Tractor conversion-Photo

Topics Last Day Last Week Tree View    Getting Started Formatting Troubleshooting Program Credits    New Messages Keyword Search Contact Moderators Edit Profile Administration
Model T Ford Forum: Forum 2012: Tractor conversion-Photo
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Herb Iffrig on Thursday, March 29, 2012 - 10:57 pm:


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Rob Heyen on Thursday, March 29, 2012 - 11:04 pm:

Herb,

A nice roadster to turn into a tractor. It would be much nicer than a period tractor, with a top, cushioned seat, room for a passenger, etc. I can see why tractor conversions were attractive.

Are you planting yet?

Rob


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By JAMES STARKEY Naperville, IL on Thursday, March 29, 2012 - 11:06 pm:

Not much horsepower on the draw bar. Jimmy


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Rob Heyen on Thursday, March 29, 2012 - 11:07 pm:

Not many horsepower on period tractors either?


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Stan Howe Helena, Montana on Thursday, March 29, 2012 - 11:19 pm:

Looks like it has a set of reduction gears on the back axle with the big wheels on a second axle. Like most of these it probably had a ring gears with the teeth on the inside. Reduction was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20:1 on most of them. That would give a slow speed and plenty of horsepower for pulling small implements on high gear. Top speed would only be around 2 1/2 mph but horsepower would go up considerably. Even tho they showed them plowing, I think most were used for pulling a drag harrow or a grain drill. Walking in soft ground like a plowed and disked field is hard on horses, just like it is if you try to walk in soft sand or mud. You are pulling your foot up on every step. It is also hard on the field because every hoof packs down the soil. Most crops in those days were planted in rows because of that. Later, after tractors with a lighter footprint came along, the crops were planted much closer together or in the case of grains and grasses, in solid blankets of crop.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By A. Gustaf Bryngelson on Thursday, March 29, 2012 - 11:44 pm:

Lower gearing does not give more horse power, horse power is based on amount of work in a given time. Most of the tractors of the time were 20 brake HP or less. The T is light enough that the PTO HP and Brake HP would be very similar.
The closer planting is more related to the type of farming, Grains are still planted in rows that are 6 to 7 inches apart, on dry land, it is sometimes planted 12 to 14 inches apart.
Best
Gus


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Aaron Griffey, Hayward Ca. on Friday, March 30, 2012 - 01:26 am:

Where we lived in Wisconsin the tractors used for what we called mixed farming were mostly far less than 20 HP.
A Ford Ferguson had a 145 cubic inch engine compared to 177 for the model T.
Many farmers had tractors smaller than that.
I knew of farmers that had one tractor and it could have been a John Deere H or a Farmall C.
The Farmall H was a medium sized tractor and the M was only seen on really large farms.
The B John Deere was probably the average size tractor used on a 120 to 160 acre farm that grew it's own corn & oats for the 15 milk cows and 20 pigs and maybe a few sheep or a dozen turkeys and of coarse we all had a few chickens.
I would guess a T tractor conversion would out-do a team of horses when you add in the fact that you didn't need to give it a rest and it could be used more hours per day.
I never saw or heard of a T tractor conversion but I sure can think of a lot of jobs we did that would have made life easier if we'd had one.
I only remember the Finky brothers out by Martel Wisconsin that made a tractor from a big diesel semi tractor. They say it really did the job. Twin screw and all.
I think any tractor was such a step up from a team of horses that they didn't think they needed anything bigger than a one or two bottom plow. As years went by and farmers became more powered machine consiouse they started tilling more land with less manpower and they got into using larger tractors as time went by.
When I was kid in the forties and fifties there were almost no pickups on farms and not many had trucks.
The ones that had pickups also used them for the family car too. We had a car and usually a truck but never had a pickup. There were 3 kids in our family. To have a pickup would mean we'de not have a car.
How times have changed.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Stan Howe Helena, Montana on Friday, March 30, 2012 - 01:37 am:

That may be true in a technical sense but I'm willing to bet the average farmer building a T tractor would consider it to have more power at lower speeds.

Small grains such as wheat and barley are planted in rows. There is no planting today that I have seen that is wide enough for horses to walk between the rows. Row crop (corn, beans, lentils, etc.) width was based on two horses walking side by side. With the advent of tractors the rows were placed closer together. Not all grain crops are planted in rows. Come up to Montana where it is not unusual for one farmer to farm 30,000 acres or more and I will show you. My family farms and ranches in seven counties in Montana and two in North Dakota. They probably collectively farm over 100,000 acres of small grains and just between my nephew and I grow hay on a couple thousand acres in Montana and Dakota.

