Super A vs. 8n

I have a super a with a freshly rebuilt 123 engine. My neighbor has an 8n and is the kind of guy that likes to talk trash on any tractor other than the old fords. DO I have a leg to stand on as far as some good rubbing with him or is the 8n a more powerful tractor?

Our club had a "dead boat" pull for the old tractors a while back. A dead boat pull is where you keep adding weight to a flat sled until the tractor can't move the sled anymore. With each weight, you have to pull the sled 15 feet. At that pull, an A (not a super A) out pulled the ford 8N which was in the same weight class. The 8N had more power I think, but it just spun out.

With your 123, your power is comparable.

There are insufferable fans of most every make. As long as he's a good sport about it, have fun with the argument. Tell him if you'd wanted a loader tractor, you might have considered a Ford. If he's not, blow it off. The "victory" of the 3-point over the Fast Hitch is old news.

I Have the same problem. My neighbor across the street has be a tractor mach. all his life and his dad before him in the same building behind their house he is in his late 60's now. All my life he has told me if it's not a Ford it not a tractor. He will work on anything but Ford 8n is his preference. He is always raging on me about my Farmalls. And I am allways raging him about his uggggly Fords. It's just fun and we keep it going.

The SA should outpull 8N in tractor pull type setting but the 8N is a handier tractor because of the factory 3 point. Back when the 8 Ns were new they were hard to beat as a 2 row cultivator tractor.

Hehehe!

This comparison is like between prunes and lemons....forget apples and oranges!

I have a SA and have ran more than a few old 8n"s.

Both are dogs in my estimation. I call my SA a riding rotortiller...it"s not fit for much more than cultivating. The 8N"s are deathtraps...I"ve seen more than one flipped over and had a good friend killed on one. He went through a ditch, the wagon tongue caught the ground and the 8N flipped backwards in an instant...the steering wheel crushed his chest. A heavier tractor would not have flipped quite so easily. I know lots of folks are nuts over these old machines....why, I don"t know. I won"t allow an 8N on my place and if it wasn"t for the garden, the SA would be gone as well. It has nothing to do with brand name.

You fellers can enjoy poking fun at each other, but neither of the tractors mentioned are anything to brag about.

Mark, I kind of have to agree with you. Over the years around here most people have used their little Ford's for transportation after they lost their driver's license. Kinda slow, but it get's them from point A to point B.

HI guys, I am 76 years old and own a Super A. I might be able to out pull a Ford with it if I could just get on the darn thing.

Know what you mean have owned my A for over 40 years and something changed about it few years back that makes it hard to get own.

(quoted from post at 10:55:47 11/24/09) Hehehe!

This comparison is like between prunes and lemons....forget apples and oranges!

I have a SA and have ran more than a few old 8n"s.

Both are dogs in my estimation. I call my SA a riding rotortiller...it"s not fit for much more than cultivating. The 8N"s are deathtraps...I"ve seen more than one flipped over and had a good friend killed on one. He went through a ditch, the wagon tongue caught the ground and the 8N flipped backwards in an instant...the steering wheel crushed his chest. A heavier tractor would not have flipped quite so easily. I know lots of folks are nuts over these old machines....why, I don"t know. I won"t allow an 8N on my place and if it wasn"t for the garden, the SA would be gone as well. It has nothing to do with brand name.

You fellers can enjoy poking fun at each other, but neither of the tractors mentioned are anything to brag about.

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While I know what you are trying to say I think you are selling the SA short, I can't comment on the 8n since I haven't owned one.

The farm I live on right now had 3 primary tractors while it was in operation (stopped in 1999), a BN, A and 200. They made hay, they made silage, they did tillage and twitched firewood. Heck the first tractor, the BN, was the only machine for the first 10 years or so.

Like I said I know what you are getting at, by today's standards they're light duty "Iron Horses" but to say they're good for nothing more then cultivating isn't fair at all.

Now 8n vs. SA, the few antique tractor pulls I've been to the 9/2/8Ns haven't fared well at all. I think they were a tractor built around a hitch, and if you didn't use it you lost a lot of traction.

