(First Posted August 5, 2013) Even though I lived the first twelve years of my life in a small farm town in Germany and later attended a college that had a rich agricultural history, I never really had much exposure to tractors and other farming machinery. Moving to Colorado several years ago in part to get more exposed to nature and the land certainly has given me more opportunities to do that…
This weekend we attended the Larimer County Fair here in Northern Colorado. As fairs go, it’s fairly small but very nice and well presented (and free!). Along with the livestock exhibitions, rodeo, fairground rides and an assortment of vendors, there is also a Tractor Show. We’ve gone for the last several years and I always find myself looking over my favorites again every year. This year I carried a camera and took a bunch of shots – Since my tractor background is very limited I can identify the makes but will rely on you all to fill in the blanks.
For some reason I really like the Oliver Tractors – there are two that usually attend the show. The opening two pictures are of a 1961 Oliver 550, while the pictures immediately above and below are of a 1955 Oliver Super 99 Diesel. Something about the styling of these really does it for me.
Below is a Case, the only one there (besides an assortment of new ones). The bright orange color stood out from the rest.
And then we have a Minneapolis Moline. This is a brand I had never heard of before – is that stub on the rear axle an attachment for another set of wheels/tires?
I’m guessing if you asked the average non-farm person to name a tractor builder, the default answer would be John Deere. There was no shortage of representatives from the green team on display.
Like the Minneapolis Moline it also has that axle stub. This one has a single wheel up front as opposed to many of the others with two wheels. Some of the front wheels are close together and some are very far apart (same track as the rear). I’m assuming that it has something to do with different applications or maybe it’s more to do with the era that the tractor was built in. I’m sure someone will enlighten me below.
This is a 1953 John Deere 40u. As you can see it is currently for sale.
It has kind of a Kermit the Frog vibe to it with the headlights where they are and obviously the color.
Seems comfortable enough to plow the back 40 or whatever the acreage may be…
Here is a 1952 Massey-Harris “44” Standard. Most of the tractors at the show really were in top-notch condition. I have no idea if this tractor is the Camaro of Tractors or more of a Plymouth Valiant of its day. This is probably how my wife feels when I take her to a car show – The colors are pretty and they all look nice, but not sure of the differences between them!
This is the same tractor from the other side. Is it still easy to get parts for something like this or do tractors eventually succumb to NLA parts difficulties?
Here we have a nice little Ford, it sort of looks like a Hot Rod. It is a 1952 Ford 8n, this one apparently has bored cylinders with flathead V8 pistons and an estimated 24hp. Drive is through a 4speed with Sherman overdrive auxiliary transmission giving it 8 forward gears and 2 reverse gears. Top speed is 20mph. The paint is apparently non-standard gray paint. The picture is a little washed out, it’s a nice light gray, not as white as the picture appears.
I believe this is also a Minneapolis Moline but a completely different color scheme than the yellow one above. It is a 1936 “ZTU” model. I wish I had taken a picture of the spec sheet this one had. It looks like a crank starter, no?
Here is another 1952 Ford 8n, and this one really is a Hot Rod. It sports a Flathead V8 with racing cam and headers for an estimated 125hp and a top speed of 45mph. 45mph in something like this sounds terrifying! In this case it has 12 forward gears and 3 reverse gears I can’t imagine up-shifting in reverse…Very nicely presented.
This is a closeup of the engine of the Ford 8n above. Looks great.
Here is a Massey-Ferguson Diesel. That’s all the detail I have on it but it sounded good and looked capable.
This one is a 1953 Massey-Harris “333”. Do the numbers represent anything in particular or just a model designation?
And this is what I suppose is its bigger brother, a Massey-Harris “444”. It looks identical to the 333 above except for the front wheels. (To my untrained eyes anyway…)
This one is just for Paul – I think this mighty little Montgomery-Ward would complement your magnesium deck M-W lawnmower very nicely. Although it looks too nice to actually use for anything besides looking pretty on the lawn. I love that little exhaust stack with the flapper on top.
