John Deere A questions

I am a Allis Chalmers person, but just bought 2 John Deere A's because my wife likes them. One is a 47 with a starter bracket on top, but it has the hand crank flywheel. Will the flywheel and starter fit it off of the newer pressed frame tractors? Also it has no water pump, is that normal? It has the pulley on the fan shaft. Thanks

You should find a flywheel from the vintage tractor you have... as it is smoother, and there were no flywheel covers (only a shield over the ring gear) on tractors in your vintage. The later one would probably fit, but has a lot of rough edges that could catch clothes. Another thing... the earlier ones were a little less prone to cracking, and should be easy t o find.

Your tractor did not come from the factory with a water pump- none did until the end, when the Korean War made copper hard to get for radiators, and a pump was needed for cooling in a poorer conducting radiator. The pulley yours has is for a generator.

Also the late A's were 12 volt & the mid series (early styled) were only 6. Early styled were made 4 ways. No electric which had a short hood & lots of space between you & the dashboard! They also could be had with electric starter & generator, or with lights & generator but no electric starter or with generator and both starter & lights! All but the no electric models had a "long hood" & slanted cast iron dash assembly with the battery sitting between the gas tank & dashboard all enclosed by a three piece hood extension. The various models required different hood pieces, different dash assemblies, different crank case covers, steering wheel supports, lights and of course flywheel, flywheel guard, starter and generator.

Does yours have the long hood & slanted dash where the battery sits between the gas tank & the dash or is it really a hand start (short hood) tractor onto which someone put the electric start crank case cover?

The long hood dash is cast iron & clear back only a few inches forward of the steering wheel. The short hoods you could put a picnic basket between the steering wheel support post & the dashboard.

Hope that's helpful.

Thanks for the replys, I ended up buying all three of the the A's he had. Two of them with the straight frame rails and one pressed frame. The tractor I mentioned above which has a long hood and cast dash. The other tractor is a short hood with no hydraulics. I am guessing the two tractors might have had the flywheels swapped.

The flywheel on your long hood A should look like this one.

You can go to the John Deere parts web site and download the A parts manual for free. PC0675. Styled A tractors. It is about 100 pages. Has all the info about what parts go with what serial numbers. I have it saved on my computer and a paper copy for taking to my shop. It is well worth the time to print it for parts identification.

Rodney 8)
Rebuilding a 1950 John Deere A.