4020 Battery Box Mods

Does anyone have a link or photo of a 4020 that has replaced the two skinny batteries with a single battery?

Just looking for some tips on switching my 1968 4020 diesel over to a single battery.

I was thinking of building a custom battery box and bolt it just behind the starter. Might have it also double as a step.

Anyone have any tips?

Thanks

Are you still 24volt or have you converted to 12v? You can't run 1 24v battery with out damaging the rest of the wiring. You have to run 2 batteries to get your 12v neg and 12v pos circuits that run everything. If your 12v now I can take a picture of the box that dad and grandpa made decades ago for dad's 4020, was just angle iron and 1/4" plate welded and then bolted to the frame below the starter. Both long batteries sit side by side in the box and use short wires to the starter. The box was running longways (paralell to the frame) at first, but after the loader was installed we drilled new holes in one end of the box and now its perpendicular to the frame still below the starter. It is very convenient to work with his batteries compared to mine with the 2 factory box under the platform. I can try to get a pic of dad's set up later today or tomorrow if you want it, its not pretty but it works great. Oh and on top they put a "lid" that was a plate with angle iron that is a toolbox holder. The lid had 2 slits (one on eache end) that slide over a bolt to keep it from sliding around and the toolboxes have never fallen off (to heavy) no matter how rough the field or steep the hill was and the tractor has nearly been rolled more than once due to some of the hay fields we used to have.

Why would you want to swap from 2 batteries to 1?
It would take one heck of a battery to start that diesel by itself.
Back in the day we were too poor to afford the long batteries so dad cut a square hole in both battery boxes and made a sheet metal box and riveted it over the hole so that a standard square automotive battery would fit in the factory battery box. Of course you still have two batteries so that you can get 24v to the starter and 12v to the lights and radio and stuff but it is a lot cheaper to replace the batteries. It has worked well like this for decades. He did it to both the 4010 and the 4020.

I was at an auction last week that had a 1970 model 4020 with two of those oval dry cell batteries in the left box.It started right up.

It is already converted to 12 volts so I'm thinking
this should be an easy swap.

It does have a loader on it so that will most likely
effect the how and where the custom box gets
mounted.

Any and all pictures are welcome.

Thanks

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For my gas 4020, I made a wider and taller step and sat the side terminal battery close to the starter. Picture at www dot geraldj dot networkiowa dot com slash images slash leftside dot jpg.

Gerald J.

Ok here are some pics of dad's battery box. I took them from my phone before I went to disk this morning.







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The box is more than strong enough to stand on when working on tractor. I had some trouble uploading a few of the pictures to photobucket (vzw internet card on a Us cellular tower, they periodically bandwith cap me at 1.2kbps upload and download, when I go to town where its vzw tower it flies all the time) I will try to get the last few uploaded later. Its nothing pretty as it stands now, its just functional and has lasted about 40 years. Hope teh pictures help.