2017 - Volume #BFS, Issue #17, Page #46
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Deere 5020 Repowered With Detroit V-12 Diesel
“I bought a well used Deere 5020 tractor at an auction with a locked-up engine. It sat around for about a year before I decided to replace it with a Detroit V-12 diesel engine with about 450 hp,” says David Will, Wadesville, Ind.
  The tractor rides on 20.8 by 38 radial dual tires filled with fluid on back and on 20-in. tall, 22-ply truck tires on front. It weighs about 22,000 lbs. Will installed air cleaners out of a Freightliner semi truck on both sides of the tractor and also added a pair of 5-in. chrome stacks off a Peterbilt semi truck. A pair of gear-driven blowers force air into the engine.
  “I use it to pull a 30-ft. field cultivator. It’s a lot of fun to drive,” says Will. “It’s really loud - you can hear it 2 to 3 miles away when I’m using it in the field.”
  He found the V-12 diesel engine in Illinois. “It had come out of a Manitowoc dragline in a Kentucky coal mine, where it was used to mine hundreds of thousands of tons of coal. But the engine was locked up due to spun main bearings. I sent the bare block to Republic Diesel in Louisville, Ky., to have it line-bored. They also bored out every cylinder hole to install oversize sleeves.”
  The entire winter of 2013 was devoted to assembling the engine and then installing it in the tractor. It has about 450 hp. “It now pulls anything I hook on behind it and is quite competitive at local tractor pulls,” says Will.
  He cut the frame in 2 and welded in new material to lengthen the tractor by 15 in. “I added part of the frame off a Deere 4840 underneath to strengthen the frame so that it wouldn’t break the flywheel housing,” says Will. “The 4840 frame is bolted to the the 5020 frame and also to the tractor’s planetary housing.
  “It was a lot of work, but I’m pleased with how it turned out,” says Will. “I spent about $10,000 just to rebuild the engine. I also added two big 12-volt batteries hooked in series to provide 24 volts to start the engine.”
  Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, David A. Will, 10920 Diamond Island Rd., Wadesville, Ind. 47638 (ph 812 963-6503; cell ph 812 204-4587).



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2017 - Volume #BFS, Issue #17