Farmall Cub

Hello All,
I joined this site more than five years ago with the best intentions of posting about my two Cubs and other tractors/equipment, but never quite found the time to do so. Nonetheless, this site has been an invaluable resource for all of my questions over the past few years. I guess all of my problems had already been asked about and answered by others, so I never had a need to ask new questions. Now, having finally finished restoring my 1947 cub and sickle mower (after something like 16 years in the shop), I've decided it's a good time to finally introduce myself (and show off my Cubs)! I will start threads for each of my tractor projects in due time, but in the meantime here are some before and after photos.

Welcome to the forum

Welcome back

Welcome back to the Forum, BenjaMINN! Nice '47 Cub! Is it a low serial number?

Don't know if you got the "full meal deal" back then, but take some time now and read through a few threads to reacquaint yourself with the Forum:

• Welcome Wagon
• How to Upload Pictures to a Post
• Forum Picture Posting And Other Interesting Things You Can Do
• Using the Forum

After you’ve logged your 2nd post, you'll have access to the all the PDF Manuals on this site. There’s a few ways to do that:

• From a desktop or laptop, go to "Quick Links" in the upper left corner of your screen. Hit that and a pull-down appears where you'll find "PDF Manuals".
• You can also go to “Cub Info” in the upper toolbar, then hit “Rudi’s Manuals”. From there, you can access a variety of information.
• If you're using a phone, go to the "Links Directory" (second category down the main page). Once in "Links Directory" , scroll down to the second section "Tractor Parts & Manuals" and you'll find them there.

You'll be able to download an Owner's Manual (very strongly recommended) and any service manuals that interest you. Implement Manuals are also available.

We’d encourage you to take the Safety Test located in the Safety Forum: http://farmallcub.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=68084

We would ask that when adding your comments to a thread, be sure to look at the date of the last poster. If it’s more than a 6 months old, the posters are probably not going to see it. Consider starting a new thread.

Glad you joined us.

Thanks for sharing the info again...probably good to review all that stuff from time to time anyways!

I wouldn't say my '47 Cub has a terribly low serial number (#5727), and some of the casting codes are from September of that year, so I'd say it is a late 1947 model.

It's still early enough to have an engine block susceptible to cracking on the right front ear, though. Of course, I noticed such a crack developing there only while painting it this summer. Doesn't look like it's leaking any oil yet, so I'm not too worried. A while back I saw that someone on this forum was selling a brace for the engine block to prevent further cracking. I tried to find the website where those were sold but it looked abandoned. Any idea where I might still find such a brace?
Thanks!

Send a PM to Berlin (Bezirk is his forum name). He is having them made.

Welcome,

Where are you in St Joe? Better yet who are you?
I'm on the West side.

Hi,
The Cub looks good in your picture.

I noticed in your first pic, the Cub 22 Mower seems to be too low. The left rockshaft arm is about fully up, I can't see the right arm, since the pic is of the left side of the Cub.

The mower should be much higher, the cutter bar should be more vertical when the mower is fully raised.
The lift chain should connect to the rear hole on the right rockshaft arm.
There was originally a clevis there, so the chain can be shortened or lengthened, to adjust the height.

I measured on my mower, it is about 9 1/2" from the bottom edge of the inner shoe skid, to the ground, with the mower fully raised.
You will be able to lift the cutter bar higher when mowing, having the chain set so the mower goes higher.

Below is the Cub 22 Mower owner's manual, if you don't have it. It has lots of info.

http://www.farmallcub.info/galleries/ci ... _Mower.asp

The 1st pic below is from TM Tractor, showing the lift height, I think it might be a little low, hard to see it exactly in a pic.

Bob McCarty wrote:Send a PM to Berlin (Bezirk is his forum name). He is having them made.

Thanks, I'll be sure to reach out to him.

farmallcub49 wrote:Where are you in St Joe? Better yet who are you?
I'm on the West side.

I'm Ben Carlson...I live west of of town a couple of miles (out by Big Watab Lake). I think I've seen your tractors in town. Did you show some of them at the Millstream street fair a couple of years ago?

Glen wrote:I noticed in your first pic, the Cub 22 Mower seems to be too low. The left rockshaft arm is about fully up, I can't see the right arm, since the pic is of the left side of the Cub.

The mower should be much higher, the cutter bar should be more vertical when the mower is fully raised.
The lift chain should connect to the rear hole on the right rockshaft arm.
There was originally a clevis there, so the chain can be shortened or lengthened, to adjust the height.

I measured on my mower, it is about 9 1/2" from the bottom edge of the inner shoe skid, to the ground, with the mower fully raised.
You will be able to lift the cutter bar higher when mowing, having the chain set so the mower goes higher.

