Well, I figured I should contribute a little bit to the site. My father bought this tractor from a tractor junk yard in Pennsylvania off of Ebay about 5 years ago. He paid $5500.00 for it then and as you can see it was in tough shape. I have never really asked him why he decided to purchase this peticular model over anything else but at the time neither of us really realized the rarity of the tractor. After we won the auction me and him made the drive to go pick it up and it sat in the barn up until the end of summer 2008. When he bought it I had no interest in it and he planned to work on it when he retired. After doing some research on the GP series of tractors it was clear that there were not tons of them left. After visiting a friends collection of GP tractors in Indiana my interest in the old tractor grew. After searching for a summer project I decided it would be interesting to restore the GPWT. That was almost a year ago and i believe I have made some really good progress thus far. I am an Ag Engineering student at Iowa State University so I only get to work on this during breaks and the summer, so progress is slow right now. Well here are a bunch of pictures of my progress, I'll update it as I go.

Me and my father were told when we bought this tractor that it had been sitting out in a field for the last 50 years so of course the engine was stuck. After a days worth of work the manifold was off and in went a mixture of 50/50 diesel/kerosene to loosen it up a bit (you can see the pipe in one of the pictures). A long pipe with a weight attached at the end was attached to the flywheel to slowly break the engine free. After a month only one cylinder broke loose, the other piston was pushed out with a hydraulic press. After further inspection we found a broken oil line and the number 2 connecting rod bearing was obviously not getting oil. I'm sure this was the reason it was parked and forgotten. To my surprise after soaking all the bolts with PB blaster and a product called Kroil the nuts and bolts came off with little resistance.

While I'm at school here there is a whole section of pictures of the disassembly that i do not have. I will get and post these soon. In the mean time after doing the research I discovered that the rear wheels were a rare inset potato wheel. That was great but I only had one hub. Figuring it would be impossible to find another set of hubs I went ahead and bought a set of regular F&H GPWT hubs. After talking with Robby from Detwiler tractor I was informed that a customer of his had just one potato hub he really had no use for. Sounding too good to be true he sent me pictures of it and I eventually was able to buy it. The owner of the hub was from Pennsylvania also, weird. After a few months the front and rear wheels were all done and ready to be picked up. They looked good!

Man what a basket case, I thought mine were bad to begin with but they don’t even compare. I can’t wait to see the after pics! I’d hate to know the grand total $$$ after she’s done.

Yeah it is rough for sure, but worth resotring buecuse of its rarity. I was just looking at the date and today, Feb. 20th is this tractors 78th birthday!

I’m a believer that all of them are worth fixing, it aint like their going to make anymore of any of them. That’s a neat little fact about the 78th birthday too.
I wish you the best of luck and I’ll be watching for the rest of this story.

Very Good progress on your GPWT. Its going to take a while to get it in tip top shape, but in the end it is totally worth it. Keep it up. I have a 1931 GPWT as well, and the serial number 403627!!! and yours is 403727!! WOW!! What are the chances!!! Mine has recently made "a name to fame" in a couple of tennesse papers where it originated. It is now in my collection in NY. Heres a link of the story on my 1931 GPWT. http://www.stategazette.com/story/1434876.html This is a really nice story. Let me know what you think.
Jeff Rottkamp
rottkamp@portjeff.net

What a coincidence, I always search GPWT on google and I have read that article before. I actually have that picture saved on my computer. I know when I started I was picking weeds and branches out of the crevices! I would love to see more pictures. A bit of an update, during my spring break I was able to take both the rear quills off and am working on getting all the gears out of the transmission now.

Here are some more pictures and stuff. Things are moving slowly due to me being a state away from home and in college. I have got it all disassembled now and most of the big stuff is bead blasted and primed. The main transmission case is also fully painted JD green. Hopefully during winter break I can get some gears back into the transmission. Enjoy.