(first posted 2/2/2018) I ran across this ad recently which prompted me to learn a little about these neat garden tractors Ford offered from 1972–1983.
Jacobsen manufactured Ford’s garden tractors, actually starting in 1964 with the T-800 and T-1000. These were quite heavy-duty tractors and are worth restoring today when found. Gilson Brothers made the Ford LT 81 and LT 111 from 1982–83, and took over manufacturing of the whole line as of 1984. These later units were considered to be more of a ‘yard tractor’ than a ‘garden tractor.’
I pass a rural home on my way to work that used to have a little blue Ford garden tractor parked next to a shed, so now I know what it was – it disappeared a few years ago, unfortunately. I wonder if the young lass in the photo above is a Mustang-driving secretary?
From about age 12 until I left for college, I spent many an hour on our old Sears Craftsman SS-12, purchased new in 1968. We talked my Dad into taking us for one last ride around the block a couple years ago (and obviously had fun doing it). What was your mowing machine of choice (or forced servitude) growing up?
Awesome! I have several Sears Craftsman (Roper-built) tractors, a 1977 ST-12 and a 1979 ST-16. These are real working tractors capable of a lot more than cutting grass.The ST-12 is getting an upgrade this year, when I replace the Tecumseh 12 hp flat-head with some Honda power. I have the front blade, belly-blade, cutting deck, roto-tiller and snow-thrower attachments as well as the original manual and sales brochures.
I had no idea Ford made lawn equipment. The first house I grew up in had a huge backyard lawn for 1100 square feet, and we had a Honda push mower. Thank god it had self-propel. Grandma’s house (and her neighbor I would cut) had teeny lawns, but they had a huge slope out back. I got to use a Snapper for them, but no self-propel… A powered tractor would have been amazing for both. When we moved to our new house when I was in 3rd grade, it was just a small front lawn. The backyard was all wooded and filled with ferns and hostas. We had a self propelled Toro by then. All the neighbors around us had the tractor type mowers, and damn if I wasn’t jealous as a kid watching everyone drive thru their chores. And now I’m in Tuscon, and don’t have to worry about mowing sand and gravel 🙂
My father bought a Toro lawn tractor about 1968 and replaced it with a rear engine riding mower that was a Trustworthy Hardware brand. Maybe the fact that I ran the Toro into my stepmoms 68 Cutlass was a factor?
Other than the Studebaker-Gravely connection, did any other auto or truck manufacturer offer lawn tractors besides Ford? If I ever knew about these I had forgotten.
International Cub Cadet. They started it all.
AMC owned Wheel Horse for a short time. 1974 to around 1982-3.
Oh man, the Gravley, pride of Dunbar, WV. And the top of the line “Westchester” with the fancy fiberglass hood (your own lawn Avanit) and the riding sulky!
For those of you who don’t don’t know, Gravley’s were – and are – two wheel tractor units with a front PTO that links to a range of attachments – that’s why the mower deck is in front, not below the engine. And this isn’t a four-wheel model; the rear sulky is a 2 wheel trailer that attaches to the rear of the tractor. Normally, you operate a Gravely as a walk-behind.
We had a regular one of these in 2nd half of the 70s, inherited from my grandparents’ house outside of town. It’s sickle bar and 36″ rotary mower weren’t much use on a suburban 1/2 acre lot, but both the snow blade and especially the 2-stage snow thrower got a lot of use.
We finally traded it to our landscaper for a brand new 1980 Toro 2-stage snow thrower that my parents’ neighbors use to this day.
As to other automakers dabbling in homeowner class equipment, Graham-Paige morphed its production capability into serving the lightweight ag world.
The colors of the ad and the setting make me think of the John Deere Patio Series tractors. Sell you a tractor to match your home decor.
So ironic since most people’s John Deere purchase is influenced by green and yellow paint.
The Patio series have seen more interest in the past 10 years than they ever did at the time of introduction. Especially if the collector also has the complete set of attach
Ford anticipated Honda somewhat, who sells snow blowers and lawn mowers. But unlike Ford, who out-sourced, they’ve always done small air-cooled engines.
Two things that are different: Ford had been making tractors since the teens. And they were just imitating International, who was the first with their Cub Cadet.
Also, unlike John Deere, Ford never broadened their distribution beyond Ford tractor dealers – think that was the same for IH, but not sure.
I had no idea those Ford mowers existed, but one would look right at home alongside my Sierra!