To wrap things up, we have this pristine Massey-Ferguson riding mower with electric start! I have no idea of the age of this but it looked impeccable.
Here’s a shot from the other side…
…as well as one from the cockpit.
That’s the show, folks, I hope you all had a good time at the Fair! Come on back next year, lots of fun!
I know I’m going to catch some hell for this but in all the tractors there wasn’t a single working version there? Do the organizers discriminate against working tractors and only let the shed queens in?
Give me a tractor show with real tractors, you know Red ones that haven’t been restored to better than new condition. I’ll take an IH still wearing their original paint and still earning their keep over any of these beauty queens. All of the ones seen here seem to have perfect paint on their exhaust systems indicating they haven’t been really run since their restoration.
Hahaha – Yeah, pretty much all beauty queens except for this one below: A Minneapolis-Moline Bailer. I spoke with the guy for a bit and it had obviously been well used. Hopefully the pic is not too big.
Still, it’s nice to see what they more or less looked like when they came off the dealer’s floor. Although some of them probably did look better at the show than they ever did from the factory.
Now that is cool! I’ve never run across a self-propelled baler like that before…
Here is a slightly different view of the same for you…I wish I had realized that it was different in being self-propelled, I would have taken more pictures while I was talking to the guy after he parked it. I guess I’ll do so next year as I can’t get back there by tomorrow (when the Fair ends)…
OK, one last comment so I’m not hogging the discussion. This may be a Uni-System machine-New Idea marketed it at one time, not sure if Minneapolis/Moline had it too. The idea was to have one, single power source to which you attached multiple harvest equipment-balers, silage choppers, combines. These were somewhat popular in dairy areas, where people harvested a lot of forage. Great field of view!
As seems to be a common theme in comments lately, “each to his own.” Some guys get a kick out of restoring and have no interest in “using.” Others “restore,” but mainly with the intent of keeping it going another 25 years… I enjoy seeing both kinds…
I “frame up” restored my ’50 8N in 2008, and it looked just as nice as any of the above, but it subsequently has gotten regular use on my hobby farm. It’s a bit faded, scratched and dented now, but still looks mighty nice after a session with the pressure washer. Pic is of first drive after resto.
It seems as though Fords that get restored are much more likely to get truly used than other makes. IHs on the other hand typically don’t seemed to get restored, it would mean that it wasn’t able to be used for some time and thus too expensive. John Deere tractors seem to be the most (over)restored and least likely to be used once they have been restored.
Eric, not many tractors from the fifties get used anymore. Most of these restored tractors are owned and restored by retired farmers. The ones that re still being used aren’t very likely to be hauled to the fair, eh? I think you’re being just a wee bit harsh.
Certainly there are not that many 50 year old tractors being used on big commercial farms but for the gentleman/hobby farmer small operation there are quite a few old tractors still out there earning their keep like Ed’s. Around here you see quite a few old tractors still earning their keep on a semi regular basis. One of my houses is down in the Kent Valley with a field across the street and a bunch at the end of the street. I also used to work down there when I was doing the fleet maintenance for the dairy. And there are a handful of hobby type farms around where I live. It is a pretty common sight to see fairly old tractors on the street and in the fields. Of course you’ll see the massive new tractors with air conditioned and stereo equipped enclosed cabs around too.
Our community has a little parade followed by a carnival/fair/car/tractor show and lawn mower racing in the local park. Every year there are a number of the locals that bring their tractors to be in the parade and on display and out of the dozen or more there only one or two is restored and the others are un-restored and are used on at least a semi-regular basis.
There are actually quite a few ’50s-’70s smaller tractors that get used in our area, typically to run augers or move wagons around. They’re not out doing the heavy field work anymore, but they *are* still being used… and a handful of them (like mine) are “restored,” too.
