Farmall h

Hey guys I am super excited that I was able
to aquire a 1940s farmall h. I don't have
many more specifics on it yet but, it will
be a fun project. Ultimately I want to pull
it and I want to be able to work it at home
if I need to. Got it from a friend of mine
for 1000 bucks but it runs doesn't smoke,
hasn't been converted to 12v yet. New front
and rear tires but as it has sat in a shed
for years it does have some things that
need done. If you have advise and or
pointers for my road to come please feel
free to respond.

A true puller and a workable farm tractor are two different animals.A stock H really isn't a very good pulling tractor,but they are a lot of fun,even tho you won't win any prises.Give it a thorough tumeup is the best thing.Play with it ,weighted or not.Checl with your local pulling club.Find out the requirements.Drawbar height length,heigth,hook up..talk to members,get their input.Above all,have fun!And in a year or two will buy another tractor(an M) because you just cant have omly one. Happy tractoring.

I know nothing about pulling, but a H sure makes a nice tractor ride tractor. they will zip right along if you need to or amble down the highway while you enjoy the sights at 10-12 14 mph. gobble

I would love to have a super MTA or a 450 diesel but, my current budget wouldn't let me swing for one right now. I will get more in the future but I guess you have to start somewhere. Eventually I might build the motor if I stick with the H on the other hand I know they don't normally do well. It will be a fun project to say the least. At least it will teach me what and what not to do for the next one.

An H will run 15/17mph wide open.

Really wish I had it before Halloween for a hay ride for my nieces and nephews. That sounds like a good idea

Good luck with your H. I hope it is fun. We bought my son an H for his 12th birthday, and he enjoys maintaining and using his own tractor. Here is a picture I took when he was raking hay over the weekend.

I just posted some pictures of it in a reply to deltared on this forum.

An H can be competitive in a stone boat pull. In some areas they call it dead weight pulling.

By chance do you know of any pulling clubs near Fredericksburg, VA?

You asked so here is a 78 year old man's advise. Forget any thought of pulling it they are one of the worst tractors to ever pull in the ring. Keeping it around to do some thing like pull a wagon or trailer is about the best use. Implements that came with or fit that thing are hard to mount.

From the pictures your H is a 39 to 42. Serial number is on tag below air filter. Engine number is below number 1 spark plug.

Here are my three H's, I do not pull them they each have their specific jobs around my place. Left to right 44, 40 and 43.

I've clocked one of mine at 22.

Looking at the pictures, I'd say your H is probably a late '41, '42 or '43. I have 2 '44's, one of which my dad got new in the spring of '45. He wasn't in the service and obtained a war time tractor that he'd applied for when I was born in 1943. (They were called war time tractors because they have cast steel knobs on the shift levers. Tractors before & after WW II used rubber shifting knobs.) One of the reasons he was allowed to buy it it was because he & my grandpa were farming together but did not have a tractor. They were using horses to farm a half section. Reason I think it might be in the years I indicated is because of the PTO. Later models used a different PTO assembly that had a larger diameter shaft. I believe the change came sometime in 1943. Your tractor originally had steel wheels, probably due to rubber shortages caused by WW II. When rubber tires became available after the war most steel rims (lug rims) were cut off & either 36 or 38 inch rims for rubber were welded to to the wheel centers. It has an original seat & the starter button is behind the steering post. It also has a distillate manifold that looks to be in surprisingly good condition. I'll bet it either has the small starting tank or at least a hole in the hood for the starting tank. I didn't see either in the pictures, but I may not have looked at them close enough. Tractors of that era usually had motor and chassis serial #'s that matched. Have fun with your H. They are great tractors. When I was in HS in the late 1950's & early 1960's Dad farmed 800 acres with four H's. His help was me & a cousin my age that lived with us. I spent many hours on the seat of an H watching a 2-16 Case plow do its job behind the H in both the spring and fall. They are great tractors & did a lot of field work in their day. You could put in a long day on a tank of fuel.

I agree on the nice tractor riding tractor. I'm a John Deere man, but got an H for tractor riding. With the M&W 9 speed in the transmission, and the Schwartz wide front, it is the cats meow for rides.

Yours is an early one on 'cutoff' rear wheels.Most likely a wartime tractor.It has a distillate manifold that is cracked and sloppily repaired.Replace it.The tractor will never run right.It has a magneto,but that's ok. The front wheels are wrong,but they won't affect funtion.the wheels may allow you to rum in a lighter weight class.That would be good for an underpowered H.I didn't see a drawbar/hitch eother.Enjoy it,turn it into a great (and fun) learning experience.

I see the starting tank after I looked more closely than before. The engines that were designed to burn tractor fuel or distillate needed to be hot before the distillate would ignite by a spark plug. The process in the days when distillate was used was to start them on gasoline, close the shutters until the engine temperature reached 170 or so degrees. Turned off the gasoline in the small tank & turn on the distillate valve under the large tank. Use the shutters to regulate the engines temperature. At the end of the work day, before you shut off the engine, you turned off the fuel from the large tank, opened the shutters, turned on the gas in the small tank. After the engine cooled off, turn off the engine. Before you started the tractor in the morning, drain the lighter oil off the top of the crankcase by opening the lower of the two petcocks on the oil pan. After it quits draining, close the bottom petcock & open the upper petcock. Pour fresh oil into the oil fill area on the motor unit oil drips from the upper petcock. You are then ready to start the distillate engine. A unknown amount of distillate hydrocarbons would leak past the rings and accumulate in the crankcase. They would float on the engine oil after they cooled and needed to be drained off after they condensed. Otherwise they would dilute the motor oil. BTW, that is why the two petcocks are seen in virtually all IHC oil pans of the era when tractors commonly were equipped with engines designed to use tractor fuel or distillate.

Most tractors you see at tractor pulls are severely altered. Set up to pull the sled in every possible way imaginable.
I'm not saying you need to do that to yours, but thats what you'll be competing against. Unless you find some sort of original stock farm class to pull in.

Eventually I will get there my grandfather pulls a 400 and a super mta and depending on the day a super MD. I really just want o have fun with a project before I get into straight up doing a pull build. Correct me if I am wrong I can go up to 3 and 3/8ths pistons without the sleeves being to thin? And do you know if anyone has gone as far as doing a stroker motor on an h?

Thank you so much! I appreciate any and all info I can get.