I looked up the file and it was uploaded to a tractor forum site on June 27, 2012. It's not ran since that day 8 years 1 month and 27 days ago. The chance of it starting today was pretty slim, all things considered. This tractor is affectionately referred to as "Uncle Woody" in honor of the old timer that owned it from new until it came to live here. What follows is some of what I wrote on that forum back then:
Uncle Woody was an uncle of one very good friend of mine. Uncle Woody bought this styled 'A' new from the dealer in '41 or so. Mostly it sat but he plowed his 2 acre garden plot and occasionally plowed others gardens and sometimes helped work a brothers farm with it.
Along with it came a front mount cut off saw, and a set of two bottom JD plows. The tractor was delivered with spades but they were carted off to the junk yard by a local drunk one day while Uncle Woody was at work. These are the original rubbers he put on back in the '40's. He told me he was quite angry with the fellow, but there was nothing to be done, because the booze the fellow bought was already consumed, so that was that.
Uncle Woody was pretty far up into his 80's when I got the call from my buddy that they wanted me to have this old boy. Seems that Uncle Woody had been having these blackout spells and would sometimes wake up laying in the yard or the garden and didn't really share that information with anyone, until one day he was plowing his garden and woke up as the plows hung into the asphalt of the street in front of his house and he had been almost thrown off. He'd plowed out the end of his garden, across the yard at an angle, past his house and was heading across the street when he came to.
It was truly a sad day for him to have to admit that if he kept the old 'A' around he would most certainly hurt himself or worse hurt someone else as he couldn't possibly walk past it too often without climbing on to putt around the neighborhood. We spent what seemed like hours going over every detail from the magneto to the radiator to the carb and even tire pressures. He kept oil soaked rags wrapped around the splined rear axles to keep them from rusting. He'd custom bent a little shield to shed rain water from the magneto and showed me how he had wrapped it delicately with the same wire for decades.
He apologized several times for the numerous coats of brushed on household exterior paint he'd applied heavily over the many years, one time even being red. Looking closely, there is still spots where the red sticks out under some heavy coats of brushed on enamel where the latest two or three shades of green have been chipped off. I remember watching his work worn hands slide over the hood, over the flywheel and over numerous parts as if to be giving a trusted old friend his final pat on the back and thanking him for a life well spent.
I listened as closely as possible to every detail of starting and I was literally amazed at the ease Uncle Woody had with spinning the flywheel. Open petcocks, and squirt in a little gas with the oil can that had done that duty for more than 50 years. Now in his day, Uncle Woody was a strapping farm hand but now time and age had him worn down a bit, but his grip was strong as mine. He didn't force the flywheel, grunt or strain...gently rolled it to the top and gave it a nudge and first rotation the left cylinder belched a bit of fire then the right, and he was a running. Slight grin on his face, he gently closed the petcock on this side and slowly made his way to the other side and closed that one also.
Looking intently into my eyes, he asked if it was allright for him to run it up on the trailer for me....So he ran it up the ramps with the ease and finesse you would expect from a team that had worked together for many years. We bound him down and that was the last time Uncle Woody ever drove the 'A' or for that matter ever heard it run. I remember the first night we had a freeze warning that fall. The phone rang, I answered and guess who...Uncle Woody wanting to make sure I didn't forget to drain the cooling system. After a pretty good conversation, he thanked me for taking such good care of his first and only tractor and said goodnight.
This is about half of the story, the rest wouldn't fit here. The site I am a member of is Antique Tractors Forum and my username over there is Missouri Massey Man. Go figure huh. LOL. This is the link if you are so inclined to read a bit more of the story, because the above paragraphs though copied, are not congruent: www.antiquetractorsforum.com/... It was posted June 27 2012 after the tractor sat for 12 years.
I have a good number of tractor buddies over there though I have been absent for a few years, and I've never told them I did the KZfaq thing as Tractorman44.....ain't that funny. LOL Thank you for watching and taking the time to read the description.