Re: Farmall f-12

Posted by LenNH on November 20, 2008 at 14:21:48 from (24.61.134.129):

In Reply to: Farmall f-12 posted by bob a on November 12, 2008 at 08:48:32:

There were ALL KINDS of IHC equipment to be mounted on the F-12, including one- and two-way plows, middlebusters, two-row cultivators (several types, for different crops), a 7-foot sickle-bar mower, and so on. My father bought a new one on 40" Goodyears in 1938, and it seems like I spent the next 15 years on that thing. I actually drove it before I could reach the pedals (somebody had to jump on the drawbar and throw a leg over the axle to push in the clutch). I was determined, you might say.
We had a two-row cultivator, which we used every year for the corn crop. This tractor was delivered with a factory-installed hydraualic lift (which was available separately and could be installed on tractors which did not have the lift). I don't know if the lift was useable with anything except the cultivators. We also had an IHC 7-foot sickle-bar mower, which had to be lifted by hand. This was quite a job for a 12-year old kid--that bar is heavy.
I have spent a fair amount of time doing farm work with a steel-wheeled F-12. The difference between the steel version and the rubber is remarkable. Steel wheels rob a lot of the engine power (which is why the old tractors rate the drawbar power as half the engine power--10-20, 15-30, and so on). On rubber, the F-12 would almost do the work of our 10-20. We pulled the same 7-foot double disk, at about the same speed as the 10-20 (second gear, around 3 mph). We plowed always with 2 12's. When we replaced the
10-20 with an H, it also pulled the 2 12's, and
that seemed to make a good load for it in our clayey soils.
The one thing I didn't like much about the F-12 was the lack of a pulley clutch. The pulley runs all the time that the clutch is in. Not a big deal, I guess. You could block the clutch down if you wanted to, and I believe some people made some sort of metal bracket that would do this.
Incidentally, if you have a pulley, don't leave it on all the time. It's heavy and I've been led to believe that it's hard on the shaft bearing.
The F-12 was designed for steel wheels, and that is why it is pretty slow with the original gearing. Steel wheeled tractors won't pull much of anything over about 3 mph, and the ride is so bad on hard soil that you don't WANT to go any faster than that.
This was/is an excellent piece of machinery. I don't remember any kind of failures in the maybe 15 years that we used this tractor every day (even in winter, with the several loads of manure from the barn). There may have been a ruptured fuel-pump diaphragm, but that was a normal problem in the days before synthetic rubber. Cars would eventually break down with a bad fuel-pump diaphragm. Don't know why IHC went with the downdraft carb. The tried-and-true updraft type lets you use a gravity feed. Maybe there was a little gain in efficiency. Anybody know?
This tractor is a lot like others designed in the 20s and 30s. The driver didn't get much attention. The seat was low, and the steering wheel sat between your knees. There was no real platform, and the foot rests were little stalks sticking out of each side near the gas tank support. The F-14 improved this a bit by raising the seat and the steering wheel.
All in all, in my opinion, this is one of the great tractors. It allowed small farms to have a real "Farmall/farm all" that would do anything that the bigger Farmalls would do. It was extremely sturdy and reliable, easy to drive, relatively comfortable, and fast enough for almost everything except road work.

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