Stage IV M, 400, 450

I was just perusing the archives and saw some definitions of M stages. Guy Fay's book was quoted as saying the 400 was the stage IV and end of the M's. Why would the 450 be left out? I thought it was the same as the 400 with more ci's being the only difference?

IndianaRed, I do not have a definative answer, maybe someone else might. But I will take a stab at it with my speculation.
The 400 was the end of the line of the M lineage for after the 400 the M was no longer a representation in the 450, but a morphed new tractor. The old 248 engine was replaced with a simular, but different 264. the hydrolics had been changed out to a newer and improved version with different controls TA and torque tube over the old non-TA version Ms. rear end was different in some respects over the M. A real LP designed engine, not a gasoline conversion.
Basically the 450 was the first tractor that didn't have M designed compoents! It is as good a speculation as there is I guess, I maybe off base with my speculation, Better yet maybe Guy will chime in with his answer. I too would like to hear his view too.
Later,
John A.

Red: The guy who came up with the idea of stage I, II, III, IV, etc. is the dreamer. I was quite actively involved in farming back when these tractors were new. We never heard tell of this "STAGE" gobleygook.

They were either a Farmall M or SM with belly or live hydraulics, SMTA, 400 or 450. H was the same H or SH with or without live hydraulics, 300 and 350. You look through books and broshures put out by IH, no mention of STAGES.

Of course not Hugh. Who would advertise that their tractors are already obsolete? They may as well say, "Go buy a John Deere." Of course they did just that by bringing out the 460/560...

I recall from IH history books that back then "stage" was used by the engineers and marketers behind the scenes at IH. It's used by historians and collectors now to tell tractors of the same model apart.

Nobody uses Stage III or Stage IV, though. It's an SMTA or 400/450.

Frankly I'm not sure what Guy Fay meant there either. The 450 is not much different from a 400.

The 400 and 450 share the same parts list. Side-by-side they are nearly indistinguishable. Main difference is the jump in displacment 264ci vs. 281ci.

Chris B.

The stages are real, it's just IH never used them in public. The Stage I Super M had the belly pump, the Stage II had live hydraulics. After that thing get interesting, Stage III became the SMTA and stage IV they dropped the letters and called it a 400.

After that they may have just stopped using stages since the models had clearly different names (Stage I - III were all just variations of the Super M vs 400 - 450).

It's to bad IH made things so complicated back then. If they could have just got live hydraulics and a live PTO into their line right after the war they could have dominated the farm world even more then they did during that period. Instead they just crawled along and let others implement these features and gain some ground.

It's frustrating to think what that H/M line could have been.

K

Kopeck: We were screaming louder about having IPTO in the late 40s and early 50s, Oliver and Cockshutt had it.

Good answer. I hadn't heard of all those differences before. I thought the 450 was just a 400 with bigger bore.

Thanks.

(quoted from post at 13:34:21 06/03/09) Kopeck: We were screaming louder about having IPTO in the late 40s and early 50s, Oliver and Cockshutt had it.

Click to expand...

I have to think the consumer probably hurt them self in the 40s and 50s. People kept buying IH stuff even though they were lacking some very key features. If folks talked with they're wallets IH might have listened, or maybe not.

I heard they even had a C/Super C rigged with IPTO but never brought it to production. So close but yet so far.

K

Kopeck: In our area we had a new Massey dealer open his door for the first time in 1954. By the end of his first decade, he claimed IH fast hitch was the best friend he had.

Proves my frequent statment Harry Ferguson won the hitch war before IH sold their first fast hitch. No, IH weren't listening, they listened to no one. IH were only ahead of their time, look what happens today when a major corperation doesn't listen to it's customers.

THe stages were used internally.

It really depends on how you define a M descendent. Engineering woul define a descenent as using the same tooling. In that case the end of the Farmall M line was the 686. I don't know what of a 686 transmission woul fit a M, but I know that when IH was going through the 560 issues, the new transmission parts replaced the existing Farmall M replacement parts.

Guy: You make a good point, I do know an M wheel will fit a 686 axle, may need some keyway modification. The wheel weight will fit without modification. Beyond that, and between that wheel and the flywheel, all bets are off.

I firmly believe that IH was afraid that too much new technology at once would turn the farmers off. That is the only logical explanation for the way IH handled things in the 1952-1963 time period.

Just look at how things went since then. Which tractor manufacturer is the only one still standing alone? John Deere. Which tractor manufacturer stuck to archaic backwards technology the longest? John Deere.

The Oliver family of tractors was the first with truly modern features, long before everyone else. Where are they now?

I am not an authority on the 400/450, but I understand that the fast hitch on the 450 has draft control which the 400 did not. Tom

Very well could be but I always thought John Deere was one of the best marketing they're brand more then anything.

Ask any kid, tractors are green. They figured it out early on and ran with it.

I don't see how anyone would be afraid of IPTO or live hydraulics. The live hydraulics are really strange, the C had the technology in '48, it took the SM until '53 to pick it up.

K

Kirsch: Your take on this is interesting, however I can't agree with it. Deere may have kept the 2 cylinder engine but the 60, 70, 620, 720, 630 and 730 were quite modern tractors for their time.

