Looks great! More motivation to do mine.
My 70 Resto Project
10
There’s been some good restoration project posts lately, so I thought I would add one for my 70 as well. Probably like the projects of many others out there, this one started as just wanting to fix something small, and snowballed from there. I’m posting this as I am almost done, but since I have gotten a lot of enjoyment, and some good tips from the other projects on here, I thought I would share mine.
Despite discouragement from my wife, I just couldn’t resist when a 70 came up for sale locally last Fall for cheap. After all, it was Joe Loch’s 70 that first caught my eye and got me into this mess, I mean hobby. Initially the plan was to either A. fix a few things and flip it, or B. turn it into tractor show ride-around / tribute to my grandpa’s 4010 puller. As you will see, plan B is obviously the one that won out. Although my efforts did go way beyond my original plans, I intentionally stopped short of a full-blown nut and bolt restoration. The tractor ran pretty well as it was, and I just wanted to make it look a little nicer.
![]()
![]()
![]()
I got it home and found it ran and mowed reasonably well. The most pressing issue was a front tire that would leak down to flat after a few days. So, first order of business was getting some new front tires. Following the lead of others on there, I went with some 3.50-6 Deestone tri-ribs. Since I bought the tires online, the local tire shop understandably wanted to charge for the dismounting/mounting of the tires. For just a little more than what they wanted, I was able to get a small tire mounting tool from Harbor Freight. My first attempt at dismounting the tires did not go well. Having done a few since, I now know that was the fault of the tires and not the tool. The one original front tire was especially stubborn in getting the bead to break free, and eventually required some persuasion from a sawzall. Once those were off, mounting the new tires and tubes was a piece of cake.
![]()
The next order of business was fixing the hood. In addition to the typical cracks in the corners, this one had apparently crashed into something, cracking the hood in the middle and leaving a small dent in the grill. I did the fiberglass repair and filled in the cracks with some body filler. My 5 year old saw me mixing up a batch of body filler, and was curious what I was up to. I told him it was like playdough for daddies. He thought that was cool, and helped me fill in the last few little pinholes. Through a stroke of luck, I got some perfect weather conditions for painting outside and painted the hood and grill with some John Deere spray paint. The only problem was it looked too good, and made the rest of the tractor look worse in comparison.
![]()
![]()
The 70 project sat dormant for most of the winter as I was busy with the holidays and deliberating on what my next steps would be. I could put it all back together and revert to my original “plan A”, or go ahead and repaint the rest. If I put that much work into it though, I had no intentions of selling it right away. As winter started waning, I ultimately decided to pull the trigger on further disassembly and repainting.
![]()
I’ll skip the details on disassembly as there is little unique to share about that part of the process. I went down to the frame, but stopped short of removing the rear transaxle and drive pulleys. These parts had quite a bit of their original paint on them, and since they aren’t easily visible, I did not see any reason to go that far.
I cleaned all the parts with degreaser and a pressure washer, and then prepped them for paint. On parts that were still in pretty good condition, I just cleaned them and roughed up the paint a little. On areas that needed a little more TLC, I went down to bare metal with a wire wheel and/or sanding. Another shortcut I allowed myself was that for the decals that were in good shape, like around the shift lever, I prepped around them and then masked them for painting. Sure, it takes away from the quality of the restoration, but it satisfied my intentions, and saved me quite a bit of money on replacing decals that were in pretty good condition to begin with.
![]()
Probably my biggest success in this project was the painting. How well it holds up remains to be seen, but as far as initial results go, I am very pleased. I do not have a “real” paint system, and have always managed to get by with just using rattle cans. After making a mess of my garage on a painting project a few years ago, I had resigned myself to painting outside. Of course this requires wind, weather, and bugs to all cooperate to get suitable conditions for painting. I got lucky on the hood and grill for those conditions to align, but didn’t want to wait for lightning to strike twice to do the rest of the tractor. After a little research into the subject, I decided to build a temporary paint booth in my garage. I could go into more detail on how I did it, but to say the least, I was very happy with the results. It does take a little time to get it set up and torn down, but it is worth it.
![]()
![]()
That's enough for now. I’ll post more updates as I get them written and photos uploaded.
Despite discouragement from my wife, I just couldn’t resist when a 70 came up for sale locally last Fall for cheap. After all, it was Joe Loch’s 70 that first caught my eye and got me into this mess, I mean hobby. Initially the plan was to either A. fix a few things and flip it, or B. turn it into tractor show ride-around / tribute to my grandpa’s 4010 puller. As you will see, plan B is obviously the one that won out. Although my efforts did go way beyond my original plans, I intentionally stopped short of a full-blown nut and bolt restoration. The tractor ran pretty well as it was, and I just wanted to make it look a little nicer.
