JD 4520 Tractor Good and Bad

Need information; Looking at buying a JD 4520 Tractor. Any thing I need to be looking for. Roughly 10,000 Hours all seems solid.

Turbo 4520 engine or was it upgraded to the TI 4620 engine and air cleaner?

First turbo Deere, 1,000 RPM PTO only, no 540. Was a great tractor in its day. Rated anywhere from 110 HP to 130 HP depending on who you talk to. Manufactured two years only '69 and '70. The 4620 was a refinement. I assume that you are talking about the 13,000 pounder and not the compact job Deere came out with about 10 or so years ago that they also call or called a 4520, but really isn't. I don't know why Deere did that, but they rebranded at least the 4000 series tractors as compacts, except may the 4020. That one they may not have. I remember when I bought mine a decade ago, I walked in and asked the Deere guy "How much for the 4520" and he looked through his book and said something like $25,000 or $30,000. I looked out the window at the old beater and told him he was out of his mind. He said lets go take a look and we walked out, me to the 4520 and him somewhere else asking me where I was going, and I pointed at the 4520, the real 4520. He said no, over here so I followed him to some compacts and asked what they were. He said two 4520's, my choice. I told him, "Them aren't 4520's" and pointed to the '70 4520 and said "That's a 4520, how much?". We went back inside, he said $5,000, so i wrote him a check and rode it home a few miles about zero degrees out.

Mark

I will assume a 1969-1970 JD 4520. They where the first turboed JD tractor from the factory. They where about 125 PTO HP. They had a real heavy rear end almost like the JD 5020. They did not have the inline injection pump. The early ones had injection pump and injector issues.

There where several of them around here. They where 1000 PTO only that hurt them around here because of the limited use of 1000 PTO implements back when they where new. They where real heavy for the horse power. That made them kind of doggy in the field at factory horse power. Most where turned up to 150-175 HP. The rear end and transmission held up. The clutch was the weak point then.

At factory horse power a JD 4520 was nothing special to use. The later model JD 4320 would out work them at factory settings. It seemed like the extra 10 HP was used in just moving the extra tractor weight around.

The value of JD 4520s has been creeping up. Many guys are wanting them as collector tractors.

a work horse when horse turned up to where deere should have set it to start with.
i spent lots of time plowing with one turned up to 150 or so horse.
would drag 2 loads of corn 500 + up some good sized hills wouldn"t slow down just smoke more.
turbo would be singing a real pretty tune.

I had one with power shift and I also had a 4020 with MW turbo. If you could keep the 4020 cool enough it would do more work then the 4520. It was to heavy for the 125 hp. If you turned it up to 150 it was better. A 4620 was better.

Good for you if you got a 4520 started at zero degrees without being plugged in.......

Heck ours needs a whiff of ether if it gets below 60 degrees out!

Pretty good old heavy loader tractor but those darned old JDs run out of hyd. oil quickly if your foot has the clutch pushed down. Power shift tractors did not have this problem, only the synchro range ones.

The reason the Deere guy said he wouldn't go under $5,000 was because it had new batteries, and when a mechanic heard that I bought it, he put on his coat and walked out with me carrying a can of ether, and she took a few good shots, but fired. A half hour later I was on my way. I don't know for sure that it was zero out, but snow was blowing across the open fields and road, and I had to stop about three times to pull over and hop in the trailing pickup to warm my frozen fingers because the gloves didn't work. She's a fatso and she can pull. Nothing like the new ones, but she's my big girl.

Mark

Sounds like you have a good one!

I like running ours too, even with all of its quirks.