Just picked this up. 3j7524. Undercarrage is in excellent shape. Was told it runs. Both pony and main turn freely. Unfortunately the main clutch cavity is half full of water. The main clutch is stuck good! Very crusty in there. I'm thinking of filling it with evaporust and see how far that gets me. He also gave me a stack of new repop manuals. Was told it was a 1946 but I'm not finding a serial number year chart to verify. Not a bad buy for $200

Lucky guy! $200 doesn’t much anymore. Hope to see the videos of your new score soon. JM

Congrats on the purchase! Keep us updated with the progress.

Thats a nice tractor, especially for $200. Check out Chrisco machinery website for serial number and year. Looks yours is a 1945

I didn't realize there is no seal. That's good to know. And probably why the engine oil is a little milky. I haven't crawled up under it to see if it has a drain for this cavity. I'm assuming it does? I'll get some pictures of the clutch tonight. The throw out bearing is seized too. So much that the previous owner broke the lever grip off trying to free it. I may have to split her to get it functional. I believe someone had the plate loose to adjust the clutch and didn't tighten it back down firmly so it filled with rain. I recently unstuck a cylinder on a old case backhoe using evaporust. It worked amazing. In 3hrs it was free.

I purchased a D2 last year that had a stuck master clutch also. Water had leaked between the starting engine coolant port and the flywheel housing and rusted the master clutch solidly.
I couldn't free it up using the usual penetrating oils so I had to pull the clutch and de-rust it. I'm glad that I did because the clutch plate needed to be changed and I would never have been able to free up the clutch components without disassembling it.
Regardless of your clutch problem... you bought a nice D2 at a bargain price!

 A photo of my rusted master clutch. My D2 is a U series and not a J series but they are similar.  Be aware that you will have to separate the engine from the flywheel housing to repair your clutch.
 

I regret posting the photograph of my rusty clutch. My 5U is the later model and I was able to remove the clutch without removing the engine. I realize that the jknarkal's 3J tractor is different in how the clutch is removed and I may have confused him and others with my photograph... sorry for the confusion.