I got it home and found it ran and mowed reasonably well. The most pressing issue was a front tire that would leak down to flat after a few days. So, first order of business was getting some new front tires. Following the lead of others on there, I went with some 3.50-6 Deestone tri-ribs. Since I bought the tires online, the local tire shop understandably wanted to charge for the dismounting/mounting of the tires. For just a little more than what they wanted, I was able to get a small tire mounting tool from Harbor Freight. My first attempt at dismounting the tires did not go well. Having done a few since, I now know that was the fault of the tires and not the tool. The one original front tire was especially stubborn in getting the bead to break free, and eventually required some persuasion from a sawzall. Once those were off, mounting the new tires and tubes was a piece of cake.
The next order of business was fixing the hood. In addition to the typical cracks in the corners, this one had apparently crashed into something, cracking the hood in the middle and leaving a small dent in the grill. I did the fiberglass repair and filled in the cracks with some body filler. My 5 year old saw me mixing up a batch of body filler, and was curious what I was up to. I told him it was like playdough for daddies. He thought that was cool, and helped me fill in the last few little pinholes. Through a stroke of luck, I got some perfect weather conditions for painting outside and painted the hood and grill with some John Deere spray paint. The only problem was it looked too good, and made the rest of the tractor look worse in comparison.
The 70 project sat dormant for most of the winter as I was busy with the holidays and deliberating on what my next steps would be. I could put it all back together and revert to my original “plan A”, or go ahead and repaint the rest. If I put that much work into it though, I had no intentions of selling it right away. As winter started waning, I ultimately decided to pull the trigger on further disassembly and repainting.
I’ll skip the details on disassembly as there is little unique to share about that part of the process. I went down to the frame, but stopped short of removing the rear transaxle and drive pulleys. These parts had quite a bit of their original paint on them, and since they aren’t easily visible, I did not see any reason to go that far.
I cleaned all the parts with degreaser and a pressure washer, and then prepped them for paint. On parts that were still in pretty good condition, I just cleaned them and roughed up the paint a little. On areas that needed a little more TLC, I went down to bare metal with a wire wheel and/or sanding. Another shortcut I allowed myself was that for the decals that were in good shape, like around the shift lever, I prepped around them and then masked them for painting. Sure, it takes away from the quality of the restoration, but it satisfied my intentions, and saved me quite a bit of money on replacing decals that were in pretty good condition to begin with.
Probably my biggest success in this project was the painting. How well it holds up remains to be seen, but as far as initial results go, I am very pleased. I do not have a “real” paint system, and have always managed to get by with just using rattle cans. After making a mess of my garage on a painting project a few years ago, I had resigned myself to painting outside. Of course this requires wind, weather, and bugs to all cooperate to get suitable conditions for painting. I got lucky on the hood and grill for those conditions to align, but didn’t want to wait for lightning to strike twice to do the rest of the tractor. After a little research into the subject, I decided to build a temporary paint booth in my garage. I could go into more detail on how I did it, but to say the least, I was very happy with the results. It does take a little time to get it set up and torn down, but it is worth it.
That's enough for now. I’ll post more updates as I get them written and photos uploaded.
1 - 20 of 28 Posts
Thanks for the comments guys. It's good motivation to keep working. They boys do like to "help" me out in the garage.
As for the sand box, it's like that but with "river pebble" and not sand. The boys like to dig in the dirt, but obviously can't do that during the winter so I made them the box for the garage. It also gets them out there where I can keep an eye on them while I work on stuff. I didn't want sand or dirt in there, and we tried pea gravel last year and ended up with gravel everywhere. The bigger rocks don't tend to scatter as bad, although I'd guess 10% or more are now on the floor.
Space is becoming an issue though. I built it last fall when we put the big outside toys away. Now we are getting those back out, but they don't want to give up the table. They are just as good, if not better, at filling up the garage than Dad is.
![]()
(Message edited by treed on September 01, 2014)
As for the sand box, it's like that but with "river pebble" and not sand. The boys like to dig in the dirt, but obviously can't do that during the winter so I made them the box for the garage. It also gets them out there where I can keep an eye on them while I work on stuff. I didn't want sand or dirt in there, and we tried pea gravel last year and ended up with gravel everywhere. The bigger rocks don't tend to scatter as bad, although I'd guess 10% or more are now on the floor.
Space is becoming an issue though. I built it last fall when we put the big outside toys away. Now we are getting those back out, but they don't want to give up the table. They are just as good, if not better, at filling up the garage than Dad is.
(Message edited by treed on September 01, 2014)
4
My carb is still giving me troubles, so I haven’t been able to finish things up yet. In the meantime, I’ll post a few more pics of some of the steps I went through.
The seat on the 70 was in decent condition, but had a couple tears and a dime-sized hole. The pan was rusty, but solid. A previous owner, I suspect the guy that sold it to me, hastily repainted the seat pan black, leaving an uneven finish and some overspray on the seat cover.
