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First , your assumption on "The paperwork muct be there or destroyed is wrong. When Case/Tenenco bought the Ag Equipment Division in 1965, the parts drawings that IH had for ag equipment came with, as many of these parts were still (and are still) in production. Case has pretty millions of parts drawings- won't claim they have everything that IH ever made cause stuff does get lost over the years, but it's pretty close, and plenty of collectors have toured Hinsdale/Burr Ridge and have seem the drawing storage areas- it's nearly all microfilm now. That being said, there were two boxes of microfilm in a different format than the normal stuff IH/Case uses. Those films were rescued from an office being cleaned out, and on a book research trip I was the first one to take a look at those in years. Those boxes contain IH tractor parts removed from supply before 1950. Friction Drive, Mogul, Titan, etc. There's a few drawings up into the letter series, the parts from the 1939-1940 tractors that were superseded quite early. The Mogul and Titan guys needed those drawings pretty badly, so I started putting together the politics of getting those drawings transferred from Case to the Archives. With the change of archivists in the late 1990s, the big upheavals at Case and then CNH Global (everytime a vice president signed off, they got canned!), and dealing with a few lawyers and other types, the drawings (about 31,000) are in Madison now, and copies are getting scanned. A private individual put up the $11,000 to get the scanning done- not real expensive per drawing, but there's a lot! I have to check to see if I can disclose the donor's name- he deserves a lot of credit, obviously. The plan is to make the drawings available for collectors. There will be fees involved (I don't know how much). Of course, Case still has the trademarks, so if you want to go into the parts business and use IH logos or names, you'll have to deal with their product liscensing folks. Case has no problem with individual collectors making parts for themselves, but if someone tries to make a buck, Case wants their cut, and they want to preserve their trademark (obviously, someone making brand new Farmall Regulars would be a real problem). Maybe someday we can get the rest of the parts drawings out of Case, but it would take serious convincing of the Society to do that, and serious donations from the colelctor's community. Case still has plenty of other materials, and the clock is certainly ticking, even from a housekeeping point of view, which is hte real threat.
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