You’re right, I shouldn’t have said “many”. I was trying to respond to Eric’s comment by pointing out that there are tractors that get used and there are those that get restored and shown. Quite often, the two sets don’t overlap, but there are exceptions, of course.
One still sees quite a few old row-crop tractors being used for row crop cultivating because they’re so ideal for that job.
Now, I’ll preface this: I’m not a farmer. I don’t even pretend to be one on the Internet. But I’ve worked with tractors, on a golf course and with a DPW; and I’ve lived in the country more than the city.
And a working tractor…doesn’t stay nice. It pulls its weight. It has to be available. So when there’s something broken or out of kilter…it’s fixed with duct tape and baling wire. Sometimes that fix is permanent.
It gets dirty – a busy farmer or groundsman seldom has time to wash equipment. Especially farmers – the little free time they have is to discharge familial responsibilities. Groundsmen, at least, can wash and repair equipment in wet weather.
So…what I’m saying is…most farm equipment is purchased to work; and then worked into the ground. And then the broken pieces are sold to patch other abused and ancient equipment for another farmer who cannot afford shop repairs or new parts.
Which is why, I’d guess, these shows are so popular. They remind the farm visitors what their equipment looked like when new, long ago…when these were new toys right off the truck, when everything worked right; the paint was fresh, it was all beautiful.
Because it didn’t stay that way long. Like Ed’s hay-harvester, with the cracked and jerry-rigged exhaust manifold.
…How come no Case tractors? Or, David Brown…Case’s British subsidiary?
Or Allis Chalmers.
The fifth picture is a Case, the orange one. No DB’s or Allis-Chalmers. I did not post every picture I took but about 80%. The others are more John Deere’s and there are a couple of IH Farmall’s with attachments…One had a large flat shovel, the other had a scraper blade mounted amidships.
Whoops. Missed the Case…I was focused on the V8s in the 8Ns.
Read about those conversions – I used to have to limp a seven-reel fairway gang-mower along with an 8N; could have used the V8 power.
That is the min of the tractor my grandfather had. He made all of the original rigging for that belly plow work for a front mounted snow blade. In the early ninties he forgot to put a plank of wood under the plow and it froze to the ground, when he tried to lift it he broke the bell housing. He sourced the bell through the local case dealer who knew how to get antique parts. Two weeks later he had the bell and three days after that it was fixed.
And here is the other one with the large flat shovel…What would that be used for?
Manure out of the dairy barn.
EDIT: No. You don’t use a tricycle to get manure out of the channel. Perhaps some sort of scraping job between rows of corn?
My grandfather had a small dairy farm in upstate New York, even farther out in the country than Hobart, and when we visited him in 1953 he was very proud of the gutter-cleaning conveyor system he’d just had installed.
Yep, a manure bucket has long teeth on it. I have one for my 8N, but never installed it, as it would have limited the tractor’s use for other things.
Not the manure channels, but certainly the “loafing shed” if you had one. The bucket is narrow enough to get along walls or into corners. Or, if you piled your silage outside, you would use it to scoop silage into the unloading wagon used to feed cattle.
Or dirt and sand. Or, to stand in to reach up really, really high when you pressure washed the corn crib prior to re-painting. Front end loaders are very handy things.
Just for you, here’s my AC 190:
OK, you hooked me. That is a very nice Allis-one that even green tractor drivers admire. The next step up was the 190 XT, which was basically the same tractor but with a turbocharger in the diesel model. Farmers figured out pretty soon you could turn up the boost (and, maybe, fuel delivery?) on the turbo very easily, and the drivetrain could usually take it, making this perhaps the first “hot rod” tractor (that is, after that Flathead V-8 Ford conversion, but those were not produced in such large numbers at the time). We had a very popular M & W turbo conversion on our JD 4020 diesel, increased the PTO horsepower from 93 to about 125, but that was aftermarket. Allis (and the boys back in the tool shop) showed the way.
