JD A-Opinions Wanted

Now the questions--Where could these ball bearings have come from? Since the tractor seemed to run and drive fine just before this event, my present assumption is that these must have been left from an old fix (of what??) at some other time in the tractor's life, and that the gas in the oil acted as a solvent and loosened up a sludge pocket somewhere in the crankcase with these ball bearings in it. Still we're a little scared to run it without checking out where these could have come from. There is a ball bearing in the governor, but we've checked it and the balls are smaller. Any help or ideas appreciated. dwm

I don't know what bearings you were looking at, but there are two sizes of ball bearing on your governor. I have a '46 "A" (same tractor, essentially) on which the governor bearing failed *exactly* the same way!

Since I opted to buy a replacement governor/fan assembly (which you should do too, as the bearings are expensive!) at a junkyard, I still have the old governor and parts and will post photos of exatly the failure you experienced. The bearing that failed is the one on the outside of the gear that meshes with the fan drive gear (behind the magneto).

DON'T USE YOUR TRACTOR UNTIL YOU FIX THIS.

You could end up with a lot of broken and ground up parts in the end, and it's an easy fix.

Check out the photos at this link (which will be up in a minute...):

Link

chris

Chris