[Farmall] Non-working PTO on 1950 M

[Dean Vinson]

Can you replace the PTO shaft on an M without splitting the tractor?  I'm
looking at a 1950 M for sale nearby, with a non-working PTO.   Seems to me
you could just pull the PTO housing off and get at everything, right?  

I don't know for sure that the shaft is the problem, but it reminds me of
what happened to my old Case when I was a kid--the shaft just sheared off
one day while I was using the tractor to brushhog the pasture.  No noise, no
grinding, the shaft just stopped being driven.   On that tractor it was
pretty easy to take the housing off and pull the shaft out.  (Which still
needs to be done, by the way, now that I own the tractor again.  We'd pulled
the broken shaft out years ago to diagnose the problem but never fixed it).

This M otherwise sounds in pretty decent condition.  Some blowby, which I
assume means worn rings and probably won't hurt anything if all I need the
tractor for is to tinker with it on weekends and drive it around my
neighborhood.   Some play in the steering, which sounds like most other old
Ms I've heard of, and is probably a pretty easy fix also.

Thanks--

Dean Vinson
Dayton, Ohio
www.vinsonfarm.net