I don’t remember our early mowers, but around 1987ish when I was 13, Dad bought a Victa Mustang GTS (“Guaranteed To Start”). Victa is an Australian brand of mowers that’s also sold here in New Zealand. I took great delight in going to school and telling my schoolmates that we’d just gotten a brand new Mustang GTS…
The Victa passed on to me when I bought my first home in my late 20s. It always started first time (guaranteed to start!), and did a great job until 2015 when I traded it on a Husqvarna. I sold the Husky last year when we moved to a large country property that came with a ride-on for the 3+ acres of lawn. That ride-on, a Gutbrod GLX 105, is my first, and what a treat it is to sit on a mower with cruise-control after decades of pushing!
What I’d like to know is whether the Ford lawn tractor had rectangular headlights before the cars.
I grew up pushing 2 stroke Lawn Boys. At age 40 I’d had enough of pushing full time and bought a used rear engine Snapper. I’m on my second used one now. They’re cheap used and tough as hell. It was Forest Gumps mower of choice.
The first thing I shoved around the yard was a “Power-Matic” of unknown provenance, other than a Briggs & Stratton engine. The engine eventually seemed to lose most of it’s compression as it became more reluctant to cut anything, stalling at the slightest provocation. Of course, the deck was rusting through by then too.
It was replaced by a Toro Guardian, which delighted me as it’s honking big Tecumseh would cut through about anything. The Toro also had an effective self-propel setup that actually drove the front wheels. The Power-Matic had had belt drive to toothed rollers that were supposed to drive the wheels by friction, but the teeth on the rollers wore down to nothing and didn’t grip with a hoot.
For the halibut, I picked up a 24″ Craftsman in a yard sale for about $5. The guy selling it explained how, to start it: you had to slosh gas into the air intake. I took it home, freed up the push-pull cable that operated the choke from the lever on the handle, wound up the crank-up spring starter and the old Tecumseh roared to life without sloshing gas into the intake. Sold it in a yard sale at a profit.
For the last 40 years I have lived in apartments and condos, so no longer need to worry about such things as mowing the lawn.
My summer walks around the neighborhood take me past a big old house on a huge lot. The owner has an ancient tractor with a mower deck for most of it. Last summer, I found him mowing around the house with one of these (pic found on the net). I had never seen a Ford rider before this one.
Separated at birth?
We had a small yard at our house and we used a mower from the early fifties that my father had purchased from Sears. It had an old school two stroke engine; the kind that required mixing the oil with the gas in a gallon jug and then shaking vigorously for several minutes to insure the two were blended together. Actually I never liked using this mower because, a) it was hard to start, you had to wrap a rope around the exposed flywheel and pull sharply, and b) this was long before any type of safety equipment was even thought of so to stop the engine you needed to put a foot on the mower deck and then use your toe to short out the plug by pushing a metal tab against it. Even to my teenage mind this seemed dangerous so I would just grab a ball bat and pull the plug wire loose. My younger brother actually wanted to mow the grass so as soon as he could convince our father that he was old enough he took over operation of the beast.
Wow! I gave one of these to my Dad recently. I was doing a contract job for a company that was liquidating. First thing they told me was to “get rid of that junk lawn mower”.
So I did. Do not try loading one of these alone!
Here it is before having any work done.
It came with a plow, mower deck, grader and a Harrow. Plus all the owners manuals, accessory catalogs and some service records going back to 1980.
Dad’s been restoring it as much as he uses it.
Very nice! My youngest brother ended up with the SS-12, and will hopefully restore it at some point. He’s already done one before that he subsequently sold.
Hmm… So that’s where names for Terminator come from: T-800 and T-1000!
This was our yard tractor in early-1970s Vancouver suburbia. The handle on the side is for a blade which was used for ploughing the driveway in snow.
I don’t think my sister (brunette) and cousin (blonde) ever actually drove it…
Love it. My Uncle had an older orange Suburban. Here’s a video freeze-frame of Dad giving us and some neighborhood kids a ride. He’s smoking his pipe while driving – very stereotypical! We also had the dozer blade attachment, along with a Scraper Scarafier, Rotospader, 1-row seeder and a moldboard plow.
My first experience with yard mowing was behind a 1950’s-vintage Snapping Turtle mower. This would be sometime when I was around 10 in 1965. I’m sure that today this beast would be seen as fraught with child-mangling nasties – not least that potentially finger-chopping belt pulley.
That thing is cool!
When I was a kid we had a REO lawnmower made by the REO truck people. It was a reel-type mower and after a few years rotaries took over the market. It didn’t work that well in our weedy lawn and had to be sharpened by a professional.
http://www.reolawnmower.com/ for more info.
