on my 730. Some said that it will splash in, but not in this case.................
It's for draining condensation. OP manual says to put one pint of engine oil in the smaller fill plug after draining. Oil from the main bearing recycles back to the case. My memory doesn't work so good these days. Thinking back to last year I only put 8 quarts in it, thought about the 8 but I looked in the manual today. 8 and 3/4 gallons in the cooling system, 11 quarts in the crankcase so I'm still short. I got in a little duwt-up with a guy in a Deere group on FB. Question was what to put in there in his '48 A and he told the poster to use gear lube. I told him engine oil and he didn't agree so I posted the section from the manual. He was referring to a 720 so maybe they changed. Makes sense because of the doubles gears for the live PTO.
 
Lettered series tractors run engine oil in the first reduction cover. Oil from the RH main bearing splashes out and gets thrown around in the cover and circulated back into the engine through a return hole. There's about 1 qt of oil that remains in the cover behind a dam that's in front of the first reduction gear. I'd have to look into the parts books again for the A B and G but I think somewhere around 1951 the first reduction covers came from the factory with drain and fill plugs. Otherwise before that there was no way to drain that quart of oil with pulling the cover. A lot of tractors have these plugs added though.

Numbered series tractors use gear oil in the first reduction cover. Engine oil is sealed from the cover.
 

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