a farmall

I have a friend who has an a farmall, he says that it a 1940 model. The tractor does not have a starter or battery,could someone tell me what yr farmall put starters on the a I belive it was in the thirtys, but I don/t know. thanks

The Farmall A was the first of the letter series tractors to be introduced. The first A rolled off the assembly line at the Chicago plant on June 21, 1939. To quote Guy Fay in his book, "Farmall Letter Series Tracors," "To accomodate an electric starter, flywheel ring gear attachments were added first to FAA-18282, guilt March 18, 1940."
Best, Tom

Some had starters and some did not. If you will look at it close I bet it doesn't even have a place on the bell housing to mount a starter. In order to add a starter you would need a bell housing/torque tube and a ring gear.

Jack, the A came out in 1939 and none of the 39's had starters that I know of. The 1940 early models also had no starters, but during the model year changed the bell housing casting or Torque tube to accomodate a starter. From then on, the 1940's could be purchased with or without a starter. Most starters were a dealer add on. It is hard in most cases to tell the difference from a 39 and a 40, but there were some such as placement of the serial number ID tag. The 39's had it mounted on the pedal guard, whereas the 40 relocated it on the left side seat bracket. Someone also told me that during the 40 year, the kill switch ceased to be mechanical and was the normal mag kill switch button. While starters became optional in 1940, lights were available in 39. There were two different light packages for 1939 and 1940. One was a delco system which the generator charged a battery and the lights ran off the battery, or there was a bosh system where the lights ran directly off the generator. Obviously the tractor had to be running for the lights to work on the bosh system as it required no battery. I know this was probably an overkill to your question, but for a Lot of 39 and 40 A owners some of these idiosyncracies are rather interesting. I happen to own a 1940 hand start Distilate A

I"m glad I found this discussion. I was looking for info on my A and the positive ground set-up.

I think I installed my battery backwards due to some overthinking. I have the "positive ground" attached to the negative terminal of my 6V battery and the positive terminal goes to the starter.

I"m having trouble starting my tractor unless I use the hand crank.

I believe my battery is low but could the way I have it connected (negative to ground) drain the battery somehow?

Sorry to hijack this post, it wasn"t my intention.