I'm probably gonna regret this, but I bought a 420C

[dbaer78]

You won’t regret that purchase! I’d love to find an old Deere crawler to fix up. Looking forward to the progress.

 

[PHPaul]

Ooo-oooo, that smell! Can't ya smell that smell?

Varnished gas, 60 year old dried up grease, gloppy sludgy oil, mouse urine and PB Blaster. Eau de garage! :licking:

Got the belly pans off, drained the oil, removed the oil filter and drained the housing and removed the oil bath air cleaner.

Somehow, a mouse had gotten into the air cleaner and drowned in the oil cup. Hoooo-WEE that stunk! Pretty near tossed my cookies.

NAPA had the points, condenser and plugs on the shelf, oil filter will be here from the warehouse in the morning. Love me some NAPA. When I overhauled my 1938 Farmall F14, they had pistons, rings, bearings and an overhaul gasket kit overnight.

Try that with the kiddies at Advance Auto sometime...

 

[Code54]

Great project - please keep us posted and good luck!

 

[PHPaul]

A little progress on the teardown.

Pulled the blade off before pushing it into the garage. Lot of weight and opportunities to whack my shins.

Got the grille guard and nose cone off.

Got the belly pans off.

Drained the oil (ewwwwww...) and put a fresh filter in the canister.

Replaced the plugs, points and condenser on general principles and fixed the points adjuster screw as the slot was hogged out to the point you couldn't turn it with a screwdriver. It's brass, so soldered the slot shut and cut a new one at 90 degrees to the original. Remounted the coil that was hanging by it's wires and cleaned up the wiring for the distributor, coil and generator.

Got the carb, sediment bowl and fuel tank off. Sediment bowl was full of dried varnish, screen completely plugged, line to carb completely plugged. Carb wasn't as bad as I feared, but the throttle butterfly was stuck wide open, top-to-bowl gasket dry and crumbly and the rubber tip on the fuel inlet needle had fallen off. Got a carb kit on order (ouch...). Tank has quite a lot of dried varnish in the sump around the outlet, I'll plug that and let it soak in some gasahol for a while. One advantage to gasahol is that it makes a pretty good solvent.

Next job is to drop the tracks. Put the crawler up on jackstands with the tracks just barely clearing the floor and pulled them around so the master pin is in a convenient location. I need to build a jig so I can use a bottle jack to press them out. Plan to start on that tomorrow.

 

[PHPaul]

After a couple of days of trying different methods and modifying my pin pushing jig as I discovered shortcomings, I finally got the master pins out and the tracks off.

Details and more pix here.

 

[Kingsqueak]

This will be cool. When I see the crawlers around here they always catch my eye. Hope to have a shop space for projects like these at some point.

 

[PHPaul]

Since last report, things have gotten seriously expensive.

Front bearing on output shaft grenaded. Front of shaft flopping around broke the reverser housing. Rear of shaft flopping around took out the ring and pinion. Most of the oil puked out into the bellhousing, reverser and trans ran dry for who knows how long.

Parts to fix the transmission properly (rebuild reverser, replace output shaft and ring gear, bearings, seals, thrust washers and gaskets) is going to get North of $1000 easily.

I'll suck it up and do it, but it's going to have to be in stages as I find side jobs to fund it.

 

[pmsmechanic]

Since last report, things have gotten seriously expensive.

Front bearing on output shaft grenaded. Front of shaft flopping around broke the reverser housing. Rear of shaft flopping around took out the ring and pinion. Most of the oil puked out into the bellhousing, reverser and trans ran dry for who knows how long.

Parts to fix the transmission properly (rebuild reverser, replace output shaft and ring gear, bearings, seals, thrust washers and gaskets) is going to get North of $1000 easily.

I'll suck it up and do it, but it's going to have to be in stages as I find side jobs to fund it.

Could you find a used 420 transmission and just replace the ring gear carrier with the one out of your current transmission?

 

[PHPaul]

Could you find a used 420 transmission and just replace the ring gear carrier with the one out of your current transmission?

Those ARE used prices. Shipping a whole transmission would be prohibitively expensive, they're HEAVY.

 

[dullpain]

PHPaul - what will that beast weigh when completely assembled ? I applaud you for bringing that old iron back to life. You値l get great pleasure from it.