Farmall Cub

My brother says his H quit pulling... that is it will not move in other than road gear. Not sure about reverse. Someone told him that the drive gear is probably stripped or broken. We have a parts tractor we can cannibalize.
I have not driven the tractor myself since this happened.
Does this sound reasonable? We do have the service manual.
Big job?
Sorry about the chopped sentences, I'm typing on my tablet, not accustomed to the touch screen.

I would suspect a shifter problem rather than a gear problem as the most probable. Ether a fork or forks loose or broken, or the ball that moves the shifters. I think you will need to remove the cover, however, be warned, it is VERY heavy, in addition to probably being stuck on rusty dowels.

With the engine idling in neutral, look up into the bell housing to see if the front of the counter shaft is turning. You may have to remove a cover to see it (small one if you have hydraulics, large one if you don't).

Thanks for the suggestions.
It might be spring before I get a chance to check it out myself. Meantime I'll try to get more information on exactly what happened and what it's doing. Or not doing.

I asked my brother to detail the issue with the H so I could copy it here. This is what he says:

"The H will not pull in any gear except 5th. No PTO, either. From what I can find it sounds like the constant mesh gear is stripped. It would be nice to find out what we need to do to change it. I know we can look at it through the pulley cover, but I don't know the procedure for changing it other than removing the transmission cover."

More info from my brother:

"...the belt pulley cover check will be the first thing- that's what I discovered early on in my researching this deal. Next we'll probably take the trans cover off. There was quite a grinding going on... I think we'll find the gear messed up, but I of course receive all possibilities. My main concern is how to get to/ replace all this stuff. Yes, part will be through the transmission cover, but will we have to take out the lift-all pump from the bottom also? (It's quite heavy as well, and I have read several ways to lower it.) By the way, the lift doesn't work, either, that's why I figure the only shaft being driven is the main shaft. But we won't know til we take a look at everything."

Sounds like it will be quite a project.

Sounds like you have trouble at the constant mesh gear. You are going to have to take the top cover off to see exactly what the problem is. If the only problem is the gear directly on the input shaft, I am pretty sure you can change it through the front of the transmisison (requires removing the Lift-All unit). I'm not sure how deep you have to get into things if you have to remove the constant mesh gear on the countershaft, but it will be more involved, requiring all the disassembly above and more.

Thanks Jim, and John. It sounds like this is going to be quite a project, at least for us. My brother is a pretty good shade tree mechanic, I'm mostly a tinkerer.
I don't know if we will get to it this fall or wait for spring. We don't have a nice heated shop to do the work in, will have to have nice weather for working on it outside, and that is going to get scarce around here fairly quickly.

Well, there's nothing like bringing an old thread back from the dead! At least its my own.
This old H has been sitting mostly untouched for the last few years, though the engine did start and run as late as last summer. I am arranging to have it hauled back to my house so I can get started on it, though will have to wait for the ground to dry out a little more before we can get the trailer in to where it is. When I get it to where I can work on it I'll start a new thread, just thought I'd post an update because I'm a little excited to get started on it.
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