Life comes at you fast. One minute you are graduating high school and the next you are restoring your childhood John Deer pedal tractor. With my boys growing up quickly, they started gravitating toward tricycles and pedal cars. My parents had kept my John Deere pedal tractor from when I was a kid and I had the idea of giving it a refresh. My nephew had ridden it as a toddler and loved it. However, it was showing signs of age. The stickers were partially removed and the drivetrain was worn out with a bent axle and loose chain. We had replaced the wheels a few years ago but it was time to do a mechanical restoration. I didn’t want to do a full restoration because I love the patina of the chipped and worn paint. A bright and shiny tractor wouldn’t feel right.
The tractor has been with our family for around 35 years. I got the tractor when I was around 2 years old. I used the tractor so much when I was little that I gave myself a hernia. True story. There are many family photos with the tractor so it is kind of a family member. I wanted to make the tractor last for another generation. The tractor was usable but a lot of the mechanical components were tired. The wheel and pedal bearings were pretty much shot and had a ton of play in them. The front wheels were pretty worn and the steering was pretty sloppy. I then decided to make it happen. A Google search brought me to a site called Dakotah Toys. They are a small business in Madison, South Dakota that sells every part of these tractors. If you have one of these old tractors I highly recommend checking them out. They also sell upgraded parts which help future-proof common issues.
I originally purchased a new axle, steering, front wheels, and rear bushings. Once the parts showed up, I decided to begin the disassembly. I grabbed my brand new apprentice, Malcolm, to help with the teardown. These tractors are insanely simple and are only held together with a couple of screws. Surprisingly, only one screw was rusted and had to be drilled out. Once the push nuts for the front wheels were removed with the screws holding the two parts together, the tractor came apart. The steering arms were only two pieces and had no bushings at all. Just metal-on-metal contact. I also realized that the body was made out of an aluminum alloy which is why it hadn’t rusted. The inside of the tractor was practically brand new. After documenting how the whole tractor was disassembled, it was time to degrease everything and get it as close to new.
Scraping the over 30-year-old stickers off was quite a challenge. The stickers were mostly in a channel which made removal difficult. It took patience and a few razor blades but I got the job done. Next up was degreasing the two halves. Years of grease and grime had built up on the moving parts. In my younger days, I watched my dad wax all of our cars and wanted to emulate him and at one point I washed and waxed the tractor. However, I didn’t do a good job and left small pieces of wax that have remained for over 20 years. The degreaser took care of the grease buildup and most of the wax. I had to spend extra time on the “engine bay” to get in the nook and crannies. After drying, the body looked as good as it could.
After making the original purchase for new steering, axle, and axle bushings, I soon realized I should have also bought new stickers, chain, pedal arms, and push nuts for the pedals. I decided to do this to ensure the tractor’s working parts were 100% new and would last another 30 years. Parts were relatively cheap considering I was buying them for a 30-year-old pedal tractor. The pedal arms also came with actual bearings instead of the bushing that came with the original version. A simple upgrade that could prolong the overall life and ease of use of the tractor for years to come.
Soon all of the parts were shipped and arrived. I had to remove the pedals from the old pedal arms assembly. The push-nuts put up a fight. This was impressive considering their age. I decided to use the original pedals since I had used them and they were still in good shape. Sometimes buying new doesn’t make sense. The old axle compared to the new axle was easily off by at least 5 degrees. This was visible to the naked eye. I was glad to repair the axle since this was the main item that needed to be replaced.
The next step was painting the new parts. Some of the original parts were not painted. It seems to me that the whole tractor was painted after it was fully assembled. Since I wasn’t going to paint the tractor’s body, I decided to paint the parts that jutted out from the body. This included the steering wheel shaft, front post, chain cover, and pedal arm. The green parts had to be painted John Deere green, of course, and the pedal arms were painted a semi-gloss black.
After the paint had cured and dried, it was time to grab my apprentice and fully assemble the tractor. I started with installing the steering wheel to the steering arm. The steering arm simply slots into the front post and does not require any bolting in. It’s a sloppy design but it actually quite clever and does not require any real maintenance. The top part of the front post had to be ground down a hair to fit in the tractor body. After dry fitting the steering, I added some bearing grease to the moving parts of the steering to ensure everything moved with as little friction as possible.
Before final assembly, I hammered in the new rear bushings and loosely bolted in the rear axle assembly. Once the new axle and steering were in place, it was time to bolt the two tractor bodies together. The tractor body is held together with machine screws and square nuts. After the body was bolted together, I installed the front wheels with the push nuts. This was all supervised by my apprentice who is a stickler for quality control. For good measure, I squirted some graphite dry lubricant on the front and rear wheels to help reduce friction. The pedal assembly went in seamlessly. The upgraded bearings allowed the pedals to move effortlessly and my quality manager approved.
I installed the pedals with the push nuts. This was kinda tricky since the whole tractor was fully assembled and it was hard to get a good angle for the installation. If I had painted the tractor at this point, I am sure I would have completely ruined the new paint job. I am glad I kept the patina. I am sure the factory that pumped these things out had custom jigs to help assemble these things with ease. All I had was a hardly used workout bench. After shimming the wheels, with the right amount of thin washers, I installed the wheel with the cotter pins. All that was left now, was to install the chain. The chain came with a master link which allowed for easy installation. Mechanically the tractor was refurbished, but it was lacking one last thing, stickers.
Now that the tractor was fixed, I had to call in the big guns to complete the final and most crucial part of the restoration. Mommy had to show Daddy how the experts installed stickers. I had to bow out gracefully while the master worked her magic. Mommy has about a decade on me in the sticker installation department so her resume holds up. Malcolm was interested and was ecstatic the whole time during the sticker installation. He really was a part of the whole process which is exactly the whole point of this restoration. I hope these memories stick.
The finishing touches were just a few cosmetic items. I had to add a few more washers to the rear wheels to ensure the axle was centered. After I was satisfied with the axle alignment, I pressed in the hub caps. The last item which had to be installed was the chain cover. Before I installed the cover, I had to loosen the axle assemblies pull the axle back as far as possible, and then tighten the bolts one last time. This had to be done to remove the slop in the chain. Now that the chain was tightened and the axle secured in the final location, I installed the chain cover with new hardware. With all-new steering, pedal assembly, chain, bushings, tires, rear axle, and stickers, the John Deere Ertle 520 pedal tractor was complete.
The only thing that was left to do was recreate the picture of me with the tractor when I first got it over 30 years ago. The picture of me with the tractor was when I was around 2 years old so that puts it at around 1988. Malcolm in his picture is 3 years old and taken in 2024. I hope he enjoys the family tractor just as much as I did all those years ago. I hope someday my grandkids will get to ride it. Motor on.