At one time, I had both a REO mower and a REO snowblower. Don’t know who made the engine, but they certainly were shakers. Both were trash picks and both really worked.
Reel type push mower for us. Really hard for me to push. Dad did not want anything to do with a power mower.
I used a push reel mower for the first couple years after purchasing our first home, but only because our budget simply wouldn’t stretch enough to buy a powered mower at the time. I still have it, but it hasn’t been used in many a year. We ended up inheriting a late ’70s Craftsman rider from my wife’s grandfather’s estate, which was literally a God-send. The story of driving from Atlanta to Boston in my VW van pulling a U-haul trailer to retrieve it is EPIC.
We had an electric mower. When I didn’t want to cut the (admittedly postage-stamp sized) yard I’d “accidentally” run over the power cable. I’d much rather sit at a cool basement workbench and solder together a power cable than be outside mowing anyway.
Any brand of late ’60s/early ’70s lawn tractor gets high marks from me if it apes the styling of its larger field-working siblings, like the 9000. It’s woefully underrepresented (as with most ’60s/70s Ford tractors) at any tractor show, even the Half-Century of Progress.
It’s a shame Ford never did one like this:
My childhood and teen lawnmower was a circa 1969 Toro push mower with a Tecumseh engine, with a hand throttle and an aluminum deck. This worked out well since the mower was lighter than our neighbor’s steel deck Craftsman and the throttle let me run slow and quiet until I hit a rough patch.
My Dad didn’t believe in riders. I grew up pushing a green lawn boy to do our house and his service station for years. It was a lot of grass to cut every week and that tough old mower did it without fail. Rotten thing!?
As a side note; Ed, the VW bus in the picture looks rather cool.
There has to be a story about it in CC’s past or if not we need one!
Ask and ye shall receive: http://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/my-ex-curbside-classic-1971-vw-bus-the-mayfield-belle/
In 1958 Dad bought a cheap, no-name rotary mower that lasted maybe 5 years. He replaced it with a 2 cycle Lawn Boy that lasted for over 30. Still ran when he gave it away after retiring from lawn chores.
Several here have commented about Reo reel mowers. A neighbor had one. They were not cheap and they must have weighed 200 pounds. All were self-propelled. They didn’t handle tall, heavy grass well since they only cut the blades of grass once (unlike a rotary that cut them over and over). Raking was required. By 1960 or so they fell out of favor as rotarys were less expensive and did a better job.
When I was a kid in central Florida, Dad once bought a reel mower (Sears I think) for mowing the ward. It did a terrible job on St. Augustine grass, which propagates by surface runners. Lots of grass blades were left behind, and Dad returned the mower the following day.
Lots in California’s Bay Area were small and the lawns even smaller. We had a reel push mower, either mom or dman powered (I don’t recall either my dad or older sister ever mowing the lawn). Around 8th or 9th grade I started dragging it around the ‘hood mowing lawns for $1.50. When I bought my first house it had a tiny lawn. I think I took the old mower and bought my mom an electric. I still have the electric, Black & Decker, I think, but leave it at a rental for the tenant to use. No lawn now, but we have many trees and a pool. I’m continuously trimming trees and skimming leaves out of the pool. A lawn would be easy …
I used one of those old manual reel mowers for the first year I had a house with a small yard. By the end of that first year I understood 1) why some people had put engines on the things and 2) why lawns with lots of crabgrass was not a good environment for the reel blades which would cut the short grass but leave the tall crabgrass shoots alone.
My grandmother died in 1987 & we pulled a vintage Lawn-Boy 2-stroke out from under her house that hadn’t been used in years. I tightened the intake manifold bolts, put in a fresh tank of 32-1 and the thing came to life first or second pull. Lawn-Boy 2-strokes forever!
The old Lawn Boys like the tan one I had from the 60s used a 16:1 mixture. You could always smell a Lawn Boy in those days as its owner walked around in a little bit of a blue haze.
You didn’t have to use bug dope pushing those old Lawn Boy mowers. The oil smoke kept the bugs away.
If you use modern synthetic oil it will smoke much less. You do however need to stick to the 16:1 ratio.
Thanks Ed!
The Mayfield Belle story was before my start date at CC.
I try and follow old links back when I find them but hadn’t come across that one!
1995 American Yard Products Yard-Pro, manufactured by Husqvarna. Bought it from my BIL (the one with the 575,000 mile Chevy Express) for $200 three years ago. Have never seen another like it. Well-built with cast-iron front axle complete with fittings. 20hp Kohler twin and hydrostatic drive.