Before the advent of the press drill which planted crops in rows, most grain crops were broadcast on the newly worked ground and then harrowed in. Every step a horse took in the plowed ground pressed the seeds far into the ground, often too far in to germinate and grow. Small tractors were popular, as I said, for harrowing fields because they did not make as many foot prints in the newly worked ground as the horses hoofs did.

Power at the drawbar would be considerably higher with the gear reduction no matter how you state it.

I stand by what I said originally.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Stan Howe Helena, Montana on Friday, March 30, 2012 - 02:14 am:

Aaron, the largest tractor in the world is about 150 miles from here. It is a Big Bud and was built in Havre, Montana in, I think, the late 70's. There are lots of videos of it on Youtube.

A Ford 600 tractor, which is the continuation of the NAA or Jubilee has a 134 cubic inch overhead valve engine. The larger Fords of that vintage, the 1950's, had 172 cubic inch engines. They were both 4 cylinder. The little 9 N had a bit under 120 cubic inches and is rated at 20 HP at the belt and 13 at the drawbar.

Most of the pickups around where I grew up were cut off sedans that had a box mounted on the back. Some were coupes with a box in where the trunk had been. Almost everyone had a truck but few factory pickups. Some neighbors had a Hudson pickup, we had a 1939 GMC. We also had a 37 Chevy 2 door sedan that had been cut down to a pickup.

We ranched for years with two little Case S tractors. Since we didn't farm to speak of we had no use for a field tractor. In high school I worked for some German farmers who had a new Case 930. It would pull 14 feet of tool bar and was a wonder to behold. Now my brother in law is pulling 94 feet of no-till air seeder and his is not the biggest in the area by far. There has been some experimentation here with "wide row" seeding in recent years where the grain is planted in an area several inches wide rather than in a row. I don't know much about it but I know a couple years ago I went up to Boxelder and took some video of 5 new New Holland 42 foot combines cutting in a field that had been planted that way.

The little farms are just about all gone in Montana except for the valley farms along the rivers that raise sugar beets. Ten thousand acres is not a big place anymore, you seldom see a chicken and hardly ever a milk cow. There are a few dairies left but they are few and far between. Cattle prices are the highest in history, oil prices and production are the highest in history, grain prices are good, most people who are not farming big have sold out to those that are. We pretty much leave all the dairy business and piddly crops to southern Idaho and Utah, they buy the hay we grow and we drink their milk.

When I was a kid, we all had chickens and a hog or two and a few milk cows. I always kind of liked milking but I used to hate it when we would play for a dance somewhere a hundred miles away and get home at 5 or 6 in the morning and have to go milk the cows before we could go to bed. I think the most we ever had was 4 or 5 after I got old enough to milk because cream prices had gone down and we didn't have a house full of kids to drink a quart of milk apiece a day anymore. Most of ours went to the hogs or bum lambs. My folks quit milking when I got out of high school and went to college. Things were a lot different 50 years ago.

Want to see where I grew up? Here is a web site I just did a couple days ago for the folks who remember where Westmore was and the good people who lived there. www.westmoremontana.info


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Stan Howe Helena, Montana on Friday, March 30, 2012 - 02:19 am:

Pretty much everything you can see in the main page photo except the far right is part of my ranch, which extends farther to the left out of the picture and up over the hills to the north. The townsite was where the little buildings are in the center of the picture. Fred Shrope wants to move there and fix up the Ellingson house. Or so he tells me. =) You can see why nobody cares if I have Model T parts there. There are no neighbors within sight.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Aaron Griffey, Hayward Ca. on Friday, March 30, 2012 - 03:37 am:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5N9t_z7c6o&feature=related

I have not seen a plow in California in the last forty years.
I understand that they are no longer used in the mid west.
Around Salinas and the central valley they just disc and plant. Most of their tractors are 4 wheel drive and I do see some with 8 tires.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Dale L Myers on Friday, March 30, 2012 - 10:10 am:

It is not a T but my father and uncle built this in the 1940's. It was a 1930 A with an AA rear end. It was the only tractor we ever had on our 8 acre "farm"
Stenciled on the cowl was "Victory King.Wonder Boy. Do All" (IIRC)


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By A. Gustaf Bryngelson on Friday, March 30, 2012 - 11:39 am:

