Wartime WC's

I have all the parts to build a similiar tractor with all the aftermarket options. War time steel rear end, wide front, Sudenga x-tra clutch (live pto), Knoedler seat, and foot brake kit. My steel rear is a 1946 and the discussion here before has not come up with a serial number range.

  USE TO HAVE S/N # OF SOME 47'S  #'S WERE LESS THAN 500 APART  DO NOT THINK WE CAN FIND ANYMORE

During WWII we got an interesting assortment of things on the units we received.  Yes, the steel rear on the WC but then there were things like a cast iron valve cover, cast iron oil pan, steel rear with rubber front, rubber all around, steel all around, etc.  We never argued with what we got we were that glad to get it. 

After WWII many of the steel wheeled units were converted to rubber when it became available.

Good Luck!

Bill Long

I just realized I have a late steel rearend WC.  I acquired it last fall, but never really checked it out.  Turns out it's #153387.  Guess it's worth the $400 I got in it. 

I wonder if maybe availability of castings varied month to month or even more often? E.g. they had castings when they could accumulate enough iron (scrap or new) and coal to make them. So they shipped castings when they had them and when they didn't, they pressed steel they did have into housings. So that production was mixed without distinct serial number or model year breaks? I'm presuming the gears, bearings, and shafts were the same whether cast or steel housing. And so the machining was the same, just sometimes stamped and welded raw materials and sometimes cast raw materials.

Then WW2 and its shortages ended more than 62 years ago and some of the remaining tractors surely have been reassembled from random parts using several tractor bits to make one and so the engines, transmissions, rear axles, and drop boxes have assorted ancestries these days. Since parts did interchange, it didn't make a lot of sense to identify each of those assemblies with matching serial numbers, besides engines were used on more than tractors so matching serial numbers didn't work out.

Gerald J.

It helps a great deal if there are plant records that are available and if those records show those details. Production records for a closed plant are unlikely archival items. And even though the production record books are available for JD in the 60s, the first several years of the Power Shift transmission, the production records don't show which transmission was on which tractor.

I still think there was a good chance short runs of cast rear axles were mixed in with stamped steel axle production as the plant built up scraps from fabrication so that they could fire up the foundry and cast a few. Wouldn't the cast axles weigh more and so make a better performing tractor?

Gerald J.