I've had an Empire tractor for several years.  These tractors were made after WWII using the running gear from Willys jeeps.  They used the engine, transmission, transfer case, rearend, steering, etc from the jeep.  At some point in my tractors life someone replaced the flathead 4 Willys engine with a F-head Jeep engine.

My tractor looked pretty good, but had some issues like the hole cut in the hood needed for the taller carburetor height when using a F-head engine.  This was also common to the 4x4 Jeeps when people replaced the flathead four with the F-head four.

This year I decided to find a flathead engine to make the tractor more like original.  I ended up buying 3 different Willys/Jeep flathead four engines.  None were complete or running, but I thought with the three engines I would have enough to build one good engine.

Since I don't have enough time to finish any of the numerous other projects I've started I hired a retired professional mechanic to do the engine work for me.  He's done a real nice job on the engine so far and it should be like a new engine when he's finished.

After taking the F-head out of the tractor, I decided to also have the transmission and transfer case gone through as it had some noise when I had driven it in the past.  Good thing I did as it was really worn out and I had another friend that does rearend and manual transmission work completely rebuild both units.

The rebuilt transmission has been reinstalled.
The rebuilt engine has been reinstalled and just needs a few things hooked up and we should be able to get it started.

Hopefully it will be running again before Christmas!

Only bad part is I probably have more money invested in this tractor than it is worth, but on the bright side it will mechanically be just like new.

I don't have any photos handy to load, but will try to load some later.

George

Just checked and I don't have any good pictures of the Empire.

Those are some pretty neat tractors. A friend of mine once owned one. Speaking of Willys Jeeps, those are some pretty interesting machines to use for farmwork. I had an uncle that worked on a farm that used one to pull a hammermill and for some fieldwork. I once got to see one plowing at a tractor show.

George;

I may have mentioned this before, but several years ago the Empire Tractor Club had their exhibit at the Marion, Ohio tractor show. They had between 20 and 25 tractors there. I had some good conversations with some of the members. The club is based in Cayuga, N.Y. and seemed like a good organization. Below is a link to the club.

http://www.empiretractor.net

Gene

Gene,

I joined the Empire Tractor Club as soon as I got my Empire tractor.

This Friday (10th) I'm going to the shop where my friend is working on my tractor and we'll try to get the new engine running.
Hope everything goes well.

One bad thing about it getting towards the end of the work my friend is doing is that I'll have to bring it back home.  Unfortunately, that space in my barn as been already filled with other stuff and I'll have to do a lot of rearranging to find space to get the Empire back in the barn.  One of the problems of continuing to buy stuff and filling the available space.

George

George;

Must be time to do some more building. I know that acquiring less or selling others is not an option. I am able to keep all my tractors inside my 42'x72' barn, along with the airplane, 3 garden tractors, bulldozer and skid loader. When arranged just right, I have room for the truck or car when the weather gets real bad.

Finished everything on the Case 700 in the shop and when the weather lets up a little, I will arrange the barn so the skid loader is closer to the door and tractors not used back in a little farther. Need one of those oujla boards like they use on aircraft carriers to arrange their airplanes.

Gene

Just checked and I don't have any good pictures of the Empire.

Well, whne you find some pictures, I am interested in seeing this project
Paul

Saw the newly rebuilt engine run today!  It idles perfectly.
However there apparently is a problem with the carburetor I bought for it.
It's a Chinese copy of a Solex carburetor for the flathead Jeep engines.

Like I said, it idles great. But as soon as you try running faster than a fast idle the engine starves and dies.
We took the carb apart and checked every jet and passage we could and couldn't find the problem.
Finally called the seller I bought the carb from and they said they've had a few bad ones, so will send another carb for us to try.

Hopefully the next carb will arrive and work okay.

Otherwise I'll be looking to rebuild an American carburetor.

I tried loading a picture in the photo album, but apparently did something wrong.  I've got the album and it shows a photo for the album, but the album is empty.
Not sure what the photo problem is as the file is only 79k in size.

Here's a picture of the Empire engine with the bad carburetor.

Got the carburetor problem figured out and the engine revs up now!!!!!

First of all a little more history on the carb.

It is a reproduction of a SOLEX carburetor that was used as a replacement for the Carter carburetor during WWII.
These reproduction SOLEX carbs are apparently made in India, not China as I first thought.
The problem is in the block between the carb and the accelerator pump.  There is a hole that was partially drilled but not all the way through.  Since the hole didn't go completely through, fuel couldn't through either!

Drilled out the hole and it works fine now!
Sounds like the factory as a quality control issue where their machine wasn't set up to drill the hole deep enough to make it through the material.

I am betting you are a happy camper. George.  It sure is pretty.

CV

Yahoo!

The Empire is back in my shop.  The guy that built the engine for me, delivered it Sunday afternoon.  So now I get to work on it trying to have it ready for the Tulare show in April.

Wow, what a cool little engine. It was a good thing it was you working on the carb and not me ... I don't have much luck or faith in figuring them out.

Completed fabricating a foot throttle today for the Empire.  Since I don't have a governor for the engine the foot throttle is needed to maintain engine speed when the load varies.
Took it out for a test drive on our country lane.
Don't know how fast I got it up to, but the rear tires were obviously unbalanced at high speed and limited me from going any faster.
I haven't checked yet, but I'm hoping that there is water in the rear tires and that is causing the unbalanced feel.