Hey Stan,
You are correct, power at the draw bar is higher with lower gearing, but not horse power. A good example was show at a truck and tractor pull a few years back, the modified tractors with thousands of HP and several engines had difficulty pulling a weighted sled across the arena, a steam engine with 20 draw bar HP hooked on to it and drug it around the racetrack. The weight of the pulling tractor is as important as the gearing or horse power, or the HP is lost in slippage.
A single Horse power can move as much as a thousand horse power with gearing. It will just take longer to do it. Torque is what you get from gearing, it does not have time factored in.
As for row spacings, you are correct, 100 years ago, it was common to plat corn on a 40 inch spacing, currently I plat on a 30 inch spacing, some of the farmers in this area have gone to a 22 inch spacing. With chemicals used in the no-till method of farming, it is not as important to cultivate for some crops. I still use the 30 inch rows because I irrigate with gravity, those who use the 22 inch spacing use sprinkler irrigation.
It is interesting how history sometimes repeats itself, I have quite using a drill to plant alfalfa, and gone back to broadcasting it (with a floater) and then harrowing it in. With Alfalfa, this seems to work well, but as you said, it will not work for grains, as depth is very important for good germination.
Best
Gsu


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Steve in Tennessee on Friday, March 30, 2012 - 11:53 am:

http://jalopnik.com/minneapolis-moline-comfortractor/

If you really wanted comfort and something you could drive the bride to town in there was this one. I've heard some of the mail carriers in out of the way places used them.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Bob Gruber- Spanaway, Wash. on Friday, March 30, 2012 - 12:09 pm:

I saw a 150 HP Case steamer that was pulling a 20 bottom plow.
Threshing bee in Belgrade Montana about 30 yrs ago.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Roger Karlsson, southern Sweden on Thursday, June 21, 2012 - 09:17 am:

Just saw a nice looking T tractor conversion advertised at the swedish equivalent to Craigslist ($1700]
t tractor
http://www.blocket.se/alvsborg/Epa_Traktor_T_FORD_41098569.htm?ca=22&w=3


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Roger Karlsson, southern Sweden on Thursday, June 21, 2012 - 09:29 am:

Should have added: The chain driven magneto on a home made bracket was a very common modification in Sweden for T engines since knowledge of proper coil adjustments and hand cranked coil testers were (and are) very scarce here.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Erik Johnson on Thursday, June 21, 2012 - 10:39 am:

Tractor conversion for sale on Burlington, Vermont Craigslist:

http://burlington.craigslist.org/grd/3036585020.html


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Randy Driscoll on Thursday, June 21, 2012 - 03:12 pm:

That's a good buy on the Sears. It uses double reduction gearing instead of the typical large ring gear, and it's all there.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Gary H. White - Sheridan, MI on Thursday, June 21, 2012 - 07:27 pm:

My dad built a Model A doodle bug tractor for my grandfather to use on the farm during the war. We still used it in the later 40's. The stupid thing kept loosing the radiator cap. Guess who had to search the mowed field to find it?


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Randall Strickland on Thursday, June 21, 2012 - 08:38 pm:


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Aaron Griffey, Hayward Ca. on Thursday, June 21, 2012 - 09:28 pm:

Gary, were his initials Gary H. White?
Do I get a second guess?

I never saw or even heard of those conversion tractors in Wis. or heard about doodlebugs untill I came to Ca.
In the 70's and 80's it was common to see two or more at an orchard farm auction.
I went looking at old cars at a farm sale in the delta are some years ago and stumbled across maybe 6 or 8 in the orchards. Most were made from model A Fords but had an extra gearbox from a truck behind the std. A box.
A couple of years ago I did a lot of work on a '28 AA with shortened frame and top cut off.
It still had the original early wire AA wheels and 2 speed dual high transmission behind the 3 speed box.
It came from a prune orchard and is now being used in a vineyard by the original owner's niece and her husband. He had driven it when he was a kid.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Donald Hagstrom on Friday, June 22, 2012 - 04:38 pm:

I agree Aaron, there seem to be a lot of the tractor conversions or Depression tractors in California.

Here is an early Fond-Du-Lac that I believe spent most of it's working life in the citrus, nut and avocado orchards of southern California.


Posting is currently disabled in this topic. Contact your discussion moderator for more information.
Topics Last Day Last Week Tree View    Getting Started Formatting Troubleshooting Program Credits    New Messages Keyword Search Contact Moderators Edit Profile Administration