# 1936 John Deere B cam/crank timing issue



## Kettenhund (May 23, 2016)

Greetings! My Grandfather has been rebuilding old engines and tractors for 50 years. He has liver cancer, and the tractor show we are going to this weekend may be his last. He has a 1936 John Deere B he has been working on for 30 years. I spent two weeks with him putting the rest of it together, but we cannot get it to fire. After digging into it, I found that it is blowing out the intake when turning it over, not sucking in. That can only mean that the intake valve(s) are open on the compression or exhaust stroke, which can only mean that the cam/crank timing is off. He says he had the engine rebuilt by a competent tractor mechanic a decade ago, but the guy obviously did something wrong. I have been looking at pics of B camshafts, and it appears that there are three bolt holes in the gear/cam, but no index pin. I assume the gear is timed wrong on the cam. It also appears (from the pics I have seen) that the bolts for the cam gear are only accessible from the rear. Can someone confirm all this for me? While not new at all to engines or mechanics in general, I have never been inside one of these engines.

What is the easiest way for me to index this cam gear without tearing the whole thing apart?

I plan on pulling the bearing plate on the flywheel side, pulling all three bolts from the cam/gear, and turning the motor to rotate the cam in the gear to the next hole, then bolting it back up. Will this work?

I live 4 hours from my grandpa's shop, and don't want to go down there unprepared. I will most likely be pulling an all nighter Friday night to get his B ready for him to drive at the tractor show this weekend. Thanks for any help you can give me!


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