Ditto on all the safety advice. Tractors can be dangerous if not used with care. Little like a table saw--keep a safe distance and keep your eyes open AND know how everything works.
A note on the starting problem. A bad battery connection is not always obvious from the outside, but cleaning the terminals often does the trick. The battery end is exposed to acid, and may be corroded inside the cable end where you can't see it.
The rocking treatment may loosen the Bendix drive, but if that continues to hang up AFTER you clean it and lube it a bit, then it is, as my daddy used to say, plumb wore out. The Bendix is a simple drive, but it was prone to hang up after a lot of wear. It actually drives the little gear through a spring. If the engine kicks back, the spring breaks and you have no starter until you replace the spring.
There were some minor changes in the placement of some of the controls over the years. The most obvious one was putting the starter switch up on the steering column. The original switch, way down low and in front of the gearshift lever, was hard to reach if you had a wide foot. As one of the other writers said, you can trace most of the controls. The pulley control is a heavy rod with a 90-degree downward bend in it, and it comes through the pedestal under the gas tank. The rod goes to a lever above the pulley gearbox, under the gas tank. The choke rod is a husky wire with a round end to loop your finger around. Of course it goes right to the carb. The heavy rod coming up from the right side of the tractor and ending in a big bracket beside the steering wheel is the hydraulic power-lift lever (this was an option, and might not be on this tractor). Lights and a starter were also optional on these tractors, at least at the beginning. Farmers would often save a few by not opting for these things, but I can tell you after years of cranking all kinds of old iron back then that I'd give almost anything not to have to crank.
The brake pedals can be locked together with a flipover lever on top of the left pedal (as I recall, it's on that side), and should be anytime the tractor is used in 5th gear, to avoid swerving and an upset. The little latch in the platform behind the left pedal is the parking lock. Push the pedal down and lift the latch. The latch will fall by itself when the pedal is pushed again.
I have a fair amount of info on this tractor, and would be happy to share it if you drop me a line. Can find some photos from old sales brochures, and I can probably send them through a scan. Write me if I can help. I don't claim to be an expert on tearing these things apart, but I spent a lot of time on two H's back in the 50s and 60s, and more recently, on a Super M, and have a pretty good idea what they're like to use.
One danger not often mentioned is overturing at high speed and on hillsides. These tractors are high, so that they will clear corn rows. The CG is high, and they are prone to overturning in a short, high-speed turn in fifth gear. They are also to be used with extreme caution on hillsides, for the same reason.
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Today's Featured Article - The Cletrac General GG and the BF Avery A - A Bit of History - by Mike Ballash. This article is a summary of what I have gathered up from various sources on the Gletrac General GG and the B. F. Avery model A tractors. I am quite sure that most of it is accurate. The General GG was made by the Cleveland Tractor Company (Cletrac) of Cleveland, Ohio. Originally the company was called the Cleveland Motor Plow Company which began in 1912, then the Cleveland Tractor Company (1917) and finally Cletrac.
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