The restoration of a John Deere legend COMPLETED

[JoeRainville]

Brian,

The sled looks great, and nice job locating and purchasing and NOS track and hood. Those are two very hard to find items. Keep the up the good work, and looking forward to seeing it done.

-Joe Rainville

[AJWolfe]

Ok thanks atleast I know the cleats so I'll have to do some digging for the track. Thanks.

-Alan

[Matt]

Well, not quite, the cleats are no longer available.

[80spitfire]

Shoot I was wondering if you were able to get anymore...

-Brian

[MWB]

Great restoration job on the Dator! Ihave some questions for you. I am doing a 340s right now and am prbably in over my head. I have never done one before that's needed so much work, and that I really want it to turn out nice. On the parts you have been painting, how do you know the correct colors? Like the suspention you painted the rails black but they didn't look black to begin with?? And the clutches aslo? Is there somewhere to get that information? I have gotten alot of info on the paint for the tunnel off this site and am hopeful I can geta painter to match it up ok. right now it's painting everything else thats got me puzzeled. There is alot of great info on this site and everyone is so helpful, it's great! Thanks!

[sledneck5454]

I maybe wrong but I belive all suspension parts rails springs arms are blitz black and can get it from your local jd dealer. Might be dif on the race sleds. Jim

[80spitfire]

Alright guys, as promised in a previous post, here are the pictures of the progress on the Dator. The rough body work is done on the tunnel and it is primed. It's far from perfect as of now, but it will be better when it finally gets painted. I've been very fortunate with the body work on the sled because the guy who originally sold me the sled is a professional body man and is doing all the work for me. I've become really good friends with him and we're even gonna paint the sled together. The reason why only the rough body work is done for now is because I want to take the entire tunnel to John's upholstery so that the seat will be perfect. It's definitely not the easiest seat to do because first off I don't have the correct seat and I'm having him make me one out of a 78 LF Cyclone seat and secondly because I need to have it made to fit a rear tank. Since those factors are in play, to me it makes the most sense to just give him the sled for a while so that he can get it perfect. Anyways, here's the tunnel as it sits now. Like I said it's not perfect yet, but it's a heck of a lot closer.

-Brian

[80spitfire]

Great restoration job on the Dator! Ihave some questions for you. I am doing a 340s right now and am prbably in over my head. I have never done one before that's needed so much work, and that I really want it to turn out nice. On the parts you have been painting, how do you know the correct colors? Like the suspention you painted the rails black but they didn't look black to begin with?? And the clutches aslo? Is there somewhere to get that information? I have gotten alot of info on the paint for the tunnel off this site and am hopeful I can geta painter to match it up ok. right now it's painting everything else thats got me puzzeled. There is alot of great info on this site and everyone is so helpful, it's great! Thanks!

Thanks for the kind words and congrats on the 340S! Those are both very good questions. You are correct that when I got the sled the suspension was not black, but I believe that it was black and it was stripped at some point and that's why it rusted so badly. At first I wasn't sure how the suspension originally looked, but through some research I found a bunch of different pictures of Dator-lite suspensions painted black. I found other members who had black ones and I also found pamphlets where they were black as well. It made sense that it was black originally because all the other Deere suspensions were as well, including your 340s. Jim is correct in saying that the correct color is blitz black and it is available in quarts and rattle cans at your local Deere implement; it's actually not that expensive either. As far as the clutches, originally the clutches were plated and the plating on mine had just worn off so I repainted them. I actually ended up finding a NOS secondary this spring and now I'm going to use that instead since it is more correct.

-Brian

[80spitfire]

Well this weekend I headed down to Sanborn and picked up my seat from John. He did a great job. He ended up actually making a seat entirely from scratch since it was just easier because of having to make it accept a rear tank.

[skoalmint]

Seat looks SWEEEEEEET.Brock

[cledussnow77]

Projects looking great, can't wait to see this thing done.

[80spitfire]

Thanks guys! I'm pretty excited myself to see it done too. I think my bank account might be even happier though

[69camaro]

Pretty sweet. Those seats always turn out better with the sled there. I have a local guy who has been in the business all his life. I had a custom seat made for my 77 Liquifire and it turned out great. My guy always likes to have the sled there in case of foam shrinkage to get a perfect fit. It looks like John did a beautiful job for you.

[80spitfire]

It's been quite some time since I've updated this thread so I thought I should fill you guys in. Over the last month I spent a quite a few hours at my friend's body shop working on the sled chassis and hood and I'm happy to say that it is finally painted. I think it turned out amazing for what I had to start with; especially the belly pan. I'm hoping over the next few weeks to try to find as much time as I can to start assembling it. I have pretty much everything that I need to put it together except for just two things that I'm trying to track down. I need a lower coolant hose, the S shaped one, and I would also like to find a set of CC carbides since that is the only CC part that I'm missing for the restoration. If any of you have either of those that you could let go, I'd love to hear from you. Here's some pictures of the bodywork for you guys to drool at lol

Thanks,
Brian

[JoeRainville]

Looking good Brian! Look forward to seeing the final product.

-Joe