1953 JD 50.... I'm just not expierenced enough. Venting.

Hello guys. I've been playing with everything I can find and I'm just not getting something. I can't get any constants to go by, so maybe you gentlemen can see something I don't. If anyone needs anything I missed in the post, Just let me know. Pics, Videos, Numbers, Measurements, anything.

So here goes. I bought a 1953 John Deere 50 (serial 50032XX with Wico xb4023b mag) from a guy who had NO knowledge about them. It looks like the barn, house and chicken coop all fell in on it. Got it home, and found ALL the wiring to be junk. Plugs, wires, cap and rotor had never fired. All were brand new. I pulled everything out of the mag, cleaned it all up, and reinstalled with good clean grounds. Still no spark. Needless so say, I jumped a wire from the battery straight to the ignition resistor at the mag and (using a turkey baster for fuel) got to hear the sweet sound of the 2cyl screaming to life. She needed the choke on a bit.... and a TON of other work before moving, but I got there eventually. Now its fine tune time. The dltx-75 duplex carb is a bear with those steel balls, and I can't even SEE the ones on the bottom. The passages did flow, but not enough obviously.

So I soaked the carb in berryman's for a night and cleaned it with gasoline and any other cleaners I could find that would take off everything ailing me. With the grease gone and some passages available, I drilled out the two passage plugs and popped them off with an awl. Muriatic acid. This stuff is tricky and comes with a laundry list of warnings and precautions, but it can do wonders on rust. Turns it to sludge in seconds. I controlled the flow and sent it down the passages. Gobs of yellow acid and goo came out for a few minutes, but eventually she cleared up and came out with no contaminants. Rebuild kit installed, I bolted it back up. I could barely tell I cleaned it. Still couldn't get her to stop hunting the left side, and dropping the needle out did next to nothing in terms of idle. Turning it in would stall the cylinder, but out more than 2 turns did nothing. Four times the carb came off and got cleaned. Wire through the ports from all sides that would bend around gave me nothing but clean fluid. Any solvent I sent in showed me it was all clean the first time by the amount of water I could send through it, It should have been. So I put it back on.

Time to check the timing. It starts fine when cold, but fights me a while to start when warm. The float level is 3/4" from the bottom of the body, and all jets are spotless. I can turn the load needle all the way in and nothing changes, so it's gotta be timing, right? I put the timing light on (I converted to 12v Negative when I bought the 10SI alternator) and I notice the light misses when I'm hearing the engine drop on the Number 1 (left) cylinder. Time to check the bushings are re-investigate the mag. I cleaned it all out with paint brushes and gas/carb cleaner. Wire wheeled any contacts or connections and reinstalled with small dabs of oil anywhere things needed to move freely. Now the miss seems to be gone, but the timing only holds it's 25 degrees btdc for a few moments before it drops down to 20 or even less and the idle kicks itself down. Points are at .015 but they were a little closer than that before, and it DID start EVERY TIME when they were at about .010, but I've done a lot of work since then. Anything could have changed that. Now as for the governor, I got the tractor with it set to 2 full holes short of fitting in. I tried adjusting it to 1 and even all the way to 1/2 from in, but it just gets so sluggish that she dies out before I get the gas I need. Sometimes it's like the governor has a half mile of movement before it acts on the situation.

Today, after cleaning the mag and starting it up, I noticed she ran very fast even with the throttle plates closed, but died down and barely stayed alive after 30 seconds or so. The manifold gaskets are new and I don't see a vacuum leak possible, but it does a lot of popping and backfiring through the intake. I just don't know. The main issue is that it feels like the governor doesn't care what it does with give either way, and I can't tune the idle screws worth a darn with it doing whatever it wants. If I take the governor out of the equation I still can't get a clean idle to even adjust. She does whatever she wants to do between dropping a spark (might be fixed now, haven't tried long enough) or random idle regardless of the throttle position. It'll run at 800rmp with the throttle closed, and then drop down to 300 or die after any random amount of seconds from 3 to 30 without touching it. Since I can't actually adjust the carb this way, I'm sure that's where the backfiring is coming from. The needles work to stall out a cylinder and it'll run just fine with the choke off until it decides to dog out or race up.

