1957 420U restoration

I have a 1957 John Deere 420U that I am going to be restoring. I got the tractor from my dad whom had it for 20+ years. He replaced it with a 2005 JD 790 with a loader and had parked it in the rain to rot. I decided that the tractor needed a better home so I took it. My question is what color to paint it? The story that I get from my dad is that the salesman who sold it to him said it used to be a state highway tractor that spent many hours mowing grass. How true this really is is beyond me, but what I do know is that there is about 5-6 layers of paint on this thing. What confuses me is that the bottom coat of paint doesn't match up in all spots. Some areas it is industrial yellow and other areas is JD green, but in all areas of my scratch testing there is at both the yellow and the green. I really like the thought of making the tractor industrial yellow with black decals but I want to make it what it is supposed to be regardless of what I like. If it is supposed to be green and yellow that is what it will be, but if it is supposed to be all industrial yellow that is where it is going to go. Is there an area that I should scratch the layers of paint specifically tell me what the color scheme should be?

look in areas that may not have been painted when it was repainted several times, if they just did a quick paint job they probably didnt et up under the hood, under the hydraulics, back of the dash, etc. If it was factory yellow it would have a custom job number cj295 recorded with its serial number records. Many 420 Us were yellow and used for county tractors.

My scratch tests included two areas that would have been skipped over with quick paint jobs, they included the underside of the hood and the top side of the gas tank. Both of which had conflicting stories of time. :shock:

Just got through restoring a 320U that was a
highway tractor although is was originally green.
It was evidently painted orange by the state of
Kansas, then had at least 2 other coats of green
on top of that. I too had a difficult time
determining FOR SURE what color it should be but
finally determined it was green. The serial
number research did not have a CJ & was not very
informative. What you may be seeing at the base
is yellowish primer. You might try some paint
remover in a spot, which would remove upper layers
first. The original paint is usually more
stubborn to dissolve.

The tractor was definitely Industrial yellow at one point in it's life. I just went and dug in a few more areas and it appears that it was green before it was yellow in most of the areas that had fewer coats of paint. I guess the real question becomes did it get repainted yellow before it went to the original customer as I know that Deere liked to separate the industrial use equipment from the agricultural use if nothing more than by the paint job. Is there a way that I can research my serial number without having to pay someone else? Or an I stuck paying two cylinder magazine?

All CJ codes are different for each tractor that was painted another color besides green and yellow. As was said before either have 2-Cylinder do a serial# research and look in the hard to reach places that wouldn't get repainted by a normal paint job.

If your tractor was sold through the industrial division it could have very well been painted yellow at the factory, but no custom job number was recorded because yellow was a industrial standard color.

I have an orange 430 with custom job 266

Man, take advantage of the resource at Two-Cylinder---
Serial number research is a bargain and easy to get, remember someday somebody else is gonna buy,sell or inherit your John Deere and I'll bet you wanna know more about it than they can learn.

My kids might sell it, my intentions are to obtain at least one of every variation of the 20 series from the 320-820. My kids will probably sell my collection off after I am gone. I just want to make sure the restoration is right. I probably will end up paying them for the research, but I am the type that prefers to do my own research rather than pay someone else to do the work for me. Kinda why I do my own restorations rather than pay someone else. This way I know there wasn't any corners cut.

Good luck breaking into the building and hacking into the JD data base. It's the only source in the whole wide world to tell you about your tractor.
The entire serial number search is going to cost less than a decent 40 of rye.