My expectations for the results were low, but I bought a vinyl repair kit and figured it was worth a try before thinking about buying a new seat. When I separated the cushion from the pan, the bottom of the foam didn’t look so good, but fortunately that’s not a part that needs to look pretty. The cover was bonded to the foam, but I was able to pull it apart enough to uncover the back side of the hole and tears. By following the directions on the repair kit, I was able to get decent results. It’s still pretty obvious where the holes were, but hopefully the repairs will hold up well enough to keep them from coming back or getting worse.
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
The seat on the 70 was in decent condition, but had a couple tears and a dime-sized hole. The pan was rusty, but solid. A previous owner, I suspect the guy that sold it to me, hastily repainted the seat pan black, leaving an uneven finish and some overspray on the seat cover.
My expectations for the results were low, but I bought a vinyl repair kit and figured it was worth a try before thinking about buying a new seat. When I separated the cushion from the pan, the bottom of the foam didn’t look so good, but fortunately that’s not a part that needs to look pretty. The cover was bonded to the foam, but I was able to pull it apart enough to uncover the back side of the hole and tears. By following the directions on the repair kit, I was able to get decent results. It’s still pretty obvious where the holes were, but hopefully the repairs will hold up well enough to keep them from coming back or getting worse.
4
Initially the only thing I was going to do to the engine is rebuild the carb, but while I had it out I decided to do some cosmetic work on it too. It had been repainted in chassis at some point, so looked OK, but not as nice as the rest of the tractor now does. The easy part was taking the carb and intake parts off. I also decided to replace the rusty muffler while I was at it. Soaking with liquid wrench did little to loosen it, so I had to cut it out. I cut it off, leaving about ¼” sticking out of the engine. I then used a sawzall to carefully cut a ¼” wide strip out of the piece still in the head. After removing that piece, I was able to put a clamp on the part sticking out and collapse down the pipe to remove it.
![]()
![]()
The carburetor on this tractor was (is) the source of considerable frustration. From the number of posts on this subject, it would appear I am not alone. When I got the tractor it ran OK, but throttle modulation was poor. High idle was fine, but I didn’t get much in between and low idle was a little rough. I played with the settings some, but it didn’t make much improvement. I figured if that was as good as it got, that would be OK, but I wanted to try to improve it. I got a carb rebuild kit from Deere (part# AM30962) and some very good instructions here (http://toprake.com/index.php?module=documents&JAS_DocumentManager_op=viewDocument&JAS_Document_id=2).
![]()
The rebuild seemed fairly straightforward. I got a little confused when hooking everything back up (you can never have too many pictures) but eventually got the linkages figured out. The moment of truth came and… very disappointing. It actually ran worse than before I did the rebuild. I went through the adjustment procedures several times to no avail. I found if I set the choke about ½ way, and then manually controlled the governor, it ran fine. As soon as I lowered the throttle to take the choke off, it would die. In the course of doing all of this, I noticed gas weeping around the throttle shaft. In fact, there was quite a bit of wear on the throttle shaft. I found several places where it mentioned that a worn shaft could cause problems similar to what I was seeing.
I got a replacement shaft (Tecumseh P/N 31834) and installed it. The engine ran much better (no longer had to choke it) and I was able to get it tuned. The couple of times I’ve run it since, it seems to run a little different each time. I never did hear the “rattle” I’ve seen mentioned that these carbs should have, so it could be that this is as good as this carb is going to get. I’m still not totally satisfied, but thought it was good enough to move forward with putting the rest of it back together.
![]()
The carburetor on this tractor was (is) the source of considerable frustration. From the number of posts on this subject, it would appear I am not alone. When I got the tractor it ran OK, but throttle modulation was poor. High idle was fine, but I didn’t get much in between and low idle was a little rough. I played with the settings some, but it didn’t make much improvement. I figured if that was as good as it got, that would be OK, but I wanted to try to improve it. I got a carb rebuild kit from Deere (part# AM30962) and some very good instructions here (http://toprake.com/index.php?module=documents&JAS_DocumentManager_op=viewDocument&JAS_Document_id=2).
The rebuild seemed fairly straightforward. I got a little confused when hooking everything back up (you can never have too many pictures) but eventually got the linkages figured out. The moment of truth came and… very disappointing. It actually ran worse than before I did the rebuild. I went through the adjustment procedures several times to no avail. I found if I set the choke about ½ way, and then manually controlled the governor, it ran fine. As soon as I lowered the throttle to take the choke off, it would die. In the course of doing all of this, I noticed gas weeping around the throttle shaft. In fact, there was quite a bit of wear on the throttle shaft. I found several places where it mentioned that a worn shaft could cause problems similar to what I was seeing.
