John Deere B Starting troubles.

Then your trial will be to open the fuel supply, move throttle forward slightly and attempt to start.

I should also add here that when starting a two-cylinder tractor, the throttle should never be wide open -- but rather, set at roughly half-open, or less.

You mentioned too that the engine stops when you draw the throttle back all the way. That bothers me some. Again, I am not sure what vintage JD B you are working with or what type ignition you have, but I like to see one slow idle with the throttle butterfly dead shut! IF you go to my site www.jdhpubs.com and click on carburetors, you should find some interesting data defining the IDLE and LOAD paths of DLTX natureal draft carbs.

Hopefully, you will soon be "off to the races". (PatB)

One issue that always comes to mind is tappet setings. If the gap isn't sufficient, you can have compression when cold, but begin to lose it when the engine is hot due to expansion of the pushrods. Renedy is to revisit those settings with the engine first having been brought up to operating temperature (190 degrees).

With ignition -- a failing coil will most often show up when it is hot. You didn't say if you had magneto or distributor ignition, but coil failure at HOT can happen with either one. A check you can make is to see if you still have that nice, blue spark across a plug (or test plug) when the tractor has come to operating temperature. Running this test with BOTH a test plug and a plug from the hot tractor may be revealing too!

The third concern is a fuel issue. And two facets come to mind. One is flooding, and you should see some signs -- black puffs of smoke when it does start for one and perhaps the odor of raw gasoline around the carburetor. If an odor is present, a float setting that permits too much fuel in the bowl can give you grief.

The second facet of a fuel-related concern is a subject of Field Service Bulletin 200-S issued in Feb 1953 -- the gist of which reads as follows in an excerpt from the John Deere Model "H" Restoration Guide, 2nd Edition:

TIP: Start Engine With Nearly Closed Throttle

Most tractors start easily, however, there are those one of two in a hundred that give trouble. In most cases, these can be improved by placing the throttle in an almost closed position.

The higher velocity of air entering at the edges of the throttle disk helps to vaporize the mixture of fuel and air and keep it in a volatile state for starting.

With the throttle nearly closed, the amount of air-fuel mixture entering the cylinder is limited, lowering the compression.

With lower compression, the spark will more readily jump to gap at the spark plug electrodes; battery load is decreased, causing a hotter spark; and cranking rpm is increased (FSB 200-S, February 1953). This technique works equally well for hand-start models -- seems to help avoid flooding. ++++