I've messed around with so many things and every time I think I fix something, it breaks something else. I even smoked the stater and had to rip that all apart and re-solder the armature to the windings. To much button push time I guess. That was when she was warm. Everything I fix from the tractor full of yankee ingenuity (I'm from MA so I can say that) has had adverse effects. I'm just not sure I can save her without help. I'm even about to ship the carb to someone to see if they can tune it. That would at least solve one issue. A good smack of the throttle send her straight to a solid high idle with a slight puff of black at 2 1/2 turns of the load, and she runs GREAT there, but a miss at high rmp is hard to hear. This is obviously more of a venting than a reach for help, but if anyone has any ideas why little brother isn't running right, I'd love to hear it. Still haven't received my service manual so maybe that will give me a few ideas. I think tomorrow I'll check the valve adjustment. Does anyone know if a valve cover gasket from a 48A would fit on a 53 50? The RTV holding this one just won't do, but I haven't gone a day without hearing the pop since the day he came home. Ok, I feel SO much better now. Stupid addictive green things. My neighbors do NOT need this much sleep.

Adjust the rod that attaches to the carburetor 1/2 hole SHORT, to get a pre-load on the Governor...then it will work properly..

The Main Fuel (Power) screw can be closed all the way, if NO load is on the engine...there is a Main metering jet internal that will flow some fuel..
Idle mixture Must be made with the engine at IDLE Speed..if made above Idle, the Main Jet will be feeding fuel..
The engine should never "Kick-Back"..if it does, the timing is advanced too much..should be at TDC for starting..
Ask as many questions as you want and need...
Sounds like you are needing direction but have ALL the desire you need..!!

Ron..

HA, yea. I left it in the woods the other day and told it I'd see it in a year when the starter died. 3 hours later, I pulled the starter and found the bad solder joint. He was home again in minutes.

I don't remember where I left the rod, but I've had it 1/2 hole, 1 hole, 2 holes and everything in between. It never idles consistently. The load needle is 2 3/4 turns out and it seems to like that. Any more and I get black exhaust climbing hills. It doesn't kick backward as far as I know, but it's not a hand start. I just hear popping when starting and also when running, but once again, even with the governor disconnected, I can't get a consistent idle to actually adjust them. The popping might be the fact that the idle mixture needles have never been set correctly. Obviously one is getting more fuel than the other.

I think tomorrow I'll pull the carb again and check the throttle plates for leaking/wear. That would cause lack of vacuum and to much air. I also tried removing the air intake pipe. No difference, so I ruled out the clogged intake idea. As simple machinery goes, it's as simple as complicated can get. I must be missing something obvious.

Did you take the mag completely off to clean it? I know for my
B with wico x you have to have cylinder one at tdc on
compression stroke on my flywheel it says left impulse that is
towards the back of the tractor when at tusc on cylinder one.
The shaft the magneto goes into should be straight up and
down. Then u should be able to move mag forward or
backward to adjust your timing to fine tune it. Hope this helps I
know it"s a pain when they don"t do what u want..

I noticed these old deeres always seem to stop at the exact same position give or a take a few degrees. The good thing is that it always stops with the points open so you won't smoke them. To answer you question about the timing, I haven't done any static timing. The magnito (or distributor as it doesn't actually make it's own power) has not been off. I cleaned it in place as the parts explosion only shows 2 parts out back that could even possibly need attention. Where it is is where it was run AFAIK, but who knows what was done before I got ahold of it. When she runs, she runs, and if you throttle up she runs well. At high idle, -25btdc is clearly consistant through the observation window on the flywheel. For this reason I ruled out overly evident timing issues. Should I be going back to that? If I do find something wrong with the mag timing, I'm sure my valve will come flying out of the valve cover.

A Wico XB is a dist. not a mag. They are junk. you would be better off finding a Delco Dist.

I know it's not the best, but like I said, it has all new parts and seems to work well enough. In the post above yours (in parenthesis) you'll see that I understand it's a distributor, but given the case shape and look most know it as a magneto. My experience is that it's all about how you relay the information. When I think distributor, I see a cylindrical coil and a round cap connected a foot or so apart. Besides, it seems kind of rare, and dad's 48 A has the same look. That kind of money just to prevent a possible problem (especially with so many other options) just doesn't seem feasible right now. To much other stuff to buy.

