Why the loader was red, I don’t know.
This poor tractor had a hard, hard life before we got it. I was living away at the time, and came home for a visit and it was there. It should have been sent for scrap.
Dad was on the lookout for a tractor with a loader. He managed to find this one in the fall 1999 for $4000. It had to be the fall, because the bloody thing wouldn’t start anywhere close to freezing! The more he used the tractor, the more problems that showed their head. The steering box and linkages were worn out, and with a load in the bucket, it was unsteerable. The gear shifter was so worn, it’d slip out of the forks. Then we’d have to pull the shift cover off, and line everything back up again.
Power was provided by a Ford-designed 3-cylinder diesel engine. It was direct injected, which usually means that they’re better to start in the cold. Not so with this one. It was probably worn out, though. Sometimes it would not start at all, which turned out to be something adrift in the injection pump.
The clutch failed in it, and we sent it out to get it fixed. Shortly after that, it started to leak antifreeze from the bellhousing. Again, we sent it out. Turned out to be a freeze plug that had rotted out. He decided to sell it shortly afterwards. I think he got $4000 for it, but he spent almost $2000 on it in the year he had it.
Looks like it was running. It would never start in this cold.
We weren’t sad to see it go. It was a lot of trouble, and it would be a while before we’d buy another tractor. Dad had a Honda 4-wheeler for hauling wood, and we bought a plow truck for snow removal. The time would come where we would buy another early-’70’s tractor, with a totally different experience.
You don’t often hear tractor stories like this one.
My father’s Oliver 550 had a loader. A favorite family story involves that loader bucket crashing through a big picture window when Dad tried to jump the front wheels over a raised porch slab in an attempt to get closer to the house.
As a kid I always wondered what happened with Ford tractors. From the 30s and into the 50s the N series tractors were part of the fabric of rural America. But by the 60s and 70s they had become relative rarities, while green (Deere) and red (International) tractors were everywhere. The rare sighting of a blue tractor always made my day. Too bad this one didn’t work out for your family.
The “thousand serious” tractors were actually pretty good back in the day, and I looked at a couple 4000s before buying the AC 190 that preceded my Boomer 8N. Most of what you see from this timeframe, at auctions or alongside a road with a For Sale sign, are “ridden hard and put up wet.” Yours sounded like that, and while my AC wasn’t quite so far gone, I was only able to get a couple years out of it before very expensive engine noises meant having to find a replacement.
I don’t think Dad knew really what to look for. The price was right, and it looked good too. If it had been in decent shape, it would have made a good tractor
Next week I’m writing about a Massey Ferguson 135 – which was better in every way.
My first tractor was a ‘52 Ford 8n. I loved that old tractor. Live PTO and all. When we lived on our acreage, we had a house fire in 2010, I needed a tractor with a front end loader to prep the site to build a new home. I found a guy who had a Yanmar 2020 with a loader who was willing to trade me for my 2006’Honda VTX 1300 straight across. The Yanmar was a great tractor and took everything that I threw at it. (Remember that many of the green and yellow brand of tractors were Yanmars underneath). And kept coming back for more. When we sold the acreage, the owner wanted the tractor as part of the deal, so we left it behind. It was just starting to have some slipping issues in the semi-auto transmission and a loader cylinder seal started to leak, but I decided to not drop any money into it, and let the new owner deal with it, with full disclosure of course. But it was a good tractor and as far as I know, the new owner is still using it.
I think you meant ‘dead’ PTO, didn’t you? There are ways of converting the N Series to live hydraulics, but not live PTO.
For the uninitiated, “live PTO” means the PTO (power take off, that drives implements via a driveshaft off the back of the tractor) keeps spinning when you let in the clutch. Same with live hydraulics. The 8N’s PTO and hydraulic pump are driven off the transmission, so when the clutch is in, all action stops.
This can be a challenge when baling hay, for example, as you might want to let in the clutch to stop forward motion so the baler can clear a heavy slug of hay – but you need the PTO to keep turning to do this! On the 8N, this means bouncing the clutch in and out quickly to put the transmission in neutral and then re-engage the PTO. Not a problem with live PTO.
I literally just came inside from giving both my tractors a workout moving last night’s snow.
No, Live PTO, as in runs all the time when the engine is running and can not be disengaged unless you engage the clutch. When brush hogging, if you are not carefull, the runnning blades can actually push you through fence lines.
Mine did not have an overrunning clutch shaft, that mounts on the PTO.
I think we’re talking about the same thing, just calling it opposite! 🙂 I’ve always heard (and referred) to Live PTO as running even when the clutch is depressed. That’s what my Boomer 8N does, for example.
Either way, I have an ORC on mine for the very reason you gave!
My understanding of “live” PTO always meant that you had control of whether the PTO was engaged through a separate and dedicated clutch. That way you could start the PTO, such as for a baler or flail chopper, before you started the tractor, or stop the tractor with the implement still running. Our first live PTO tractor was Dad’s JD Model 60, and this is a big part of why he loved it.
http://www.tractordata.com/articles/technical/pto.html
And there you have it! All N Series had a transmission PTO (what I called “dead PTO”). My Boomer 8N has an independent PTO.
Indeed… Never heard it called “transmission PTO” It could be a regional thing here too as just about anyone around my neck of the woods with a tractor calls a PTO that can’t be locked out “live”. For all intents and purposes, types 1 and 2 both describe a live PTO. In general terms, a PTO that can’t be locked out is a live PTO. But I understand the need to distiguish the three basic types from each other. My Yanmar had a 2 speed PTO that could be completely locked out. And would fall in the type 3 “independant” category. With the engine running, the PTO would slowly “coast” when disengaged, but you could grab ahold of the PTO shaft and stop it.
So that does clear things up a bit.
My VT dairy-farmer relatives swore by (not at!) Farmalls, always being loyal to red. When I was a kid I had to have a red tractor to ride, even if it was a Murray! After marriage we had an 8N used almost daily when we grew & sold 5 ac of berries and asparagus, a great little tractor for hauling, spraying, plowing, disc-ing, you name it! It had it’s limitations but was darn near unbreakable. Now we use a Suzue M-15 4wd diesel up in VT for general sugarbush and logging work, she’s a real little workhorse. Helps to keep her indoors and make sure that the glow-plugs are a-ok when it comes to starting Suzi in the -25 VT winters though!
Suzue 4wd (Misubishi 15hp diesel sold by the Suzue farmers co-op, gray market in the US).
That Ford 2000 is like an update of the Fordson Dexta which had a small Perkins? in it and was a clone of the Fergy 35 pretty hard to kill usually yours mustve been worked read hard, the end loader will be what killed the steering assembly theyre a bit light for such implements.
The Ford 2000 had a 3 cylinder Ford-designed direct injection diesel, and in the first years of production could be had with a gasoline engine using essentially the same design and block. The Dexta was an import, the 2000 a domestic tractor and were not directly related. I don’t believe they shared any components in common. A 2000 or 3000 in good order would start unassisted down to about 0 degrees and a manifold heater was engaged below that temperature. The 2000 was an entirely new tractor design about 1965, similar to but not a clone of anything that preceded it. That basic design lasted at least 30 years. I’ve got a 3930 which is very similar and uses essentially the same 3 cylinder engine and it was produced around 1998 after the name was New Holland on the hood.