John Deere model r

Looks like its doing a good job for 35 drawbar horsepower
John Deere r plowing

Plowing right along. Diesel technology has came a long way since then. Dad and grandpa both had a WD-9 and pulled a 4x16 plow. I still have the plow.

Those old diesels are cool . Is the wd one that starts on gas

Yep, WD-9 started on Gas and switched over to diesel.IH made them in really big displacements too, 400-500, biggest was 1090 Cid in the TD-24. They were not a high output engine, the DT-817 in the TD-25 outperformed it.
Dad bought a Deere R just before Christmas 1963, got the matching Deere 4-14 plow too which the really struggled to pull, I pulled the IH #8 3-14 most of the time. Dad had the 2 cyl Deere diesel tuning wiz tune the R up before we hooked it to anything. Yep, just what every 10 year old kid wanted in 1963, an R diesel while most of my buddy's had 4010's and 4020's. The R was gone by mid-April, the FARMALL SUPER M-TA plowed the last 16 acres with the Deere 4-14 plow. And the M-TA did all the prep for planting, and cultivating. A FARMALL 450 gas replaced the M-TA spring of '65, a REAL 4-BOTTOM tractor. When Midwest plow harrow got popular Dad parked the 4-14 IH Fast-Hitch plow and bought a CASE 4-14 and mounted a Midwest Harrow on it, it really made for a nice seeded. Ran that 450 thru fall of 1968, took the 1963 4010 D to the field spring of '69. It was a REAL disappointment, any day it was still running to get you back to the barn was considered a good day. I walked home more days than I care to admit.

Sounds like your wizzard wasnt much of a wizard to me if he couldnt make a 4010 or an r run

The WD-9 started on gas and then you switched over to diesel. They are dad's favorite tractor and were very popular here.

I wonder on an international dozer that started on gas and ran on diesel it was fun to play with one thing it wouldnt start on diesel even after sitting a week in a heated shop

I've had that exact same thought! Putting the 4010 on a pto dyno and pulling it to it's knees and seeing only 60 hp should have been standard procedure at a Deere dea,er's shop. The guy that finally got the 4010 to run was Terry Warner, owner of Warner's Turbo Shop in rural Cambridge, Ill. He even did R&D work for M&W Gear. He came over one night after supper with his black bag of parts & tools. Somebody had ground the ends of the leaf spring in the inj pump, the engine was running wide open on 3 cylinders and about half throttle on the other three holes alternating thru the firing order. A decent Deere tech would have caught that. The guy Dad first took the 4010 to didn't do much if anything to the pump, and He worked on the R several years before that, which is why a stout FARMALL M would run circles around the R. The R's all had very weak PTO's so it was never dyno'd. The township road Commissioner who bought our R ran a 5 ft pto rototiller chewing up scarified oiled dirt roads, the Oliver 770 diesel I ran one summer doing that job handled it easily, the R shelled out the pto 4 times in 4 years and was sold, traded for the 770 Oliver. R was also the ONLY DEERE DIESEL with only 2 main bearings on the crankshaft, lug them long and hard enough and the crankshaft can and will break which pretty well destroys the big diesel engine. The salesman who sold the R to Dad warned him to NEVER lug it down in a hard pull. We normally pulled the IH #8 3-14 plow with the R. It was kinda a disappointment, that's why it was gone before we really got started planting corn.

Looks like nice soil

None of them has starts will start on diesel from cold. The only time it will start on diesel is if its in good shape , it will start right after a shut down while its still hot. But that is hard in the starter. Starting them on gas was the best idea out there to start a diesel.

I thought it was a neat idea

That was a sad 4010 maybe it identified as a 3010 ??I cant believe what they were doing with 35 or 40 drawbar horsepower. I guess they werent plowing like we so now either