IH 504 restore. I'm new!!

drodsgarage

New User
Well long story short I was laid off of work ended up at an auction and bought a 1963 IH 504 gas rig to flip and sell. I'm mechanically inclined and know my way around a shop...but i have no experience with tractors. ill post up pics soon. I drove it home from the auction by the time I got to my driveway the power steering required about ten turns to move the slightest. brakes leak at the round drum, Rear axles leak where it has the 4 bolt cap and one fender is rusted out. currently I have completely removed all wiring, removed all the body panels, degreased it and am working on removing the old paint and 40 year old grease for a good prime and paint job. I have also put a new tube in one of the rear tires.
Questions:
- has anybody used fenders from another to use on one of these? they seem much more expensive than the farmall fenders.
- as far as power steering goes, I think the fluid leaking from the axle and PTO seal have caused the problem, again I am naive to tractors. would love some insight.
- also could use a new steering wheel and defiantly a new seat. I am just looking for some recommendations from some guys who know the industry. Thanks in advance.
Dillon
 
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Hi Dillon
Welcome to the world of loosing money, fancy paint jobs don't always make a tractor worth more or easier to sell L.O.L. I used to buy fixer upper tractors here in Canada to flip. I quit doing them because it was tough to make
money, the parts guys and the guy I got them from made the most money more times than I did!. I really hope you don't have to much in it, and you
know you can get out what you put in and still pay yourself minimum wages at least for the time.

An old tractor you buy for say 2500- $3000 spend maybe $800+ for parts/paint oil and filters, then a week or so messing with it, sit on it for
maybe a month or longer as you got to wait for the right guy to buy it. Having advertised it at $5000, and get offered $4500 or less for it by the
last guy to look at it that actually wanted it. Had the money to buy it and came after you spent 2 hours + on the phone or in the yard talking to
complete time wasters/scammers , and guys wanting to trade junk for your tractor with $500 difference. I'm sorry to say it wasn't worth the bother.

I got offered a tractor the other day I new the guy that wanted it before I got it. I kinda had a rough idea what it needed doing, figured $500 in
parts a day or 2 in the shop and make around a $1000 in less than a week when he picked it up, so I gave it a shot to see.
Yeah it ended up needing $200 more in parts and 3 days in the shop. I basically paid myself for fixing my own tractor, just like I get paid by
customers that buy their own parts to. All i really achieved was remembering why I quit.
I got offered another tractor today. The way I will make money on that one is by not owning it, and If I put the seller in touch with the buyer the
owner will give me $400 cash for him selling it and me helping him get it out of his yard.

In your situation I really do wish you good luck and hope it works out for you. buying and flipping is not easy, some make it some don't. There are
more hard earned dollars, and lessons learned than easy ones in this game if you are unlucky.
Regards Robert
 
Hi Sometimes a reality check on buying and selling old used tractors, without the rose tinted glasses Image of making a quick buck, is the most friendly helpful advice you can get. The last big re build tractor I did , was real nice and should of been worth 13-$14000 easy at the time. Reality I paid 4000 for it in a trade deal put around 6000 in it in parts and got 10.000 for it after sitting on it quite a while, and needing to sell it pay bills. The lower the price of what you got the harder it gets with parts costs. you got to buy the tractor everybody pays good money for a good one, service it and make adjustments. Don't spend time painting and messing around. Then blow it out quick for $1500 + profit. The hard part is you can't easily find the everbody wants tractors at the right price /condition that are not totally worn out to actually do it. Buying trends change to a tracctor round here that used to make $2500 now isn't worth buying to flip noboby wants it anymore. you got to be on the ball with that stuff to,so you aren't the guy gets stuck with it.
Kinda reading Dillons reply he got educated driving this one home, he knows a lot more about why it was cheap now than he did before.
Regards Robert
 
Best thing to do if you want to play this game is buy wrecks. Then if you have the chance to buy something cheap and you know you have a parts tractor with whatever you need,you're right in business. If you have to buy parts,you're pretty much dead in the water right from the get go when it comes to making a dime off them.
 
No seat or steering wheel? Then it was owned by a farmer that lost his a$$ and had nowhere to turn.

