Re: 1936 Farmall F12

Posted by LenNH on December 02, 2010 at 17:32:22 from (24.128.163.35):

In Reply to: 1936 Farmall F12 posted by Cory Seiler on November 19, 2010 at 17:02:49:

My "first tractor" was a 1938 F-12 with those handsome factory cast wheels. I just got on it one day when I was about 8 and got an adult to
stand on the drawbar and put his foot over the axle to work the clutch. That must have been in 1939. For a while, I would drive with someone standing on the drawbar, or I would drive in the field when we were picking up windrowed hay with a loader. In about a year, I guess, I was able to slide down enough to work the clutch, and from then on, I was hooked and did just about anything the tractor would do. By the time I was 10, I was plowing, disking, cultivating and mowing with the attached mower. I don't know what the adults were thinking to let a 10-year old runt out in the field alone like this--maybe they weren't thinking! By today's standards, the F-12 seems primitive, especially on rubber, because of the slow and slower ground speeds. The speeds were designed for steel; 4 mph on steel is about the maximum speed that won't shake the tractor to pieces, AND steel wheels rob so much power that the tractor won't pull any kind of serious load at 4 mph anyhow. On rubber, it was another story. The F-12 would pull more than it was advertised for. We pulled a double 12" Little Genius or a 7-foot double disk (which had come with my father's 1929 10-20). In second gear, of course, which was the "design objective," to use modern industrial jargon. This tractor was not terribly comfortable, but then many tractors designed in the early 30's didn't give much thought to driver comfort. The steering wheel was down between your knees and there wasn't a really good place for your feet. Still, we didn't think much about those things back then--they were normal. The hydraulic power lift was a nice feature--it speeded up raising the cultivators, and it spared some of the back muscles. I always regretted that it wasn't designed to lift the mower. The 7-foot mower took
a huge and very awkard push to raise it.
This was a very versatile tractor. The big wheels make it look like it wouldn't be agile, but it was, in fact, fairly short and would turn very tight (automatic wheel brakes were very good). As to quality, I don't think any tractor
was ever made any better. The ONLY problem I can remember in the years we used this tractor (probably 15 before it was replaced by an H) was
a cracked fuel pump diaphragm. They were probably made of natural rubber in those days, and it was not uncommon to have them split on any vehicle. Fairly simple fix. Never did know why IHC went for a downdraft carburetor. Was it really more efficient than an updraft?
You know that the dual front wheels were mounted on a single cast stalk which was not supported by a housing. One day when I was about 11, I took the tractor and manure spreader out in a field on a really cold January morning. I was always hell-for-leather when I was younger (my wife now says I drive like an old lady). I had the throttle wide open, in third gear, and I was probably holding the notched rod back to get "just a little more" out of it. Well, the ground was covered with snow and I did not see a huge hole that must have been caused by a washed-out underdrain. Whump! The tractor dropped in the hole, the front-wheel post snapped and the front of the tractor hit the ground running and kept on going until it stalled the motor. I was lucky I was holding the wheel fairly tight because the whole tractor suddenly slanted down at maybe a 30 degree angle. I went back to the barn and said, in a very quiet voice, "I broke the front wheels off the tractor." My father never said a word, and to this day I don't know why he didn't chew out my narrow backside. The next day, I got back from school and found the tractor had been repaired (IHC dealers always had a good supply of parts, and they weren't too far apart--one of the reasons IHC made so many sales, I expect).
The downside of the slow ground speed was that the tractor would take 15 minutes to take a load from a field a mile away. We had a couple, and I remember buzzing along with a load of hay but feeling like a snail. The 7-mph factory high-gear option would have been very welcome. The normal third wasn't used much in the field, but this economical little tractor got to do a lot of crop hauling and the higher road speed would have been nice.

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