Regular readers are sure to have spied shots of the John Deere 4630 we picked up last summer at auction. To date all you’ve seen are still pictures of the tractor in the shop getting cleaned up or tuned up, and maybe a few shots of it running an auger to load corn. You may recall this tractor was mostly clean, but had lived a great deal of its life stored outdoors. The sun had taken a toll on the paint and the interior was worn out. And being a 1975 4630, this John Deere is five years older than me!
One piece at a time we painted nearly the entire tractor aside from the hood and the cab roof. We shortened the air intake and scrapped the muffler for a chrome stack. The headliner was replaced along with the seat. We’re still chasing some electrical demons that make us bust out the battery charger a lot, but she’s in pretty good shape now.
Today I took a minute to shoot a video of Dad plowing some snow in the barn lot. Enjoy!
The straight pipe exhaust sounds really good although the sound is hard capture on a mobile phone. Unlike our more modern tractors, the 4630 will fill the shop with diesel smoke upon startup. Have to admit it’s fun to start up, but you get an idea of how far engine technology has come when much larger, more powerful tractors have hardly a puff of smoke even on a cold start.
What do you think of our little tractor now?
You guys are fabulous!
You can’t kill that many zombies with it, but I’m sure it has other uses. 🙂
I might be picking up a zombie attachment tomorrow. Probably will find a photo on facebook.
I love how it sounds! And the smoke adds character.
Would like it better if it had a regular muffler
Love the older tractors. We have a Case 930 that has been on the farm longer than I have and was bought second hand at that.
It’s always good to have a little tractor to do those odd jobs like clearing the driveway or just to run a PTO to move grain around…
We bought the 4630 last summer hoping we could take the 7920 off roadside mowing duty. It’s large, has duals, and with the loader it’s a bouncy ride trying to mow all over. Now we are thinking if we upgrade our backhoe a bit we may not even need the 7920 at all. That’s a lot of capital sitting around that could be use elsewhere. We’d be going from 3 “main” tractors to 2. We’ve already downsized one piece of tillage equipment recently.
In your last comments its all about management.Maybe the duals can come off the 7920 and use it to plow snow with a loader.The 4630 to use it to roadsides is not a bad idea.Have pictures of a new 4630 from the 1975 Washington County NY Fair.THe 4630 was a pretty big tractor for it time.When introduced in 1972 it was the 2nd most powerful row crop behind the 6030.Thats would change 40 years ago when Allis Chalmers introduced the 156hp 7050 with 6 more hp.
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all good
4630 rated at 150 hp. , but most of these tractors were 190+ hp from the factory . Had a 4630 pulled a 7 / 18 moldboard with harrow attached . Turbo was hot enough to light a cigarette by just touching cigarette to turbo . Fond memories .