Love the comments this brought. I will see if I can scan this document and get it presentable enough so that anybody can read it. Maybe it will work best via e-mail. Will let you all know when I figure something out. Comments about mud and steel wheels are probably right on. My grandfather grew potatoes, which go in pretty early. He had an F-12 on rubber, but it slipped too much in early plowing, so he bought another one on steel. My father had a steel-wheeled 10-20, which I plowed with for probably 10 years. The wheels on a 10-20 are 42" but the F-12 wheels are 54". This isn't very scientific, but I swear that the big wheels rode better--probably a shorter "fall" for the lugs coming down. I remember like it was this morning how the 10-20 rode on a gravel road. A real bone shaker. You could stay on it if you throttled way back in second, or maybe in first throttled up somewhat. On plowed ground or on sod, it wasn't bad at all, although you were aware of some slippage that occurred when the lug was pushing backward against the soil (a kind of little jerk, but not unpleasant). You are all probably aware that Allis-Chalmers tried out rubber tires in 1932 (I think this was the year) and found out that they wasted much less power than the steel wheels. Here is a little anecdote: My father bought a new F-12 on those beautiful cast wheels in 1938. I began to drive it maybe the following year, when I was 8. I say "drive," when I really should stay "steer." I couldn't reach the pedals, but I was bound-bent-and-billy-be-damned (my father's favorite way of saying "determined") that I was going to drive. At first I would steer while pulling a wagon and hayloader. An adult would jump up on the drawbar and swing his leg over the axle to reach the clutch. Anyway, we plowed with double-bottomed 12" Little Genius, in second gear, AND we pulled the 7-foot IHC double-disk that my grandfather had bought for the 10-20. A neighbor once asked if he could use the F-12 for a day. When he returned it, he said he was amazed at how much power it had. He had had a steel-wheeled F-12 and thought it was pretty anemic. I used to wish the F-12 was bigger and had more power (don't all kids?), but as I look back, I realize that it was quite a wonderful machine for its day. We used ours for at least 15 years without any repairs at all except to put in a new fuel-pump diaphragm (very common to all fuel pumps back in the 40s, before synthetic rubber entered the picture). The engine was of first quality, as was the rest of the machine. It could have used an extra gear for road use, but then it was designed for steel wheels in the first place. It was short and quite maneuverable, had a great many implements you could mount on it fairly easily (cultivators, a mower, even a corn picker, I believe), and it was fairly comfortable to ride on and drive (could have used a real platform, but then we never thought much about comfort back in those days). Today, I'd love to have one for chores. I'm no longer in a hurry and kinda enjoy just tootling along at half-throttle.
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Today's Featured Article - The Cletrac General GG and the BF Avery A - A Bit of History - by Mike Ballash. This article is a summary of what I have gathered up from various sources on the Gletrac General GG and the B. F. Avery model A tractors. I am quite sure that most of it is accurate. The General GG was made by the Cleveland Tractor Company (Cletrac) of Cleveland, Ohio. Originally the company was called the Cleveland Motor Plow Company which began in 1912, then the Cleveland Tractor Company (1917) and finally Cletrac.
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