Making non-operational tractor operational

I was simply looking for a tractor for our Little farm to do property maintenance. Something that could pull a back blade and run a bush hog. I am a full time auto mechanic and work on high tech vehicles all the time. I have always enjoyed old tractors and find them fun to work on and run them.

I found this 1972 Ford 3000 on an online auction. It was owned by a government wildlife department and was only showing 390 hrs on it. It was non operational which is what I like to buy. From pictures I could see it had rodent damage to the wire harness. It also came with a brush hog which I was needing as well. 

Well needless to say I won the auction and a few days later my family and I drove the few hours to where it was and winched it onto a trailer and brought it home. That is when the fun began, looking over the tractor to see what it was going to take to get it running. The motor was free, the gas tank was full of varnish, carburetor was gummed up, wiring harness was chewed apart, spark plug wires were chewed off. 

So I started getting a parts list together and to my delight discovered Steiner Tractor Parts had every thing I needed for this old Ford. I repaired the wiring harness, cleaned the fuel tank, rebuilt the carburetor, replaced the spark plug wires and changed the oil. The first time we tried to start it with the freshly rebuilt carburetor it cranked until the fuel system was primed up and then fired up and ran great, like it had never missed a beat. I have put a few hours on it running the brush hog and grading our 1/4 mile driveway, and find it a real pleasure to run. 

As I was fixing it up I was curious whether the hour meter was correct or not. So when I drained the engine oil it was very clean, the distributor cap had very little wear on it and the hour meter worked once I got the tractor running. So I don’t know for sure but it does seem like I found a very low hour older tractor that could be a candidate for a full restoration. I don’t know if I will ever do a full restoration on it or not, because for now It has some work to do for me on the farm .

Clement Leinbach
Missouri

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