John Deere Crawler Restoration

(Page 2 of 2)

July/August 1989
Brad Hauck 
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When I got home I called Wendell Kelch, a good friend of ours, to see if he would haul it home for me. He said as soon as he got his trailer hooked up, he would pick me up and we would go. Sure enough, he was at my house in about fifteen minutes and we headed out. When we got there we had to move some stuff before we could winch the 'MC' up on the trailer. I did not know if the tracks were frozen or not, but the crawler rolled when we hooked it to the winch. After about an hour, we had everything loaded and boomed down. I went back and thanked Mr. Waits for selling the 'MC' to me and I would have to say he was one of the nicest men I have ever met. We then headed for home. When my dad came home from work he was surprised to see that we already had the 'MC' home.

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That fall we began working on the 'MC'. Once we started taking the crawler apart there was no place to stop. The motor was stuck bad and had to be bored forty-five thousandths which barely cleaned it up. We had the crank turned ten-ten since it was badly worn. The manifold came off in three pieces. I could go on and on, but before long all that remained intact was the transmission and rearend, which rested on three jack-stands. Luckily, Rick Stegbauer had some 'MC' pieces left over, after he finished his, that I badly needed. I still needed most of the sheet metal though. After searching in many junkyards, I was able to find all of the sheet metal I needed along with an optional belt pulley.

After two years of hard work the 'MC' was finally done. I showed it for the first time this year at the Ohio Valley Antique Machinery Show at Georgetown, Ohio. For any of those John Deere lovers out there I thought you might want to know the 'MC' won its class in the antique tractor pull. I would like to thank my dad for helping me whenever I needed it and to my mom for staying kind of calm considering what the yard looked like when I finished taking the pictures of my crawler!

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  • Dick Roscoe 7/19/2009 7:42:33 PM

    Good to see you have restored an MC.
    I purchased an MC in November 2007 in Oragon and am presently restoring it. You can read about it in the Two Cylinder (March-April 2008) which has been most helpful. I do not know if you subscribe to that magazine but it has to be one of the best.
    Good Luck
    Dick

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