Bullwheels and Fordsons: questions for a pop science book

I'm writing a book about great inventors and their not so great inventions. One chapter features the Fordson tractor (the original, 1916-1928 model). I'm having some trouble understanding how it worked. Apparently it had a bullwheel - which i understand horsedrawn implements had - that dug into the ground, and when it spun around, it worked the implement. Questions: are there other names for this gadget other than bullwheel? Is this how the Fordson operated? Is this how all tractors operated prior to the International Harvester's PTO? Rumour has it the Fordson tractor was difficult/dangerous to operate. Anyone have any info on that? First hand experience? Photos? I'd love to quote a tractor enthusiast in the book, so if you reply let me know if you are okay with that and include your name and how you want me to describe you (Tractor Hobbyist, Tractor Engineer, or whatever) so I can include that too. Thanks!!!

"great inventors and their not so great inventions"

Hwy do you assume the Frodson tractor was a not so great invention? It helped revolutialize farming in the 1sp art of the 20th century.

The Fordson tractor pulled implements much like horse drawn implements before it. Individual implements that needed a power souce may have had a bullwheel, but I am not aware that the tractor had anything like it. The lugs on the wheels provide traction not drive power. The Fordson tractor was very modern in it's sdesign and had an internal transmission drive like a modern car.

There was some danger of flipping a tractor in that time frame if they were not hooked up correctly and an obstruction was hit. This is where Harry Ferguson came into the picture with his eros self regulating plow. This plow greatly reduced the danger of flipping a tractor while plowing. H. Ford and H. Ferguson would later come together and really revolutionalize farming with the Ford Tractor and Ferguson System packaged in the 9N.

But, the Fordson tractor as a not so great invention. I find that hard to believe. It was very sucessful and the first of the modern tractor designs.

The first tractor I ever drove as a kid was a 1926 Fordson. It was revolutionary in its time for its simplicity and durability. I don't see how it could possibly have any negative connotations. If you're looking to sensationalize your book by quoting someone as saying the tractor was dangerous to operate, don't come here.

The tractor had a short wheelbase, and could pick the front end off the ground. The one I grew up with had "teardrop" fenders that had toolboxes in them that extended behind the rear wheels and prevented the tractor from flipping over backwards.

As for a bull wheel, I never heard of one related to a tractor. We had a grain binder that had a large, lugged wheel that drove the binder by ground motion. That was referred to as a "bull wheel", but I never heard the term used pertaining to anything on a tractor.

The only negative I saw about the Fordson, was it had a wet clutch that ran in the transmission gear oil, and the clutch wouldn't release properly until the gear oil warmed up. If you started one when the gear oil was cold and stiff, you depressed the clutch, gritted your teeth, and shoved it into gear.

One final note, my father designed and built an adjustable wide front end on a Fordson years before the manufacturers thought of it.

Thanks for posting that photo. My dads first tractor purchase was a Fordson. A number of years ago I was walking around in our pasture and I happened upon what I assume is the toolbox lid from it. Means a lot to me even though the tractor was never around when I was a kid.
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Walter Jones, writing in a 1922 agricultural engineering journal, explained the reasoning for equipping tractors with a pto. A sprocket attached to a ground-driven bull wheel on horse-drawn machines could provide rotary power. A tractor with no pto could replace the horses but not the bull wheel; slippage of the tractor drive wheels and bull wheel reduced the power transmission efficiency far below that of a pto shaft.
Article telling of 540 rpm and also bull wheel drive.

Thanks for the posts so far! Don't worry...no sensationalism here. That's why I'm coming to you guys - I know you know your stuff. My hubbie sent me! If I'm wrong, I won't print it; I want to understand it fully. Part of my motivation is that I think Ford is cool, and tractors are cool and I'd like to have it in the book.

Failure or not a failure:
I realize that the Fordson played a big role in revolutionizing agriculture. Do you know the story of how early on in its history the UK government during WWI begged Ford to help because they didn't have enough men to tend the fields and they were afraid of mass starvation. Ford built and shipped over Fordsons, and mostly women drove them to grow food.

I am examining how and if the Fordson was a "not so great invention." It has been called by some a failure. This is because the original model - the one Ford put out, received a lot of complaints, including difficulty in operation, and a tendency to flip over (Pipp's Weekly in 1922 published a list of 136 fatalities). From my perspective, the tractor is ONLY a failure in comparison to the Model T, and Ford's OWN standards. The Model T was relatively perfect - the jokes were about it being boring and dependable and longlasting. There were not large numbers of complaints about operating it; there were not fatalities during regular use as a result of mechanical design. It dominated the marketplace. Having read about Ford, personally I think that for some reason he was not able to make the tractor up to his OWN standards, and was anxious to help farmers so gave them the best he could. RELATIVELY speaking, the tractor did not last long in the marketplace (production in US ceased in 1928, when there were over 100 tractor models on the market, and Ford had only 5 percent of the marketshare.) International Harvester outcompeted Ford because they widely introduced the PTO, which was a much superior system - but I'm still trying to figure out what system it was replacing.

(Keep in mind that the premise of the book - not so great inventions - is taking a look at the reasons why inventions might be considered failures...it is not clear cut. for example, Thomas Edison's Concrete Piano sounds like a silly idea. It didn't sell then very well, and wouldn't now. But in fact, it works well, produces great sound, and is cheap to produce: just as Edison planned. During writing the book, I realize that the word failure is pretty grey area, and I hope to get that point across to readers)

Thanks for the fantastic pic Jeff - can I use it? Is it yours? Can I give you photo credit? I'll need your name to do so.

Goose: from what I've read, the rear fenders were a later addition in response to the problem of it flipping.