I finished up a MF 65 diesel that was burned in a battery fire. Thought I bought it right but ended up needing a whole lot more in parts and then once it was
running I found out the clutch was bad so I had to split it and throw more parts in there. I broke even but got nothing for my
hours of labor but an education. No regrets because I learned alot and got some great assistance from the helpful souls on this
site.
 
(quoted from post at 13:37:00 02/27/16) No seat or steering wheel? Then it was owned by a farmer that lost his a$$ and had nowhere to turn.

I finished up a MF 65 diesel that was burned in a battery fire. Thought I bought it right but ended up needing a whole lot more in parts and then once it was
running I found out the clutch was bad so I had to split it and throw more parts in there. I broke even but got nothing for my
hours of labor but an education. No regrets because I learned alot and got some great assistance from the helpful souls on this
site.
I've always said there is something to be said about an education. I'm 23 and feel like I've an 18 year degree in hard knocks lol mostly with time management and underbidding how much it'll cost to do. I'm not gonna restore it to a point where it's ready for the parade. Just wanna get it to where you can jump on it and go. When I go to do one for myself I'm gonna do it up nice.
 
Thanks for the info Robert, lol I knew it was probably an impulse buy. Ive been doing so many construction jobs and sorts that I haven't had much time to mess with it and am gonna need my money back out of it soon. Ill probably end doing the cheap paint job. throwing a $100 seat on there and maybe fabing some fenders from another tractor. I'll be in it for around $2000 to $2200 and am hoping for around $3500 to $4000 but will see how it goes I'm also big into trading so hopefully I can get in a good trade deal. This will probably be my last tractor flip tho. Takes a lot of room, lots of special equipment, and time. The next one I buy is gonna be for me and done right. I appreciate all your guys impute. I've already learned so much from browsing this forum.
 
I buy and flip tractors, try to do one a year. Some Ive made good money and others not so much. Ive never lost money
but you have to get it at a steal. There is so much risk involved with expensive parts. You cant pay a fair price for a
tractor and paint it for a profit. Most guys dont care that much about looks.
 
Hi rr
In this area it just don't work, the wreckers offer guys 1000-$3000 on the junkers that are popular parts machines round here, so guys find this out and won't sell complete junk parts tractors for that. they figure if the wreckers going to make money they want 5 or $6000 in their yard or it don't sell. Yeah the wrecker has costs and the stuff that don't sell, or is no good. But these dumb guys don't get that. newer stuff they pay a bit more depending what happened to it. They will never sell complete units to guys like us that flip. It's not in their interest to have us in business.

In sales you bid against wreckers or some complete clowns, that have to have the tractor to flip or use it. There is one guy pays the sell out price for good stuff, then adds $2000 for his mark up for a tractor thats far from right. he's got a website full of about 50 tractors that he can't sell. Now he has completely screwed up buying and selling more than it was before, as guys go there see his junk and won't trust anybody selling a good tractor at the right price either now.
I tried moving into the newer 15-20 year old stuff like internationals, JD, ford and some others, the tractors that needed work where making near as much as they where to buy one right and I couldn't afford to do the work and buy parts for some of them. I had to go about a 1000 miles from here, to buy them cheaper to fix and flip. when trucking was on top there was close nothing left again.
Some places are great to live but trying to make a buck round here isn't easy. The guys here don't want you making a buck off them, they want the cake, cherry, the cream, and lick the pattern off the plate! they are so greedy. I had a couple ealers felt threatened by me trying to sell a couple tractors a year. they tried reporting me to the province as an unlicensed dealer, so I got fined and shut down, the licence department said I was a repair shop could sell a couple a year and go tell them to grow up!.
Regards Robert
 
Hi Dillon I'm 42 and restored my first tractor at 14 so got a few years under the belt. I have restored many tractors for myself and sold a fair few
and older backhoe loaders as flips to after working on them or using them a while and updating to better ones until i quit. I made more on the
backhoes 16 years ago than I ever did on tractors, but the markets changed since on Backhoe loaders to now. there are lots of overpriced machines
around needing work. The market has dropped on them to, as most guys want trackhoe's now instead for most jobs or their self build projects.
Regards Robert
 
The Army bought those tractors when they first came out to pull large rotary mowers on firing ranges. When they started using them they started
using oil and found the engines were not sleeved and would require machining. They sold them at auction. They bought big Ford diesel tractors. Hal
 

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