Actually, the transmission was/is the weak point of this series of ACs. It was basically lifted from the previous generation and not beefed up. Thankfully (not knowing this when I bought it), mine is in pretty good shape. It’s a straight-cut gear, non-synchro gearbox, so as long as you come to a complete stop for shifting, all is well. It does have a “power director,” which lets you hydraulically shift between 1-2, 3-4, etc., which is handy when baling for slowing down on the turns.
I stand corrected-again! Hope no one is keeping score or I could get kicked out of this club. I have always thought the hood and gauge housing of this A-C was a really nice example of good industrial design-with the hood tapering wider toward the front in a way that made it easy for the engineers to design and install an adequately sized radiator (and for good side vision), and with the gauge housing extending back and up in a way that mirrored the hood.
It looks like the Oliver 99 and the Massey Ferguson in the background of picture 2 have Detroit Diesel engines; It looks like DD superchargers on the sides of the blocks.
If that is the case the noise of the two cycle engine plus the supercharger probably left farmer driving those tractors nearly deaf by the end of the day. More productive than following a horse, but probably just as tiring for the farmer.
Great pictures; nice change of pace.
That Oliver 550 is just like the one my father owned from the early 70s until he died, right down to the year. Dad’s had a hydraulic bucket in the front. One of our favorite family stories involved Dad accidentally ramming that bucket through a huge picture window in the family room.
I spent a fair amount of seat time in that Oliver, which was a good little tractor for him.
To answer your question on the close-set front wheels (or single), they are for row-crop usage. I can’t remember ever seeing dual wheels on one, but I wasn’t around when they were common either and I don’t think you’d find many in regular use (non-hobby) over here any more.
Regarding restored vs working tractors, I think that most of the tractors that appear at shows over here are collectibles owned by working farmers who use newer & larger gear on their farms. Depending on what they own and what they can transport easily, they might bring a few tractors on a semi trailer – it’s a creeping thing really, if you are going to load a truck why not take 2-3 on a slightly larger truck!
Interesting to see these, thanks for posting
Thank you for the explanations regarding the tractor configuration, I appreciate it.
In response to the restored vs. working, I guess the same thing would happen to a regular car guy, you bring the nice shiny ones to show off, not the one you are currently driving around. Several of the tractors were owned by the same sets of people, i.e. several people did bring more than one to the show.
The M and Super M could both be had with wide front ends, too. My 8N and most, if not all, these tractors have adjustable wheels and axles so you can set the track to match your row width. Modern farming uses fairly narrow rows (as small as 15″), with 30″ being most common. My older equipment is all set up for 36″ rows, and when I use the 8N to cultivate, I flip the wheels around to straddle two rows:
Restoring old tractors is a relatively inexpensive hobby, if you have good mechanical skills or access to a machinist to fix/fabricate parts. Parts availability varies by manufacturers, but old farmers are quite resourceful. So, many restorers keep several-maybe one or two dirty and rusty ones for actual work around the farm, and then a “parade tractor” with everything shiny and new-better than new, actually, in terms of the paint job-often with some sort of unique machine attached or pulled behind. Usually the parade tractor has some sort of sentimental or personal meaning. My brother has five old John Deeres, but the parade tractor we are restoring right now is Dad’s 1956 JD 60, the first row-crop tractor that could be ordered with factory power steering. (Dual carburation, too-one carb/cylinder, whoo hoo!) Dad says it is the one machine that made more of a difference in his farming life than any other. The “tin-work” is currently at the home of a friend in Missouri who does high-end car restoration/painting. Cause it was Dad’s.
It’s not very common to turn a profit restoring a tractor (unless it’s something *really* rare). Including purchase & restoration price, I have about $5,500 in my 8N (needed new wheels and tires, which was about $1300 of that). In our area, it would sell for maybe $2,500. But since I use it, it’s paying its way by being useful.