On a side note, I was just reading through Duane Larson's stuff and came across a section for the coil wiring. I don't know what this tractor was set up for before, but I guess I should verify the coil is wired correctly. Once again, it's a Wico XB4023b. Currently, the positive (right off the resistor) goes to the right side of the plate that the points mount to and the red coil wire attaches there. The black wire for the coil goes over to the left side of the plate. Both wires come down the right side of the case. The bare wire grounds to the screw holding the coil in with two steel tabs. I would imagine that would be right for the original 12v pos ground. I may try flipping it over so the wires are reversed on the points. There's only so many straws in this pot to grab. From what I read, there's a voltage difference between the two sides, and seeing as #1 fires first, maybe it needs a bit more voltage?

I have successfully rebuilt an XB distributor, and it works fairly well. But as many say, they are not very good. A big problem is trying to run them on 12 V. They require an extra ballast resistor, and many get fried. I think the condenser is particular to the XB, not the same as the WICO mag.

Anyway, here are my suggestions.

Time it properly, and install the right plugs and plug wires.

Send the carburetor off to a GOOD carb rebuilder and let them clean it for you, or at least test it.

Replace the XB with a XH WICO mag or Delco distributor. (Maybe you could borrow one for a test?)

Set up the governor by the book, and make sure all of the linkages are free.

Make sure you don't have any mud dauber nests in the air stack.

She should run fine.

Kurt

Thanks for the ideas so far guys. I'll try em all. I guess if worst came to worst I could try to snag the XH off my dad's A, but in this family we know if you break it you bought it and none of these things are cheap by any means. Last resort. I will say that the capacitor is bigger in the xb than the xh. You are confirmed right on that.

For the "right plugs", my notes show that somwhere the Autolite 3116 was the best on opinions for the b and or 50, and the 3077 was the ideal for the A. I bought 4 for the A but none for the 50. Time to make a few phone calls i guess. Work will be over soon and it'll be back to the green monster. Oh, is the spring on the governor supposed to be a large arch or flat? Mine looks like the umbrella holder swung out really far.

One of my first steps to a good tune up is to check the compression and adjust the valves. Start there. You may also want to find a mag. or dist. off of a known good running tractor and try it. This will eliminate or confirm one source of the possible problem.
Not saying your carb. isn't still goofed up , but alot of carb. problems are not in the carb. !
It's just the first thing everyone wants to yank off and tear into.

Status update. I started it last night and saw that for about 1 minute, there were no coil misses, but we have a EEE warning in this part of MA, and mosquitoes around here have REALLY pointy noses. Either way, it was still putting like poop. Today I pulled off the whole gov shaft and greased everything that would slide as well as oiled everything that could bind. I also pulled the cap and noted the oil from last night had worked it's way in nicely. Everything was moving freely and smooth there too. I gave her a shot of fuel (still haven't gotten the ridge off my sediment bowl cut-off) and hit the button. She rolled a few times and and finally started... but seconds later ...as if backfiring out a corn kernel, she settle right out and came down to reality. I was ecstatic to only hear the occasional pop at the intake, so i grabbed the left mixture screw and back it out 1/2 turn. Popping was almost gone. I went another 1/2 and WOW. That's what I was waiting for. She was idling high so a few turns of the screw brought her down to peaceful. I am 100% sure the carb had issues, and I made them a lot worse when I took it off to do the manifold gaskets. The previous owner had a 1 inch long copper collar on the choke. She must have missed running like this.

Was it the rod or the mag? I have no idea. Nothing obvious in either one. Regardless, I learned a great deal of knowledge about this tractor the past 2 weeks. This forum is insanely helpful. You guys keep up the up keep. I'll try to join in when I can. Apparently, I like to type more than most.

Oh, and Mike, I'm going to check the valves as soon as my current permatex gasket replacement is hear. They are pretty loud compared to the A. Thanks again guys!!!

Nice story to read. You will be a big help on here. Welcome.