Here’s what I had to deal with.
Very little experience.
Ford 9N, 2N tractor. Likely a 44-47 2N (oval front radius rod) but not too sure as there is no serial number on the engine.
Dearborn 19-61 loader.
Front mounted distributor.
The belt: 5/8″ x 46 1/8″ part # 9N8620B3 which I ordered online at Yesterday’s Tractors, cost was about $9 + shipping.
Day 1: I got the tractor started and pulled it into the garage with rafters and parked it.
Day 2: I took 4 slotted-head bolts out of the hood by the steering wheel and 2 larger hex head bolts out of the front bottom of the hood, 1 on each side. I disconnected the gas line at the easiest spot close to the gas tank (gas line has been modified, no sediment bulb, just and inline fuel filter and shutoff).
I slipped my 1-ton chain hoist on a 25lb barbell bar and put it up in the rafters above the hood. I took some 700lb nylon strap and attached the hood to the hoist. One strap was toward the front of the hood wrapped around where the bend is and the other strap was at the steering wheel end. I attached both straps to the hook of the hoist so both were taught. The hoist itself was above the front end of the hood. It took some manuevering to get the hood off with one person hoisting and the other on the tractor seat trying to get the hood to clear the steering wheel/dash and a rigid hydraulic pipe. After a bit of struggling and a few tries the hood was up off the tractor.
Next I see that the drive shaft of the loader needs to be out of the way in order to get the old fan belt off the crank pully (and new belt on). The new belt, by the way, was significantly thicker than the old belt which was so rotted and frayed and > 25 years old, I do not know how it hadn’t broke yet.
The front hydraulic pump which powers the Dearborn 19-61 loader is driven by the crankshaft pully on the engine. There is a drive shaft from the loader. At the engine end of the loader drive shaft is a hub with 4 pins on the engine side of the hub. These 4 pins engage the crankshaft pully on the engine and power the loader pump. If this hub/drive shaft assembly for the loader was not in the way, changing the belt would now be easy as there is enough clearance to easily do so. Because the hub has these 4 pins, there is not enough room to get the old belt out, much less the new belt in.
Day 3: I removed the Vickers vane front pump from the tractor by removing the 2 bolts holding it and also the 2 smaller bolts at the flange on the back of the pump to the coupler. I then removed the coupler from the shaft by removing the remaining 2 bolts. Now I have the front pump hanging off the front of the tractor held on by a hydraulic hose on each side which I did not touch. I have the coupler off the tractor. The mounting bracket for the front pump is still on the tractor, it is connected by 2 bolts and a large pin thru the main loader frame tube which holds the front end of the loader to the front axle/ engine body. I had mistakenly removed the 2 bolts holding the front pump mounting bracket on Day 2 and was attemping to remove the pin before I realized I was going in the wrong direction. Luckily I didn’t get the pin out and just pounded it back in place. The bolts for some reason were very tough to take off because as I discoverd after I got them off, the threads on the nuts were being shredded as I was removing them. The bolt threads were fine except the ends. New nuts would not go on the bolts so I corrected the threads with a 1/2″ x 13 die. I cleaned up a bunch of grease/oil/dirt on the tractor and put those bolts back in place with new nuts. Somewhere around this time I jacked up the front end with a floor jack and put a jack stand under the engine block toward the front so that the front tires were now 2-3″ off the ground.
Now back to the fan belt. Now that I have the pump and coupler off the front, I have enough room to move the driveshaft to its maximum forward position where it is stopped by the hub with the 4 pins hitting the front axle/radiator support. There is still not enough room to even get the old belt off.
Next I removed the radiator so that I could access everything better. It was a great improvement with the radiator out of the way and much easier to see how much room I had to play with and get my hands in to the crankshaft pully. I wish I had done this sooner. With this out of the way I could see there was enough room to remove the old belt, 1 pin at a time as I turned the shaft/hub clockwise to force the pin over the belt (a tight fit) one at a time. Now with the old belt off, I tried to put the new belt on. There is not enough room for this to happen. Now I look to gain more room to allow this to happen. The top right pin (when standing at the front pump looking at the engine, i.e. facing the back of the tractor) seemed to allow the most room.
There are 6 bolts that hold the front of the engine body to front axle/radiator support. If I can move this forward, I will increase the amount of room between the pins on the crankshaft hub and the crankshaft pully. The large pin that I mentioned earlier holds the pump mounting bracket to the main loader tubing, but the bracket is on both sides of the tubing connection plate and this will prevent the front axle support from moving very far foward regardless of the 6 bolts on the front axle support. There appears however to be enough play in the pump mounting bracket over tubing mounting plate that it might allow enough of a gap to take care of the fan belt issue.
So I loosened all 6 of these bolts (engine crankcase to front axle support) and the front axle moved foward on it’s own as I did so. I loosened the 6 heavily grease covered bolts but did not come close to removing any of them. Remember I had the engine block on a jack stand to support the rest of the tractor. Now I looked at the gap between the pins on the hub and the crankshaft pully and it had opened up probably 1/8″ wider. I put the new fan belt over the fan blades and in place and then tried to get it on, 1 pin at a time. I twisted the belt good so that the pin would try to slide inbetween the ridges on the belt. After some struggling, I got the belt past 1 pin. Now there were 3 more pins to get it over before it would be on the pully. The 2nd pin was like the first. The 3rd pin was harder as I had to twist much harder on the belt to get the pin in the groove of the belt so it could go past. With some serious effort I got it past the 3rd pin. The 4th pin was like the 3rd pin with some serious tweaking and counterclockwise twisting of the crankshaft with my other hand and eventually pushing past the pin with a strong wooden dowel and a lot of twisting of both the belt and the crankshaft in the opposite direction, it finally went through the gap.
That finally did it, the new belt was on. Now I just tightened up the 6 bolts and put the coupler and pump back on to the shaft and tractor and engaged the 4 pins into the same cranshaft pully holes that they came out of. Everything was back except the new belt was in place!
Now that I have the hood up and radiator off, I am going to do a minor tune up while it is so convenient and hope the tractor will still start and work when I’m done with it.
Below is a picture of the front pump removed, working on removing the coupler from the flange of the drive shaft.
Below is a picture of the 4 pins, gap, and crankshaft pully (before the old belt was removed).