Bullwheel: I had a feeling the term wasn't being used right. Goose - how did the tractor operate its mower? Or was this ground wheel (anyone know the right term for it??) part of the implement itself. Come to think of it, did the tractor pull the older horsedrawn implements??
There are stories about how the first Fordson owners would light a fire under it to warm it up!
Thanks again

Bull wheel referred to a ground-driven wheel on a pulled impliment which engaged the ground to acquire power to run the pulled machine. Used a grain binder this summer to make bundles of oats. It used a metal wheel with cleats on it to drive the machinery - cutter bar, aprons, string tieing mechanism. Looking at the ground later, it was evident that even the low power requirements for this machine were enough to cause slippage of the bull wheel. A directly driven PTO off a tractor would have been an improvement. But then you have to realize that many early tractor jobs were pulling old horse drawn impliments. Don"t think anyone had figured out how to install a functional PTO on a team of horses! Ground driven was the only way to go.

For the mower, we shortened the tongue of a horse drawn mower. In fact, when I was a kid, we still used a lot of horse drawn machines that were ground driven by themselves. We simply shortened the tongue to pull behind a tractor.

Before remote hydraulics, some machinery still required someone to ride on it. One instance was corn planters. One person would drive the tractor and another would ride the planter to raise and lower it while turning around on the end of the field.

In the case of the grain binder I mentioned before, someone had to ride the binder. The bundles of grain were collected in a "bundle carrier" and every five or six bundles the bundle carrier was tripped by a foot pedal to drop the bundles. Each round the bundle carrier was tripped in the same spot to form windrows across the field.

Before my sister and I were big enough to ride the binder, my father contrived a way so he could ride the binder and steer the Fordson tractor from the seat on the binder. It worked with a system of ropes and pulleys. He also had a way to operate the clutch on the tractor from the binder. One day one of the steering ropes broke and he started going around in circles. He pulled the rope for the clutch on the tractor and it broke, also. All he could do was jump off the binder, run and catch up with the tractor, and jump on the tractor. OSHA people would have had a lot of fits in those days.

I have no idea what ever became of that Fordson. I still had the fenders until a couple of years ago I sold them to a cousin of mine who collects antique tractors. He doesn't have a Fordson, but he wanted the fenders in case he ever got one.

I still have a Fordson toolbox in excellent condition. To the best of my recollection, I don't have any pictures that survived from those days. I do recall the correct color for Fordsons was battleship gray with red wheels.

Awesome! Thanks for the stories. I love the one about your dad driving the tractor from the binder. wow. If I can work it in, I'd like to include it. Can I use your name?

Not my picture I do not own it.

judy, if you are looking for a reference book there is a hardcover book on the ford tractor. pretty much the history of henry ford and his tractors. even has a chapter on the ford tractor that was built by bear ewing (?) not sure about the spelling, but is was a stock scam with a poorly engineered tractor. this brought about the nebraska tractor tests. i will have to look at home and get the name and author of the book, it has a ton of information in it.

"Don"t think anyone had figured out how to install a functional PTO on a team of horses! Ground driven was the only way to go."


They might not have thought of it back in the Fordson's time, but they've got it figured out now. The Amish today regularly use pto-driven implements behind horse teams. The pto power comes from an engine mounted on a cart that's pulled by the horses.....

now, that being said, why it's "ok" for them to run the pto with an engine but not drive the cart it's sitting on(in other words, having a tractor), is kinda a head scratcher...

Judy perhaps you are thinking of bull gears which many tractors had. They were very large diam gears inside the differential that the axles slipped into the centers of.

yep. bull gears it is. thanks to you guys i've got the bull gear lingo sorted out and can explain to the masses (well, the few thousand people that will buy the book) how it all worked, before pto's ruled the world.

In answer to your question above and also in a later post, the so-called "Bull Wheel" was on the implement, not on the tractor. In the case of an implement that took a good bit of power to operate, the bull wheel could be quite large. About the same size as the rear steel wheel on a Fordson tractor. An example of this would be on a grain binder and also on a corn binder which only had one wheel that powered the implement. I never heard smaller wheels, such as those on a hay mower, referred to as "bull wheels".

other than bull wheels and bull gears, is there another name for the "smaller wheels, such as those on a hay mower"?

"Drive wheels" or just plain "wheels" come to mind. Probably because those wheels, in every case I can think of such as corn planters, hay loaders, hay rakes, potato diggers, etc., were placed on each side of the machine and were identical in size and, in fact, both used to drive the machine by employing a ratchet mechanism on each wheel to provide for unequal wheel travel. On those machines employing one main drive wheel and a smaller "grain wheel", the one single drive wheel was referred to as the "bull wheel".

Henry Ford tried to enter the new market for farm tractors in the best way he was good at...low price to the farmer, like the Model T.
$500 for a new tractor when a new Waterloo Boy was reportedly $1200. I don't know what a Titan or a later 10-20 McCormick cost.
My grandfather had two Fordsons when he farmed the "big farm" near Harmony, MN. They were hard to operate, hard to start. They were on the leading edge of design for the time, with the bulk of the tractor made of large iron castings, not just frames with components mounted in a row. But, Henry used big ball bearings in the low revolutions axles and due to metallurgy or design, they often broke, breaking the casting and to repair, one had to replace the whole rear assembly. The castings effectively sealed out dirt and the gears operated inside out of the dirt. Earlier tractors evolving from steam engine designs had crude gears driving the drive wheels directly, working in the dirt.

Even though the tractor was the cheapest and most available, it wasn't durable compared to the International, Case, John Deere, Hart-Parr (later Oliver). Grandfather sold both of his Fordsons after his wife died in a stupid farm fire and went back to farming with horses on a smaller farm. Leonard