Thanks for the advice...I followed the manual to the letter regarding installation, knife register, cutting bar angle, etc, but nothing in there about adjusting the height. I think my lifting chain was simply too long; I hooked the chain a couple of links higher on the clevis and now the mower does sit quite a bit higher when fully raised. And now the outer end of the cutter bar raises properly while cutting as well! Go figure.

Here is the other side (pre-adjustment):

Hi,
The Cub looks good in your pictures.
Glad you raised the mower up some.

On the Cub 22 mowers I have seen, not all the links of the lift chain are used, a few are extra links.

If the grass board rod hits you when the mower is up in the transport position, while driving the Cub, I just take the board off the mower, at the 1 bolt with the spring on it.

The board isn't needed much unless you are cutting tall grass.

This is a small thing, but the end of the band on the starter goes at the bottom, that probably helps keep water out of the starter.

Below is a page from the 1955 Cub operator's manual showing it.
The pic in the 1947 Cub owner's manual doesn't show it much, except I can see the ends aren't facing up.
Also the screw head in the band faces out, and the nut is on the side toward the engine.

http://farmallcub.com/rudi_cub/www.clea ... age-39.jpg

Glen wrote:This is a small thing, but the end of the band on the starter goes at the bottom, that probably helps keep water out of the starter.

Thanks for pointing that out...I don't think I would have noticed. I need to take the starter off sometime anyways, as the bendix gear often doesn't want to engage (or disengage) properly.

Glen wrote:If the grass board rod hits you when the mower is up in the transport position, while driving the Cub, I just take the board off the mower, at the 1 bolt with the spring on it.

The board isn't needed much unless you are cutting tall grass.

I mostly use the wood grass board for show...this mower came to me with the metal, 3-rod style grass board seen on later mowers, so I'm planning on using that for actually cutting with the mower.

I like the looks of your sickle mower with the later yellow paint scheme. Is it still the original paint? I'm particularly interested in researching how Cub implements changed over the years. Do you by chance have close-up pictures of the decals on your mower?

Tim Talleur (forum name tst) makes many decals for cubs & implements and might have the ones for the sickle mower, if it had any...could have just been stenciled on.

BenjaMINN. wrote:I like the looks of your sickle mower with the later yellow paint scheme. Is it still the original paint?

Hi,
I repainted the mower once, I painted it the same as it was. As far as I know, it is an original yellow and white mower, which IH started making about when the yellow and white Cubs came out, in 1964.

The decals are different than the blue mowers used. Dale wrote info above.

The 1st pic below shows the decal on the right side of the mower tube, it has an IH at the left.
The red on the I has faded.
The 2nd pic shows the other decal.
The mower needs some cleaning.

The 3rd pic is a pic someone posted before of a 1979 Cub, with a yellow and white mower.

In 1947, the mower would have had a "McCormick-Deering" decal on the left side of the flywheel shaft tube. There would have been a model id decal (a circle with "Cub-22" and maybe "mower" inside) located on the cutter bar hinge. It was similar to the one seen in the '79 Cub picture above. The model etc. was stenciled on the belt guard. One can be seen on the TM Tractor Parts site, the Implement Hookups page for the mower. If there were any other markings, they do not come to mind.

It is time for me to otherwise chime in on this thread. I live in Clear Lake but have strong connections to St. Joe. I drove through both your and farmallcub49's neighborhoods today.

Jim Becker wrote:I live in Clear Lake but have strong connections to St. Joe. I drove through both your and farmallcub49's neighborhoods today.

Good to know that there are so many Cub folks here in Central Minnesota! I saw your recent article on the Albany Pioneer Days in the Red Power Magazine, so I figured you might be local.

Dale Finch wrote:Tim Talleur (forum name tst) makes many decals for cubs & implements and might have the ones for the sickle mower, if it had any...could have just been stenciled on.

Jim Becker wrote:In 1947, the mower would have had a "McCormick-Deering" decal on the left side of the flywheel shaft tube. There would have been a model id decal (a circle with "Cub-22" and maybe "mower" inside) located on the cutter bar hinge. It was similar to the one seen in the '79 Cub picture above. The model etc. was stenciled on the belt guard. One can be seen on the TM Tractor Parts site, the Implement Hookups page for the mower.

As for the mower decals, I was mostly just curious as to what the later decals looked like, since I haven't seen too many pictures of original late-model Cub mowers. I doubt my mower ever had any decals on it...at least I couldn't see remnants of any before I sandblasted it. Likely too old for them, as Dale alluded to. At any rate, my belt shield still has fairly decent stenciling visible, so I've opted to leave that part in its original condition until I can find a way to reproduce the stencil.

Jim, I have often wondered about that McCormick-Deering decal on the flywheel shaft tube before, too. I've seen photographs of this decal on pre-production mowers (pages 82 & 83 of the Farmall Cub Photo Archive come to mind), but I've yet to see any clear evidence that this decal was used on regular production mowers. Decent detailed photos of original Cub sickle mowers are hard to come by it seems.