I love a project like that
Last winter brother got bored and went looking for something to pass the long winter days.
He looked around "Iron hill" and spotted the partial remains of a 15-30 and a 22-36 (1929 model) we bought as scrap at a farm auction about 40 years ago.
The 22-36 chassis was pretty well intact, although converted to rubber tires, the 15-30 still had all 4 steel wheels in good condition.
Both engines were a total ruin, one had been run out of oil as evidenced by the spattering trails of rod babbit on the inside of the crankcase.
Both engines had the keroscene manifolds cracked and burned to junk and both engines full of dirt and water for the last 50 years that they were parked in the scrap pile. No mags, no carbs, air cleaner and fuel tanks mostly rusted away, no sheetmetal.
He fitted the 15-30 wheels on the 22-36 chassis, made two good fenders from the remains of the 3 on the tractors. Replaced the implement chewed rear of both fenders with parts of a third fender. Hand fabricated a new fuel tank , hood and side panels from newsheetmetal. Built a louver press to make louvers in the new side panels.
Next question was, what to use for an engine, being the incomplete originals are total scrap ??
We dug around in the sheds and found a crank start, mag fired early 40's Wisconsin V4 that had not run in 50 years.(Case PT combine) It was stuck but complete. A little Acetone / ATF got that loose.
Thought that the little Wisconsin was priced right as we already had it, and being air cooled, it relieved us of the problem of making an 84 year old tractor radiator water tight.
Brother fabricated a jackshaft fitted with a late 50's Ford car clutch and flywheel. This jackshaft connects the original tractor starting crank and the tractor transmission to the Wisconsin engine with a double belt and pulley setup. (Engine is mounted above the jackshaft.)
It runs and looks good, exhaust is routed to where it should be in the lower left side panel. The original air cleaner housing was gutted internally and fitted with a dry paper air filter, then plumbed to the Wisconsin.
The tractor starts with afew turns of the original starting crank, looks and drives like an original, although the little Wisconsin is only about 1/2 of 22-36 hp, but plenty for a parade toy.
We pondered, do we paint it up like a new one, or do we leave the original 70 year old dark rust patina ?? We decided to leave it original. We searched the hardware store paint rack and found a spray bomb color, called "Hammered rust" it is nearly an perfect match to the 70 year old rust patina, so makes the new sheetmetal parts blend right in.
We fitted the steel wheels with the rubber tread, cut from scrap tractor tires so we can run it on paved streets in parades.
Ran it in several parades in july and hope to catch a couple of threshing shows this fall.
All in all, a one of a kind cheap project, that was / is a lot of fun and turns a few $$ of scrap into a running and stock appearing classic that farmed our area of the Dakotas 80 years ago.