AYP/Husqvarna was Craftsman’s supplier in that period, so parts aren’t too hard to find…yet.
I found this one a few blocks from my house last summer. I had no idea Ford had ever marketed lawn equipment until I saw it.
Edit: Why do thumbnails keep appearing upside down?
Did you post directly from your phone?
No, I didn’t post directly from my phone. I posted from my laptop, but I did upload the picture directly from my “iCloud Photos” folder.
This article explains the “why.” My guess is that the plugin we use for comment photos doesn’t handle EXIF data when creating the thumbnails, thus the upside-down images. I usually make a copy of a photo I want to upload and save it at something like 800 pixels wide (or tall) before uploading (which makes for a much smaller file size). That automagically also fixes the orientation problems since it saves the pixels correctly vs. relying on the EXIF data.
https://www.geek.com/apple/why-iphone-pictures-flip-when-emailed-and-how-to-fix-it-1602306/
Ever since I was old enough to cut the lawn myself, I have always liked working on (and playing with) powered lawn equipment. I grew up with mostly Craftsman products but had a few Toro and Snapper products as well. I always admired the Ford and Wheel Horse tractors, but never had one. I did have a 70s Sears model that looked similar. My had had its engine replaced and took the deck off of it for us to use as a slow go cart. I don’t know what happened to it, but my dad replaced it with an 80s Murray-built Craftsman for cutting the lawn. I still have my dad’s old Murray-Craftsman. It’s in rough shape and the old Briggs 12Hp L-head needs a rebuild, but haven’t been able to get rid of it yet. I have plenty of other projects in line before it, so we will see if it’s still around when I get the time. I envisioned making it into a little Off-road vehicle or pulling tractor or something.
In 1983 my parents moved into the home my dad built for us. We went from living in a duplex in town to a house on 10 acres, with about 3 of those eventually became our yard. My dad’s first attempt for a riding mower was a homebuilt tractor using a IH 3/4 ton transmission and rearend that he narrowed down, powered by a 16 hp Briggs and Stratton engine. He used the PTO from the transmission to power a home built finishing mower that he pulled behind the tractor. Unfortunately, he couldn’t slow the tractor down enough to mow or plow without slowing down the mower to the point that it wouldn’t cut grass. So, the homebuilt tractor was relegated to plowing the garden and scraping the driveway. He wound up buying a 1968 Sears Hydrostat Garden tractor out of a guys front yard for $100 in or around 85. He still has it today, along with about 25 or so more garden tractors we/he accumulated over the years! He also still has the homeade tractor too!
Ford T-800 and ford T-1000 was made in 1965. Not 1964. I have 5 T-1000s and 2 T-800s. They only made 451 T-1000s and only 351 T-800s. There is a good article in the lawn and garden tractor magazine you read.
HAHA I knew you would have found this before i did.
I still have an LA145. It’s a 1977 model. The original 14 horse Kohler eventually died and I installed 16 horse Kohler. The mower deck eventually rusted out so I bought a new John Deere for mower duty. However the Ford still does all my tilling. Still works like a charm.
If you want to know more about Ford Garden tractors, check out our site
http://www.fordjacobsentractor.com
Reel type push mower in our family. I was a very skinny kid and it was hard for me to push. I guess you could say pushing it built character but I cannot point to any evidence that it ever did that.
Since this popped up again I’ll mention these are not the only rebranded Ford tractors. From the 70s until well into the 90s Ford’s <30 hp farm tractors were made by Shibaura and at the bigger end the Ford Bidirectional tractors were the reult of Ford acquiring Versatile, and the tractors were sold under both brands
I wrote up the history of the New Holland Boomer 8N (Ford 8N tribute) here: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/fieldside-classics/fieldside-classic-2010-new-holland-boomer-8n-retro-goes-farming/
It covers a bit on the Shibaura-built Fords…
Since writing this article, I’ve retired and downsized from our former Middle West farm to one acre in Middle TN. I traded the commercial 0-turn mower for a Cub Cadet XT3 garden tractor on which I installed an electric-lift sleeve hitch and front bucket/plow mount. The XT3 was discontinued in 2022, and was one of the last garden tractors made “like they used to,” with heavy-gauge metal and grease zerks everywhere.
The mascot of my high school was the Fordson Tractor.
They were also used to mow the grounds of the school pulling a vicious looking blade array for many years.
It has been displayed in various guise in the main hallway for 100 years.