I know I've mentioned this a couple of times before, but maybe some of you haven't seen this.
I knew a big-time wholesale fruit/vegetable grower in NJ who had about 40 "old" tractors, mostly red, going back to some of the early letter-series and on up through the numbered versions. He was able to buy a good tractor and have it restored for probably 10% or less of the price of a new tractor of similar size. He had a full-time mechanic during the winter, who did whatever was needed to make the tractors work right and look great. I am sorry to say that this fellow died suddenly at 47 and the entire operation died with him. The tractors were so pretty that they brought high prices at the auction that took place after his death. His idea was that he could have a "specialty" tractor for every operation. He had a bunch of A's, Super A's, 130s and the like for vegetable cultivation, and H's and M's and other similars for heavier work like hauling and probably cultivating multiple rows. He never had to mount or dismount a cultivator or sprayer, because he had a tractor or two set up for every job. I do think he had one or two really big modern tractors for rapid heavy tillage, but all the rest were used to make his operation super-efficient. I don't know the economics of it, but it all seemed to make sense. I grew up on a 10-20 and several F-12s in the family, plus an F-20, a "Regular," an A and B, and an Oliver RC, all belonging to neighbors or relatives. When the letter-series came out, I was absolutely starstruck by their beauty. In the fifties and sixties, my father had a couple of H's and eventually a Super-M, and I spent lots of time on them. They were certainly more comfortable than the old letter-series stuff, but compared to a modern tractor with comfort-cab, full-time hydraulics, 3-point hitch, power-steering, etc., etc., I guess they would seem pretty crude. The example I mention above shows that these now-old birds can still do a lot of useful work at fairly-low cost, especially as auxiliary units on large farms. No, they are not yet ready for the scrap pile. I hope they never reach the point of being so uncommon that their prices become outrageous. I still remember a neighbor who had TWO Titan 10-20s. In the early 40s, he had stopped using them for much EXCEPT disking corn stalks left in the rows after the corn binder had gone through. He said the angle lugs helped chop up the corn stubble, and the narrow tread fit the rows exactly. One day around 1950, my father said that this neighbor had sold BOTH Titans for scrap, and that he bragged that he had got 75 whole dollars for them!!!!! Ouch. I wasn't too interested at the time, but still I felt a little punch in the stomach that such a fascinating piece of rotating, pulsating, thumping machinery could be thrown away like that. Can you touch one today for 15K?
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Today's Featured Article - Pitfalls of Tractor Engine Rebuilds - by Chris Pratt. The first pop after you have put the machine together with your own hands is exciting and pleasing. The whole experience can be marred if one moves too fast and makes too many assumptions that they can just use "as is" some parts they should be closely scrutinizing and possibly attended to. In such cases, rework makes what could have been a fun project turn into an irritant or even a nightmare. Minor Irritants To give you an example of an minor but irritating proble
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