Re: Farmall M 1931

Posted by LenNH on March 19, 2008 at 14:24:24 from (65.96.146.183):

In Reply to: Farmall M 1931 posted by L McThom on March 12, 2008 at 09:58:03:

Just a useless remark: I have vivid memories of tractors from the 20s and 30s, so I thought I'd share some memories and maybe make a little comparison between the M and its immediate predecessor, the F-30. I'll have to admit I've never driven an F-30, but have spent countless hours on a "Regular" Farmall, an F-20, a couple of 10-20s, several F-12s, and a Hart-Parr RC (1930). On an M, you got (if you chose it--an option in the beginning) a starter and lights.
No more gut-wrenching while turning a crank, and no more broken arms from an engine that decided to spin backwards by firing before top dead-center. You got a nice seat, well sprung, set on the chassis where the boucing wasn't too bad. You got a beautiful, flat platform, just the right distance from the seat for most people, and you got clutch and brake pedals that were conveniently placed so that you could reach them easily and didn't have to grope for some lever that was always just a little too far away. Most of the other controls were pretty well set, although I always thought the gearshift lever was in a clumsy place (in low or third, it tended to hit your calf, and to get it into reverse, second or fourth, you had to bump your arm against the steering wheel--until you learned to turn your hand upside down and LIFT the lever). The throttle lever in the low-speed position was too far away from your right hand if you happened to be doing something that required you to look backward a lot, like mowing, combining or baling. With a muffler, the engine made just enough noise that you knew you had some horses under that beautiful hood.
Back to the really old stuff. The F-20 and F-30 were of the same basic design, so I'll babble on as if driving one was like driving the other. One difference is immediately obvious, and that is weight and size. The F-30 used the same engine dimensions (and probably many of the same parts) as the 10-20, and I expect they felt somewhat the same. The 10-20 was a real "thumper." You could almost hear the individual explosions, and you could certainly feel them through the chassis. The F-20 engine was about 60 cubic inches smaller, and did not convey quite the same feeling of massive explosions back through the frame. And now to the comfort part. On the F-20, you sat on a seat that was out on a stalk BEHIND the rear axle. When the front wheels went down, the driver went up. When the front wheels climbed over a rut or a bump in the field, the driver went down. All day long. There was NO comfortable place for the driver's feet. If he used the "foot rests" that were cast into the axle housing, his knees came up close to his face. This position got pretty tiring, so the alternative was to drop your feet in front of the axle housing, in which case your
ankles bounced against the axle housing. I have seen little things that looked like foot scrapers and that were bolted to the top of the transmission. Don't know if they were IH options or just a DIY thing. Probably added just a bit to the comfort level. The steering on these tractors seemed more sensitive to ruts than the letter series tractors were (my opinion). The big iron steering wheels could act like flywheels if you hit a rut, and you had to be
hanging on tight in rough ground or you might find the spokes of the wheel heading toward your thumbs. As to noise, well, mufflers were not very common in the 20s and 30s, so you usually got the entire blast coming out of the big pipes a few feet in front of you. Eventually, you could buy mufflers to fit these tractors, and they then became quite a bit more civilized, at least in the noise department.
I think one of the reasons why the F-20 and its relatives seemed so rough is that they were not designed to run at the speeds that were created when they were equipped with rubber tires. The 36" option on an F-20 gave a wheel diameter that must have been between 48" and 50",
a lot bigger than the original 40" steel wheel; in my experience, each gear speed was "advanced" by one. First moved nearly as fast as the original second, second moved at close to 4 mph (as fast as, or faster than, the original 4th gear), and so on. When you plowed all day in second at 4 mph, you really got a bouncing around. I never complained back in the 40s. I loved the old beast. Why were the rubber tires so much bigger than the original steel wheels?
In order to clear the brake drums, the rims had to be at least 36". There were options as small as 24" rims, but these wheels had to be turned
OUT, and the result was a VERY wide tractor. There are pictures of these in old IHC sales
literature; they always look extremely ungainly, and I sometimes wonder if there weren't problems moving them around through narrow farm gates.
A final remark for anybody who's interested in theoretical stuff. I found an article from a 1920 magazine in which some very serious tests were done on optimum plowing speeds. It is probably a good idea to view this from the standpoint of the slow-speed plow bottoms that were common in those days. The test was carried out at a midwestern agricultural college (I can find the reference and, with a little time, either reproduce the article or summarize the most important parts of it). The overall results that I remember were that 3 mph was about the maximum plowing speed before the power requirements went up a lot. For example, at 3 mph, 5 hp might be enough for one bottom, but at 4 mph, it might take 8 or maybe 9 horsepower.
I expect that the real choice of ground speeds on the old tractors had to do with a couple of other things. Steel wheels absorb enormous amounts of power--probably up to 35% of the engine power (see the old Nebraska tests)--AND lugs make the ride on a tractor atrocious at much faster than a walk. It may be that tractors of the 20s and 30s had such massive gears and axles because of the strains put on them by the bouncing and by the constant jerking as the lugs dug in and slipped a little before coming back up out of the ground.
My father's 10-20 was on steel all its life. I plowed with it from about 1941 to 1951. The waste of power by steel was very obvious. This tractor would pull two 14" bottoms all day in second. An overload just made the big engine bellow like a bull and go right on. In third gear, the tractor would do no heavy work. Despite all I said about the discomfort of steel wheels, this tractor wasn't too bad to ride on in soft spring sod or already-plowed ground. But you were never unaware that the wheels were solid and the lugs high and sharp. Taking this thing down a gravel road was another adventure entirely. You pretty much had to drive in low gear at about half speed in order stay on, AND it was a lot more comfortable standing up.

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