That is not the main reason I say this. IH was manufacturing a factory 3 point hitch on the Super BMD as early as 1953. That same hitch design could quite easily been designed for SH, SM, SMTA, 300, 400, etc. The French were putting a 3 point hitch on the French manufactured Super C. Don't try and tell me IH in North America couldn't have tooled up for the same.

On IPTO, Cockshutt and Oliver had it a full 8 years before IH with the SMTA in 1954.

As of 1955 International Harvester was a very wealthy company, very broad range of products, with nowhere to go but UP or DOWN. My point is, they were in a better position to do R&D on just about anything 30% of their customers were asking for. No other company building farm equipment at that time had as much capital behind them.

I couldn't agree with Hugh more. It's not like IH didn't have the know how, heck they already had the parts and pieces they needed in some cases, they just sat on their hand instead.

I've been around a few number series JDs and while the 2 cylinders and hand clutches sort of baffled me the rest of the machines were pretty well equipped.

It's funny, when IH finally figured out it needed to play catch up they rolled out the X60s. Now I think some of the problems that came with them might be a bit over blown (I know a few folks that have had them for a very long time and like them) but it sounds like IH rushed them out. Heck they had over 10 years to come up with something great and instead rushed out a line that had issues...

I like IH stuff, don't get me wrong, I just wonder if IH would still be here to day if they were on the ball a bit more.

K

I've got the book "Farmall, Eight Decades of Innovations". Big tall thing, lots of great picturs, but also lots of history and facts. Very disturbing how Sales, R&D, Engineering, and Management were so at odds with one another. By the end of the book you just kind of shake your head and still wonder why. One interesting fact was how once they realized they had problems with the 560 rear ends, they couldn't move fast enough to fix the problem. Kept sending faulty units out and paying to fix them out in the field, or worse, bringing them back to the factory to finally retrofit the replacements. Cost them a lot of money.

But they got over that hurdle and should've been ok. But it was one thing after another after another until they were in such bad shape they couldn't cope with the downturn in sales during the recession of the 80's.

Overall their failure seemed to be due to a lack of leadership. Too many guys with overlapping authority, and no one person that would stand up and say "this is what we need to do, and this is the direction we're going in". Even if that had been the wrong direction, (like the 3 point fiasco), they could've weathered the storm. Still makes me sad to ponder. The title to the book that tells it all is very apropriate. "Fall of an Empire, the Agony of International Harvestor". From the 3rd largerst corporation in the country to gone in less than a decade. No way not to lay the blame on management. They, like GM, made concessions to the union that tied their hands when they most needed to be flexible. Spent millions on idle men and idle factories, and wasted millions more on deadend ideas that by the time they were reading to roll out had already become close to obsolete.

Red: I get a kick out of those guys who wrote books on this matter. Of the 2 or 3 books I've seen they all start with 560 rear end being the beginning of the end. Far as I'm concerned it happened before the 560. IH only built about 65,000 560s. Right in my area several customers had more than one of them, thus we might assume it affected 60,000 customers.

Harry Ferguson won the hitch war, before IH sold their first fast hitch. I go back to my friend who opened a new MF dealership in 1954. Starting with no customer base, MH had not had a dealer in our area since before the war. Ferguson never had a dealer in that area. 10 years later in 1964, my friend claimed IH fast hitch was the best friend he had. He had made up his customer base, taking half the IH dealer's customers. They never went back.

In our area even before fast hitch IH were loosing customers to Cockshutt and Oliver over IPTO.

Those two items alone, 3 point hitch and IPTO, affected several hundred thousand customers across North America. 20 times the customers affected by 560 rear ends.

Hugh,

I don't disagree with the 3pt deal. But the book I've read was very detailed, very in-depth, almost too much so. And while the 3pt hurt them, it wasn't what did them in. If you're really interested in this stuff you should get it. Talks all about who was in, (different McCormicks), who was out, when, why, how. Talks about what sales wanted when, what engineering and R&D was doing all through the 1920's, (even before), until the end. Very informative.

My Grandfather had a 560, was the first tractor I really used a lot in the field when I was about 12, although I ran the letters some when I was younger. He never even knew about the problems they had with them. Then again, he never had a brand new tractor.

I don't pretend to know a lot, not nearly as much as you and the other elders here, but that book was very enlightening. I think it's a must read for anyone interested in tractors in general, and Reds in particular. Talks all about what they were thinking in regards to the 3pt./fast hitch debate inside the company. The fall wasn't due to external forces or competetion alone, if at all, it all came from within the company. They just became huge and bloated, couldn't control costs, and collapsed during the economic slow down. As you read it with the benefit of hindsight you sit there and say to yourself, "How could they do this/that, what were they thinking??"

The 560 is still up on the hill with about a dozen others tractors they wore out, mostly H's and M's, and a couple F-20's. But the machine shed still has an active M and H in there, and we fixed-up the C last year just before Grandad died. Got it running at Xmas, he passed in March. Saving up to bring the 560 back to life, still my favorite.

Red: I've read the books, some items in there do not add up. IH minions for the most part don't even know what took them down.

I look at when the percentage of sales declined across the country. IH lost market share, bigtime in the late 1950s. That my friend, is what took them down.