K

They make a step for an A that mounts by the brake pedals.
You can also turn the drawbar forward (or by another drawbar and mount it in the forward position) and it makes a great step up.
Dell

ob,

Like a friend of mine said....back in their day, those old (and now small by comparison) tractors sure beat following a mule or horse. I agree with that statement 110%!

Like anything else, you use what you have to work with. The first tractor we had on the place was a '46 Oliver RC60. I hadn't been on one for 40 years and then, my son in law traded for one. After 5 minutes behind the wheel......all the nostalgia evaporated like smoke and I declared, on the spot, 'get that ugly thing away from me!' Same with the Allis WD he dragged in.....uncomfortable in the max.

The little Ford's were/are just too darn light....an accident waiting to happen. The last small Ford I ran was a 601 belonging to a neighbor. The engine ran smooth as glass and beyond that, I haven't anything else good to say about it.

The little SA is a b!tch to get on and off of, when the cultivators are removed...they make a perfect step! I have a list of my complaints on the Super A...no need in belaboring the subject.

When we can now climb on, or in, a modern machine that is powerful, responsive, and comfortable..it makes us appreciate how far things have come and it also makes me wonder what improvements will come in the next 40-50 years. Like my old dad says.....'son the good ol' days, are right now' and I agree.

Is it the 8n or 9n that you have to take apart the front end to get to the distributer cap, and have to make adjustments without the radiator on the tractor?

You could use the ridiculous maintenance requirements as a step-up for the Farmall.

So you like the modern high tech stuff that is fine but to me simplicity will compensate for a lot. I have driven a lot of the later tractors and I agree they are more comfortable and handle better but they are hell when they break. Spent most of a day recently tracing down electrical problem on my 25 HP MF diesel, wires disappeared into large bundles and came out a different color plus a maze of relays and safety switches. I can completly rewire my A in couple of hours.

Amen.

Not everyone needs a 90+ hoss tractor, or even 30+ as far as that part goes.

NDS,

Well..great grandpa would say he never had to fool with rewiring his mule, so in that vein, a mule trumps the A.

Yes, I readily admit I like the modern machines. I also like new cars....spark plugs lasting 50-75,000 miles and no points to change and engines commonly going 200,000 miles....that"s hard not to appreciate. When I was a kid....a slug of a 6 cylinder engine got 18-20 mpg and we thought that was great. These new V6"s run like a small V8 did years ago and get 27-30+ mpg while doing it. My newer tractor does things my old ones couldn"t do and when I get out of the seat, my kidneys don"t feel like they"ve been jelloed. I can appreciate a person"s hard work restoring any old machine to it"s former glory and I also understand a person making do with what they have or can afford. That being said, the old stuff just can"t compare to the new.

Nothing wrong with liking new tractors BUT this is YESTERDAYS TRACTORS forum for people that like old tractors. There is forum here for TODAYS TRACTORS if that is what you prefer.

These forums certainly go off topic sometimes. Anyway, my two cents' worth (probably a quarter with inflation). The A and SA were certainly not easy to climb onto, although I didn't have any trouble when I was a whippersnapper. They were delightful to drive, and FAIRLY comfortable, even by today's standards. As to power, well, they were designed for SMALL farms, or to do light chores on larger farms. There is no end to the chores we used to do with an F-12 or an A, things that would have been done with horses before they came along. Back in the thirties and early forties, we even used tractors like that (on a SMALL farm, like I said) for plowing and disking, but they also ran cornshellers, pulled a corn binder or grain binder, small combine, baler, mowed and raked hay, pulled a wagon to pick up loose hay and later bales. I even used
one of these to pull the hay fork up into the barn, after the ancient one-lung engine on the winch decided it didn't want to help out anymore.
I've mowed in the zig-zag of rail fences, too.
As to ancient versus modern, I would NOT want to do much work today with a steel-wheeled F-20 or 10-20. I've still got a backache from my years on those things from the late 30s to the early 50s. Even on rubber, they were no joy to ride on.
Exciting, though--torque, torque, torque, and LOTS of noise to bang up your eardrums. Would love to have them to goof around with, but that is about all. I'm a realist, and don't entertain many romantic ideas about riding one of these beasts all day long.