Indians For Guns

Actually not what you're thinking.

I was at an antique tractor pulling contest yesterday and shot an interesting sequence that I thought I'd share. The photos are not technically anything special as the sun was at a bad angle and I didn't have my lens hood with me.
I did however, get lucky with my timing.

This is a Massey-Harris "44 Special" (1954) in the modified class with a Chevy 396 engine. He is just starting to dig in in this photo.
The truck that he is towing has a skid lowered and on the back has a weight that rides a rail causing it to progressively put more weight on the skid as the distance increases


Here you can see him lose all his lug bolts.


A close-up of the lug bolts blowing out of their holes.


Here is the tractor being shut off. You can see the backing plate laying on the ground by the wheel.



Oh No! Being helped off the field by a Case (competing brand).
Antique tractor owners can sometimes be very loyal to one particular brand name, disparaging all others.
So an event like this can provide years of material for a good natured leg-pulling.

where are you in us?

Baljit

Southern Minnesota

ok i never been there


Baljit

I hope there wasnt much damage other than to his ego..

You got it right MOA. No damage to the tractor but the owner got a lot of grief.
"I told you not to eat that last hamburger" and other comments in that vein.

Thanks, xl, tractor pulls are great stuff!

I am a country boy myself, and you are certainly right about tractors: Brand loyalty can be a very big deal. Many of the older brands have disappeared from the US market, which is a shame. I was brought up to believe in orange tractors -- the Allis Chalmers.



I have spent many hours in the field on one of these and look back on those times quite fondly. These were wonderful tractors, the best their day.

Timmy,
When I was in college, my roommate was from a farming family. As a foreign student, not having anywhere else to be, I spent most of my summer vacations and other breaks with his family. They were John Deere aficionados, so I spent a lot of time on JD's. I helped out with chores around the farm and with fieldwork. It was a great learning experience. I still remember those days fondly. The wealth of experience that I gained from being on the farm was huge. One summer, we tore down, rebuilt and repainted a Farmall H and an M. By then these were used to run PTO irrigation pumps as they were too underpowered for the equipment they had at the time. I also helped split and repair some of the big articulated 4-wheel drive John Deere's, raised bins, walked beans (ugh!), put up hay in the hay-mow, learned how to drive a semi-tractor, learned how to fence and a million other things that make American farmers so self-sufficient. To this day, we're still invited to all their family functions and are treated as just another member of their family.

My first job out of college was with a Farm Equipment manufacturer and I was a part of their electronics division. By then farming was changing and people were starting to use technologies like Radar and GPS in their tractors. The company I worked for made microprocessor controlled chemical application monitors and planter monitors (that were able to count individual seeds as they were being planted). New technologies like ridge-till and no-till were being adopted by more and more people and we made the equipment for it. The H's and M's with their 30HP and 44HP were sadly relegated to non-essential tasks as farms and the equipment to work them got bigger and bigger.

After I got married; my in-laws lived in rural Minnesota and my father-in-law had an AC WD45 with a loader on it to clear the snow off his long driveway. His family only had AC's so we would make John Deere and AC comments at each other. I helped him rebuild and paint it one summer. I've always had a soft spot for American tractors of the 60's and earlier. I really enjoy the antique tractor pulls and it is amazing how much they can pull with the limited amount of horsepower that they have. I also enjoy going to the various "Threshing Bee's" that they have in some of the small towns around here.

XL: I've done duty on a few of those, as well!

I've driven Hs and Ms, and also an F20 (predecessor to the H). Another one I've driven was Mr. Schreiber's Coop, which was made by Oliver. This was the monster of the area, being the only 6 cylinder tractor around and the largest as well. Still, there were some farms far down the road where one, at least, had a big Massey Ferguson diesel. But I never got near that one. Mr. Becker was the loner who had John Deeres. You could always hear Mr Becker doing the plowing, as the sound of his "Johnny Popper" was plainly audible for over a mile when under load.

One of my tricks was one of the Hs I drove -- as you say, by my times they were used for haying and for other jobs, since they didn't have a 3 point hitch like the ACs did. Anyway, this one H was pretty old and tired, and it was nearly impossible to use road gear (5th) as the engine wouldn't pull it. I managed to use it on long runs for empty hay wagons by double clutching - a neat trick with the hand throttle! Actually, I think those old cogs were so worn... but when you're young, you know how it is. I thought it was funny, then, when the wheels would spin because they were flying off bumps. Now, I know it was stupid and am thankful I didn't spill the thing.

