1953 John Deere R restoration

Thought I'd post a few pics of the R that I had on the old site. These are from a couple years back when I first moved it to our house and began tear down. It is a rice model so it has the big rubber on the rear, single rib fronts, and the brake and axle mud guards. It has five of the transmission gears out but I may have them tracked down through a fella in Indiana. Looking forward to getting back into the nice warm shop tomorrow to continue the pony motor tear down.











The above pic is the inside of the hydraulic unit. This tractor had blank plugs instead of outlets. The inside of that unit was incredibly clean and I'm assuming the oil was the same from when it left the factory. Just as clear and clean as you could imagine.

Haven't made as good a progress lately on the R as I would like. Some of the parts are being stubborn in coming apart but that is part of the job. I did finally get an issue resolved with my sandblaster that was really putting me behind. I found one through my brother-in-law last year at a sale but it didn't have any hose or gun with it. The price was right so I had him buy it for me. I figured I could secure the missing items someplace. I did find them but found that the thread size on the gun was not compatible with the hose. I looked for days trying to find a fitting that would work (the gun was an odd metric size thread). I finally ended up ending the search and just buying a new gun that did not require any fittings but rather slid right on the hose. It is a nicer gun anyway and the handle is much less of a fatigue to use than the other would have been. It even had another benefit. The company I went through just happens to sell a whole slew of tools and things that will work great with my restoration work. So it was a good thing. On to the tractor. I have gotten many of the parts disassembled and cleaned. I have my electrical parts away at my local shop getting the go over. I got the new big pistons in last week for the big motor. The block is in need of boring so I found a place that sells oversize pistons for the R and decided to move up to them. Other than that it is just cleaning and tearing down. I am still tweaking the sandblasting and figure it will be a learning process. I'm new to it so you can see what I mean. I have heard a lot about not having enough air when doing it so I figure I'll have to upgrade my compressor. My blaster seems to spit sand in pulses when I use it and seems to use way more than it should. Like I said, it is a learning process. I'll take any tips though from those who know. I've always done this with a grinder and wire wheel so sandblasting is much nicer on me (fatiguewise) but seems to take a lot more time for less work done. We shall see. Here are the latest pics from the project. God bless.

--old fashioned farmer