John deere 3 hp engine

Looking at buy a John Deere 3 hp engine on a cart. The engine runs well and looks good. Clean and has good paint. Was wondering what would be a fair price to pay for this engine. Any help, thanks

Prices are much less than a few years ago but there are some around who don't get to town often or refuse reality. Price will vary with region of country, original paint or repaint, OEM cart or other, and how many CBWs. (cracks, breaks and welds. But to give you an idea for a regular old repaint with cracked (common) head and nothing special non-OEM cart about $1000, add a bit if cart is nicely constructed, add several hundred for OEM cart, same for no CBWs. An extremely nice original on OEM cart would probably fetch over 2000 at a well attended auction.

When you say "good paint" do you mean good original paint or repainted? Original will bring more in most reasonable places. Look the front of the head over really well, an awful lot of the 3hp engines have had the head cracked. Like Butch said, it depends some on the cart, if it's the original cart it will bring more than another brand or a home made. I would not go over $1500 for a 3hp on the right cart, it may bring that or more at auction but in the real world they shouldn't bring that much. What is a new JD cart now, about $400? This summer a guy with green envy offered a friend of mine $2800 for his 3 on skids, he called to ask me about it and I told him to sell it NOW!!! A couple weeks later I bought him a real clean, original paint, running 3hp on skids for $1000.

RE; the $2800 3HP
Arnold
Sounds like you are up to date with prices. I still see guys quoting 10 year old prices when somebody asks. Heck of a bunch of "for sale" engines around at those old higher rates that will never sell until the estate has to deal with them,,,

I agree, the prices are all over the place now. I got excited about buying in about '97, it seemed like every sale I went to had prices higher than the last! Now it seems that the more common engines have been coming down. I've had some guys mouth off to me online about price talks, but you are 100% right, they aren't what they used to be. I'm not in a hurry, so unless it's something that I just must own, I'm going to sit back and catch the cheap ones when they pop up. Now having said that, the original paint, no CBW 6hp Sandow I got at auction this fall hurt pretty bad!!! I'm mainly into Waterloo. On an almost unrelated side note, I wanted to get a good look at a '62 Jeep coming up on an estate auction so I showed up to help them prepare for the auction for a day. LOTS of old buildings, the Jeep had not seen daylight since '84, 42000 miles on it. I found a JD 1-1/2hp in the same building, they didn't know it was there and it didn't make it on the sale bill. Nice little engine, original paint, everything loose, on a Rock Island cart. By sale time the cart, mag, and ignitor had been stolen. Nobody was paying attention and it only brought $35! The Jeep on the other hand, also hurt pretty bad.

Thanks guys, you all have been very helpful. I'm in Ms. So there not many of these engines down this way. One other question, what should the compression be on this engine. Thanks

The actual compression ratio is very low by today's standards, and I have no idea what your cranking pressures would be. As a general rule, if you can feel some compression and it will "bounce back" when you roll it up against compression, it will probably run. If the JD's have been sitting for a few years the oil pan and/or fuel tank may need repair, the pan will get small pinholes from corrosion and the oil will leak into the fuel tank, causing many first-time owners to wonder why there is so much smoke coming from a healthy engine.