Early Fast Hitch tractors

If I remember my Fast Hitch history, the only Super series tractor to have a factory fast hitch option was the Super C? Does anyone know why the Super H, Super M, MTA, etc never benefited? I would have thought that the series II supers would have used the hydraulic hitch as a selling point. --Lee

I never got that, also. They also had a "stage II" M that they were testing at Hinsdale in 1945 that had live hydraulics. If I had to guess they did not want to give credence to Ford's hitch by saying the mounted system was superior to the drawbar system. Deere had similar reasoning in terms of changing from the two cylinder to multiple cylinder engines. Maybe they did not feel farmers in the late 1940's would pay extra for live hydraulics.

Quite possibly the Super C was the test mule, just to see how well the fast hitch would hold up.

The super "C",200,230 were small point , after that everything was large point . I have been curious why they didn't use fast hitch on other supers but then they may have needed time for designing implements, and if a SMTA would of had fast hitch who would want a 400?

I've seen several SMTAs with 2 pt fast hitch.But I am not sure if that was a factory option,or added/retrofitted later at the dealer.I have aSMTA with the fasthitch.Only it has been butchered and converted to three point.

The Super MTA's differential housing is the only larger Super series tractor to have the mounting bosses for the Fast Hitch. It is actually the same casting used on the 400.

To mount a Fast Hitch on a Super H or a Super M (pre-MTA), would have required redesigning the differential housing for the mounting points. Since IH already had the 300/400 series tractors lined up "in the chute," redesigning the outgoing models for 1-2 years of production was not worth the cost or effort.

It seems to me that IH was taking "baby steps" with new technology through the 1950's, releasing a new model every couple of years with slightly more advanced features. IMHO that was intended to get farmers accustomed to the new features slowly, rather than slamming them all on the market at once.

I mean, look at today. Any time some new piece of technology comes along, the "old grumps" complain that it can't be any good, and what was wrong with the old technology, blah blah blah... Case in point, the pushbutton 4x4 vs. the old fashioned transfer case shifter on the floor, discussed on this site recently.

Who was in charge of the farms in the 1950's? The "old grumps" of the time, who started out farming with horses, and were dragged kicking and screaming into the tractor age.

"More to go wrong" they said about tractors like the Regular, F-20, H, and M. Compared to a horse, a tractor like a 450 would look like a spaceship. "Jeez, look at all those newfangled gadgets and hydro-lallic thingys. That thing's never gonna hold up!"

Sound familiar? It does to me. I heard it a lot when CaseIH came out with the Magnums. 27 years later there are still a lot of 71XX series out in the fields.