The farm I worked on used this H for hay wagons, as I said, and also for running the flat belt to the silage chopper for filling the silos. Another job it had was to haul the hay up into the mow before the elevator was bought. There were four large forks on chains that would take up 10 bales at a time. When this mechanism reached the truck rail at the peak of the barn roof, it was unhitched from the lift and could be taken into the barn hanging from that rail.

My Uncle Harold was, perhaps, the fiercest Allis Chalmers fan around, and as his favorite nephew, I am obligated to retain his approving look from that great back 40 in the sky and maintain my loyalty!

He had an old WD and later on, a D17, which was a really interesting later derivative. Rather than just the hand clutch, that same lever controlled a 2 speed auxiliary, so the middle was neutral and the ends were 2 separate speeds. I loved driving that thing!

Regarding the technical aspects, I really liked that novel way Allis Chalmers had for adjusting the rear wheel width. I liked the hand clutch and especially the great engine, with its liners and huge iron pistons -- with the "Power Crater" -- remember? (I didn't know it was called a "Heron head" after the great British aero engineer who invented it.) Also, changing hitches and attachments was very nice. I can recall sitting for hours as a little kid on the tool box on the fender -- I just liked riding the things and would do so for hours if allowed.

I would love to have one today -- a WD 45 -- and maybe some day, I will!

You mention "walking beans" -- My most hated farm experience. One year, sorghum got mixed into the bean seeds and grew up in clumps with the beans. Since they were in rows, they couldn't be rooted out with the cultivator and the only thing was to dig them out with shovels, since their woody stalks would plug up the bean picker. We would get to the fields before 8, when the humidity was so thick, and start walking the rows of over waist high beans. We were soaked about 20 feet in from the dew, at it was just plumb nasty work all day in the fields, digging out that sorghum and occasional jimson weed. I did hate that.

I so often regret that I wasn't able to provide my kids with that kind of experience growing up. Maybe they would not have liked it. My brother hated farming and wanted nothing to do with it at all, for instance, and I know others didn't like it, either. But I sure did.

I am so hoping that I can get enough ground in New Mexico to raise some corn and chiles. My "tractor" for this will be my little Honda tiller -- a very modest little machine, but I do like its tiny little 4 stroke motor.

If I can't have an Allis Chalmers, maybe I should shoot for a jugaad. If I'd have had one of those as a kid, I would have been in 7th Heaven!

I've never driven one of those tractors with a cab, much less air conditioning. I think the biggest one I ever drove was an IH 806, a gas tractor. It was too new for me; my heart belonged to those ACs!

Thanks for sharing your experiences, I could smell the fresh dirt just reading your words. Ahhh!

From tractor it came to mind that even I can share my Tractor's photograph ( including myself driving it ). Picture has been taken at my farm .

John Deer?

Tractor brand loyalty is a big deal in India too... preferred brands vary widely by state/ region. Guess it's a universal farmer thing? (pun intended)

Good read! Coming from a family of Massey Ferguson lovers, I shamefully admit I haven't driven one.
Tilling my farm with the cultivator is still on my must-do list during holidays.

Pran

mundaire wrote:Tractor brand loyalty is a big deal in India too... preferred brands vary widely by state/ region. Guess it's a universal farmer thing? (pun intended)

Eh tell me about it. we even have songs for tractors.

Here is one

[youtube][/youtube]

Njoy

-Inder

Pran wrote:Coming from a family of Massey Ferguson lovers, I shamefully admit I haven't driven one.
Tilling my farm with the cultivator is still on my must-do list during holidays.

Even though I can afford to keep a driver for tractor jobs at my farm but I personally like and do all the ploughying and tilling by myself. Mine is a power-steering model, which I specially bought since it was to be used by me. And above all Its a powerful beast and so much fun to drive . Being a businessman and an advocate by profession I still love to handle all my farm routine by myself. Being at farm is so pleasing . Well above said stuff is a bit OT but felt like sharing with you guys.