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Nominations Featured Tractor March 2015

3K views 20 replies 10 participants last post by  crittersf1 
#1 ·
Boy oh boy, We should have a ton of entry's this month. :dancingbanana: Can't wait to see everyone's Walk Behind tractors :thumbs:
 
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#8 ·
Always hard to compete with an heirloom tractor but I'll throw my hat in the ring. I'd like to thank GTTalk for setting aside a month and a feature for only walk behind tractors. I started out collecting only walk behinds and although I now have many ride-ons, I still have a great appreciation for the handle bars. Thanks for reading my entry and please vote your choice every month!

I'd like to nominate my David Bradley. I bought this tractor at auction well over a decade ago for a whopping $35. It was rainy and generally a miserable day to stand around at an auction. The seller was headed for the nursing home and the sale really was a lifetime collection. After many hours standing around doing my best to stay warm it was nice to get a bargain on the tractor.
The tractor was actually in very good condition - one of those "survivor tractors" you hear about now-a-days. This tractor had never sat outside as evidenced by the original paint and genuine Allstate knobbie tires that didn't have any weather cracking on them. Today, a tractor in as good of condition as this one was would not get restored but preserved. Unfortunately this one was restored before it was cool to leave survivors "as is". The tractor came with original David Bradley belts that looked decent but fell apart upon being used. Those belts also should have been preserved but I didn't know any better at the time. This tractor even has a perfect original offset muffler so the exhaust comes out the hole in the center of the grille as it should.
The only real drawback about the tractor when I bought it was the flywheel cover was missing from the Briggs engine, and the engine itself was stuck. When I got the tractor home I removed the spark plug and poured some diesel fuel down the hole. Letting the engine soak I gathered up a flywheel shroud from a parts-only engine. The flywheel nut had been rounded off very badly and evidence showed the guilty party had been trying to remove the nut by turning it the wrong way. These engines have left handed threads on the flywheel nut. I suppose the points needed cleaned many years before and when the previous owner couldn't remove the flywheel to get to the points, the machine was stuck in an old out building and forgotten. I used a dremel tool to square up the nut and it backed right out with a good six point impact socket on a ratchet. Another advantage in attempting to removing the flywheel nut was the engine came free just as soon as torque was applied to the nut. The engine had only been soaking for 25 minutes at this point! Upon removal of the flywheel the points and all connections were cleaned. With everything back together the coil, points, and condensor produced bright blue spark and upon reinstallation of the spark plug the old Briggs had very good compression. No valves were stuck and the gas tank was very clean so with fresh gas the tractor fired right up and ran beautifully.
This Bradley has a speed changer which works very well allowing some variation in speeds over the standard one speed tractor. Restoration was pretty straight forward. I sent the wheels, handlebars, engine mounting plate, and hood to the local sandblaster. All other parts were cleaned with a four and a half inch angle grinder with a wire wheel head. A Dremel Tool was used for the small, hard to get to places.
The genuine David Bradley air compressor came from the Adrian, MO tractor and engine swap meet. It wasn't nearly as nice as the tractor was and had been welded to a piece of old style tread plate and at one time with an electric motor to run it. The rings were stuck to the piston but came lose with the help of a friend that knew what he was doing and it pumps very well. I polished the brass fittings and added a new pressure gauge. The compressor has a pop-off valve so pressure doesn't get too high. I took that apart, cleand it really well, and with a little trial-and-error adjustment, it works like it should.
My brother found the genuine David Bradley sulky seat, dump rake, along with more than a full size pickup load of other DB stuff out behind an old abandoned small engine repair shop just outside Harrisonville, MO. Everything was sitting in several years worth of uncut vegitation and hard to see, but what a treasure hunt that was! If there were small parts I'm sure I missed them.
The seat and rake were completely dismantled and sent to the sandblaster. I painted everything up just as it was. The seat and rake had surface rust all over but just enough factory paint on each piece to know what colors to paint them.
All pieces have the original DB serial tags in place and were painted as close to original as I could.

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Well, I won't compete with my DB I restored 8 years ago or my all original survivor DB (the DB belt is not a myth because my survivor has one). So now back to my thinking board on how to compete... Lol.
 
#16 ·
Chuck great entry. You are right the Handiman site is down, and im not sure it will ever be back up. Is your model number 50209 or 30209? You could have also got the 33 Handy with a model K engine. This was called a heavy duty. The JR started in 35 and ran until 37 or 38. Other than the engine it was just a 33 tractor. Kind of clever how they recycled a unit into another one by just replacing the power. Its really hard to tell sometimes with this tractor as it was easy to make it a different model by simply changing out the engine. Sear did have a replaced engine program in the catalogs. I don't know what the recommend one was for the 33 tractor. Finding an M engine would be a lot harder than finding an A.
 
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