Warm day yesterday

So I decided to start a couple of my tractors since neither had been started since last fall. JD R and 420. No problem starting either one. Grandson has a "drive a tractor to school" day Friday and he wants to drive the R. His dad will come over tomorrow and haul it to his place as he is about 15 miles closer to the school than I am. Grandson has never started or driven this tractor however he has driven my 730 several times so knows about a hand clutch. Son has experience with a 820 pony start but it has been many years so I will probably have to give him a refresher course on starting procedure.

Nice clean original tractors. I enjoy seeing them like that more than completely restored. They are only original once. Tom

Does your grandson know the R only goes 11 mph in 5th? Not really a ROAD gear, running Dad's R the quarter mile to the other farm was bad enough. All the Farmall's ran 16+ mph. R wasn't a good starting tractor either, the 2 cyl Pony really struggled to spin the big engine over. The V-4 pony in the neighbor's 730 had the diesel started before it even got wound all the way up. I'd try to convince him to take the 420.

Thanks for your comments. This R has a pretty stout pony. Have never had any problem starting the big engine. The pony can be temperamental sometimes as it is hard to tell if it is getting too much gas (flooding) or hasn't been choked enough. As a general rule I pull the choke full out, crank for 2-3 seconds then take the choke off and it will fire right up. Yesterday it was still a little cold out and I choked it a bit too long so then had to crank a little longer with the choke off for it to fire up. I have discovered that if it does get flooded it can be remedied by turning the gas off and then it will start. I try to keep a strong battery in it and that helps. He will only have to drive it a mile or two so shouldn't be a problem. I was raised on JD D's and that is another story. We had one farm 10 miles from the home place and it took about and hour and a half to make the trip over there. The 420 doesn't do too much better than the R on road speed.

Dad bought our R just before Christmas of 1963, along with the matching Deere 4-14 plow. It was "My R" I was told. I had my 10th birthday about 2 weeks before I started doing fieldwork with it. Dad did put Char-Lynn power assist steering on it, I could barely reach the steering wheel let alone the throttle or clutch levers. Dad and I started plowing 40 acres of old alfalfa hay ground and hog pasture, me on the R, Dad on the Super M-TA with IH #8 3-14's. We plowed in circles, Dad figured it would be easiest for me, 2nd was all the faster I could run, had to downshift on a couple hills. When we got done We hooked the R to our other #8 3-14 plow and used that until the township road commissioner bought it to start rebuilding roads, he wanted the R to run a 5 ft heavy-duty rototiller chewing up scarified oiled dirt roads and pull a 10 ft wide road drag. He found another one of the R's weak spots, the pto, he tore out the pto three times in three years then traded the R for a 770 Oliver diesel. About 5 years later I ran that 770 doing that road work, it never gave a minutes problem.
The whole reason Dad bought the R was he thought he would be getting Grandpa's 160 acres to farm 20 miles away. Grandpa didn't have guts enough to tell Dad he rented the farm to a neighbor and drinking buddy. Spring of '65 fieldwork started when the 450 gas Farmall was delivered. I had disked some corn stalks with the SM-TA. I was always amazed how much difference going from 48 hp to 55 hp made in a tractor. Neighbor we farmed an 80 with got a nice Allis D-19 gas that same spring, plowing hilly half mile rows that 450 kept up with that D-19 pretty well. 2-3 years later it would actually outrun it. The 262 gas 6-cyl in the Allis didn't have the torque the 281 4-cyl in the 450 had.
It was funny, the R and SM-TA were both 48 hp, and the SM-TA always seemed to run half a gear faster than the R.

Why not just tell us you hate JDs it kind of funny how you tell how great other brands are and all that you talk about not even made any more