I could have bought a used Orange compact utility for around the same, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun. Not to mention I can drag any modern 25HP tractor around the farm all day with the 8N (weight and torque, FTW!).
Duals came into vogue in the ’60’s when the “horsepower wars” ( we had them on the farm during that decade, too!) resulted in bigger, heavier and stronger tractors that required extra traction without increasing compaction of the ground-then-current front wheel drive technology was generally too expensive or complex for the family farm. And tire manufacturers were also struggling to keep up with the demand for larger and larger tires. Before then, the wide rear axles were indeed primarily for adjustment from narrow to wide row spacing. A fun job, that, moving rear wheels in and out or, really exciting, dismounting and reversing them without having them fall, preferably not on you.
Ironically the largest 2wd tractor, that I am aware of at least, had single tyres – the Upton HT-14/350. 14 is the number of gears, the 350 refers to the horsepower, The tractor weighed 51,000lb, 80% on the rear static, with a 33.5×33 rear tire – they had 900 sq in contact area and Upton claimed less wheel slippage than competitive 4wd tractors. The drawbar alone is 1500lb, being a solid piece of 6×4″ steel.
The photo below is more recent, the tractor is still working today.
http://www.puddingsworld.com/Machinery/Upton/Upton.htm
Nice tractors! Thanks for sharing them.
The Massey Ferguson looks like a 65 I used one for a while Perkins diesel 3 speed dual range transmission good tough tractor.
Two years ago I visited a big classic tractor show in the south of the Netherlands.
That was the first time I saw those huge 100 years old prairie tractors from the US,
like the Rumely Oil Pull tractors. All tractors at the show were pre-1955, so the real “oldtimers”. Both fully restored and original. A lot of German machinery, like Lanz and Hanomag. Here’s a whole load of pictures of that show: http://www.mietracteur.eu/2011/Bergeijk/index.html
There was a time when Caterpillar’s stock color wasn’t yellow. This ancient beastie was the load at an old truck show several years ago.
That should make anyone old Navy happy since it looks pretty much like haze gray.
I have discovered that Illinois is a magic place. The soil here is so fertile you have to spray Round-up to keep plants from covering everything in sight. Perfect sunshine, perfect precipitation, perfect soil is an everyday blessing across Illinois and parts of the Midwest.
But if you are raised in Chicago, smack dab in the middle of all of this, you are completely divorced from agriculture, the culture, the towns, the people and the machinery. I was raised in malls, air conditioned environments and thought going to the vegetable section of my chain grocery store was experiencing farming.
I now live in Springfield Illinois and know better.
Included in my rural understanding, I and have discovered the charm and beauty of these amazing work horses. The Illinois State Fair closed yesterday and there is always a great assortment of tractor history there. You should see the new stuff – I am awestruck at their abilities and prices! I don’t go for the rides, or the food – I go every year to see what I never saw growing up in Chicago – farm animals, FFA kids, and rural life.
Tractors are unknown in urban USA. Farming is simply not considered outside metropolitan areas. Even in Illinois, Chicagoans are clueless about these machines. That is why guys like me are so fascinated with them. Both my wife and I enjoy seeing how friends make agricultural magic through hard work, crop insurance and banks.
We’ve discovered that the more open minded you are, the more respect you have for Americans living outside coastal US cities. While I love our US cities, I have also discovered that I love the Americans living between US coasts.
And I love those tractors!
It would’ve been something to see a Hoyt-Clagwell at the Larimer County Fair, but it would have to be a fan-made version b/c that brand was made up for the TV show “Green Acres.” In real life the tractor was actually a badge-engineered Fordson Model F, which was produced from 1917 to 1928. Interestingly, the tractor in the show’s opening was a 1928 John Deere GP, but Ford sponsored most of the vehicles so the Fordson was used in the show instead. As luck would have it, many of the Hoyt-Clagwell’s “incidents” actually DID happen on the real-life Fordson.