I got a replacement shaft (Tecumseh P/N 31834) and installed it. The engine ran much better (no longer had to choke it) and I was able to get it tuned. The couple of times I’ve run it since, it seems to run a little different each time. I never did hear the “rattle” I’ve seen mentioned that these carbs should have, so it could be that this is as good as this carb is going to get. I’m still not totally satisfied, but thought it was good enough to move forward with putting the rest of it back together.
5
After being stuck at the carb tuning stage for a couple weeks, I was overjoyed to be able to move on with reassembly. The main things that were left were the hood and the rear tires. On the 110, I found the best way to take the hood on/off, without over-spreading the sides and risk cracking, it was to remove the grill and loosen the bolts on the hood supports, allowing them to tilt inward. Of course you can’t do that on the one-piece grill of the 70.
There is probably an easier way that I just didn’t think of, but I did it by putting the hood in place and then installing the hinge bolts. To tighten the nut that holds the bolt in place, I had to make my own “skinny” wrench to fit between the hood and the grill. I also learned a couple tips the hard way. First, putting some masking tape on the corners of the grill helped keep the hood from scratching it up as I was working it into place. Second, don’t forget that the top RH fuel tank support bolt should be a regular bolt, not a carriage bolt. I initially didn’t notice that the hood tilt stop uses that bolt to limit its travel, and assumed a previous owner had just replaced one of the carriage bolts with another both he had handy. Another thing that I fortunately realized and didn’t have to learn the hard way was to put my new hood decals on before I put the bolts in.
![]()
![]()
The finishing touch on this tractor was the rear tires. I wrestled with indulging on bar tires for the rear, as they cost about as much as I paid for the tractor to begin with, and put me beyond the range of what I figured I could ever recoup if I ever sold the tractor. I tried to resist, but ultimately gave in. Once I made that decision, it was a downhill slide to upgrade from the original 18x9.50-8 to a set of 20x10.00-8 Hi-Run’s. The tire width tested the limits of my tire mounting tool, but fit on the rim just fine. I think they are just the finishing touch the tractor needed.
![]()
![]()
![]()
I haven’t run the tractor alot yet, but what I have I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I think it captures the essence of my grandpa’s old 4010 pulling tractor pretty well, especially with the bigger rear tires. The jury is still out on the carburetor, but so far it seems to run OK more often than not. I added a switch and 12V hook-up at the rear to run my sprayer. I’m still waiting for the right combination of weather and wind to give it a try. I plan on taking it to a small tractor show next weekend so I’ll post a follow up how it turns out.
There is probably an easier way that I just didn’t think of, but I did it by putting the hood in place and then installing the hinge bolts. To tighten the nut that holds the bolt in place, I had to make my own “skinny” wrench to fit between the hood and the grill. I also learned a couple tips the hard way. First, putting some masking tape on the corners of the grill helped keep the hood from scratching it up as I was working it into place. Second, don’t forget that the top RH fuel tank support bolt should be a regular bolt, not a carriage bolt. I initially didn’t notice that the hood tilt stop uses that bolt to limit its travel, and assumed a previous owner had just replaced one of the carriage bolts with another both he had handy. Another thing that I fortunately realized and didn’t have to learn the hard way was to put my new hood decals on before I put the bolts in.
The finishing touch on this tractor was the rear tires. I wrestled with indulging on bar tires for the rear, as they cost about as much as I paid for the tractor to begin with, and put me beyond the range of what I figured I could ever recoup if I ever sold the tractor. I tried to resist, but ultimately gave in. Once I made that decision, it was a downhill slide to upgrade from the original 18x9.50-8 to a set of 20x10.00-8 Hi-Run’s. The tire width tested the limits of my tire mounting tool, but fit on the rim just fine. I think they are just the finishing touch the tractor needed.
I haven’t run the tractor alot yet, but what I have I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I think it captures the essence of my grandpa’s old 4010 pulling tractor pretty well, especially with the bigger rear tires. The jury is still out on the carburetor, but so far it seems to run OK more often than not. I added a switch and 12V hook-up at the rear to run my sprayer. I’m still waiting for the right combination of weather and wind to give it a try. I plan on taking it to a small tractor show next weekend so I’ll post a follow up how it turns out.
Dave,
That 70 turned out just Fantastic, Great job
![]()
I would love to have two of those for my twin boys, those are cool little tractors !!
Oh, and I love the tires !!
That 70 turned out just Fantastic, Great job
I would love to have two of those for my twin boys, those are cool little tractors !!
Oh, and I love the tires !!
Dave,
That 70 turned out just Fantastic, Great job
![]()
I would love to have two of those for my twin boys, those are cool little tractors !!
Oh, and I love the tires !!
That 70 turned out just Fantastic, Great job
I would love to have two of those for my twin boys, those are cool little tractors !!
Oh, and I love the tires !!
Ron, I have this one stashed away in storage for when my son grows up:
![]()
1 - 20 of 28 Posts
