WD-45 Dilemma

This thread is a little long sorry but the story is kind of important mostly to me! I have been lurking on the forum for quite a while and have gotten great information about the AC tractors that have been a part of my life for the past 50ish years. 

I have a WD-45 dilemma, I picked up the pictured tractor for parts which as you can see it is pretty rough.  It has a snap coupler and my 1957 Wide Front WD-45 does not have the snap coupler so I thought that I would bring the 57 back to what I wanted with this tractor.   It turned out the tractor was less than 8 miles from my house here in Texas and the seller trying to sell the tractor for several months.  He needed the tractor off his trailer, the problem was that the left rear wheel was locked up and it was a real pain to load the tractor.  We cut a deal and he was going to deliver the tractor and take all the scrap metal to recycling after I got the parts off the tractor.  Funny thing is I already have a 55 and 57 WD-45, 2 Farmall Cubs, and we bought my wife a 2021 Massey Ferguson 1840M tractor as well.  Of course the Massey was at the dealer’s because the Air Conditioning was not working again, the 57 tractor was not starting and the Cub was getting a new sediment bowl and 12 battery.  And the 57 was blocking the 55 WD-45 so it was harder to unload without a running tractor to pull it off the trailer.  The other options to pull it off the trailer was our Ram 1500 4x4 pickup but that has highway tires that have about zero traction on grass. 

With the help of a floor jack under the drawbar we managed to get the tractor to the end of his dovetail trailer.  The floor jack needed to come out so I decided that I would put a long tow strap around the left rear axle housing on the tractor and take the ramps off the trailer so we only need to move it another foot or so and then we would have the seized left rear in the grass.  At least that was my plan.  I though with a little luck we could pull his truck and trailer forward while I held the brakes on my truck.  It didn’t work out that way.  I left the truck in 2 wheel drive just to tighten up the strap since I thought maybe I would need to move the truck one way or another.   I just dropped the transmission in gear and let the truck idle to tighten the strap and the after all that fighting the tractor to the rear of the trailer just at idle the truck pulled the tractor off the trailer!  But it was also pulling his truck and trailer back too.  We got it off his trailer and I’m thinking what a t**d I had just had delivered to my house. 

I got a crank from one of my WD-45s and tried to turn the engine over and it went a little less than a ¼ turn and stopped.  Water in the cylinder maybe, I’ll pull spark plugs today.   Not much good so far in this story but now for the dilemma.  I had a cordless belt sander and I cleaned up the serial number area on the rear of the tractor.   146762, wow that did not seem correct was I reading is correctly?  As it turns out this one is the 156^th WD-45 made!  Most likely the first week of production in 1953?  I’ll pull the plugs today and try to turn over the engine again today and hopefully I will make the required 2+ full turns. 

It seems sacrilegious to part it out, seems like it needs to be saved?   What does the forum think?