(quoted from post at 14:36:54 05/09/14) You'll need to know the condition of it, and you will get some good information here, and the ford forum.
I grew up on a '64 4000, S-O-S, which was a former NYS thruway (highway) tractor, used for mowing, and I am sure it got a fair amount of hours, it had mid mount side sickle, and at the time it went through our ford dealership for service and the state was very good on fleet maintenance, their auctions were great places to get good used, fleet maintained equipment.
This tractor was well broken in when we got it, and I spent many years on it as a kid, from about 10 years old, it had independent pto, power steering, 1 set of remotes. We ran a 535 ford mower conditioner(290 new idea actually) 532 ford baler, M-F side delivery rake, it had the mid mount side sickle, hydraulic snow plow, double ring chains for winter, which are still in use on our 3600 ford, a ford 5' rotary cutter, even had a ford aircraft tug counterweight on a ford 11 hole drawbar which I still have, and to top if off we had 3 Lamco hay wagons, a Love Mfg disc harrow which I still have, and a 2 bottom plow, borrowed by one my fathers NYS trooper buddies from the barracks next to our farm, who never returned it, that's another story, and what a character he was, and still is, so was his brother LOL ! This tractor did everything on this farm, forgot to mention we also had a NI pto manure spreader, first one of 3 we had, 2 of which we still have, we sold New Idea back then as well.
This tractor was so easy to learn how to drive, operate and had a gear for every task, it did all our hay just fine and was no trouble with the thick stand of alfalfa we had, cleared snow in the winter and I sure did a lot of mowing with it, and I ran the 532 baler when I was real young because I was not big enough to sling the bales after we removed the thrower.
My father used to lease another place we had to a friend to run shows and he borrowed this tractor and in good faith changed the trans fluid to service it, but used the wrong fluid or something and I was the last to run it when it quit, and it was the last tractor I had for a very long time, boy did that hurt, I can attribute this event for the overgrown, and now wooded fields we now have here because of that. He gave it to a dear friend that was very mechanically inclined, ran an excavation business, and he died of an aortic aneurysm in his 50's, way too young, and I narrowly missed getting it back, I think it was scrapped or parted, my 850 ford can't hold a candle to that tractor given what it did here for all those years, it was just set up right, independent pto was awesome in thick birdox like we used to have in areas, for baling and the tractor never gave any trouble, that transmission performed flawlessly for all the years I ran it and it was serviced, but minimally, till that mistake was made, lot of memories, wish I still had it given the resources still out there.
Sure its obsolete, and what the others said is true, but I know from ownership and running it all those hours, it was a great tractor, I'd own another if it was in mechanically sound condition. YOu need to have the correct books on the trans and know the service aspect of it and any adjustments, I don't know much about that end of it, but know if maintained they finally proved out to be a good powershift design that was tarnished by an initial too early release in the late 50's, it needed more time in the proving grounds, and I believe the later versions of this transmission, reflected that the corrections, upgrades were successfully implemented, still a lot of them out there today.
