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John Deere B broken flywheel

J

Jonathan Owens

New User
I have a 1949 John Deere B. I have rebuild the engine and it has been running great for the last two years. T weeks ago I had the starter and carborator rebuilt to finish the project. It started and ran great. Last week I started it to plow snow and it had no power and would stall when a small load was put on the engine. I put it in the garage and when i started to look into the problem, i found that all the splines on the center of the flywheel were broke, there was gas pooring out of the pitcocks. I am in the process of finding a replacement flywheel, but and wondering what would cause this kind of damage to such a sturdy peice of cast iron? Any thoughts. thanks
 
Well you have 2 differnt problems, at least. The float in the carburetor had to stick open to allow enough fuel to run thru the carb to fill the cylinder enough for fuel to run out the petcock.
Problem number 2 is very unusual on a B. I have seen it but the only way it happened was a B was rebuilt and never tightened down the flywheel, just drew it on the crank by using the big hex nut. It didn't take long for the flywheel to flop back and forth on the crank for their to be little to no splines left on either the crank or the flywheel. Not saying this is the case with yours but the flywheel being extremely loose is the only way to lose the splines on a tractor with as little horse as a B. At least from what I have seen this is the only possibilty I can think of.
 
Thanks,

I had thought of the float, but have not had time yet to remove the bowl and look. i have been busy trying to find a replacemnt flywheel. When i removed the flywheel the bolts were very tight, but maybe they were not tight enough. I will see if there is a torque spec for when I install the new one. Is there any chance the extra fuel could have caused a backfire. I did not hear one and i was standing by the flywheel when I tryed starting it. Everything sounded fine until the splines broke.
 
Ray(P), make sure your flywheel isnt' cracked. Perpendicular to the bolts at the edge of the casting boss. If that's good, go to Deere and get 2 new bolts (the right ones) and torque to spec. Have done the "just put grade 8's in there and torque it down method", pretty sure that's how I cracked my flywheel.
 
Also check the sediment bowl valve. I couldn't figure out why mine wasn't running right and it seems that it pushed gas through the valve (by grit is my guess), flooded the carb, filled the cylinders. Also check your oil to make sure you don't have a bunch of gas mixed into it, which can happen when you flood a cylinder.
 
Thanks, The valve on the bulb does shut off the gas. I just changed the oil 4 weeks ago, but it will be cheaper to change it again than to rebuild the engine.
 
The end of the shaft looks good. There is no damage to spines. I still need to remove the bearing cover and make sure there are not any pieces of the casing in there. Is there something else I should look for? Thanks,
 
Somebody lacking a service manual and a torque wrench was tinkering with the flywheel.
They either under-torqued the bolts and suffered a loose flywheel. Then over torqued the bolts and split the flywheel. Or they just right up front over torqued the bolts and split the flywheel.
 
I removed the carberator bowl tonight and found that the float had gas in it. I will need to go back to those who rebuilt it for me and find out why they tried to solder the float instead of replacing it.
 
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