Posted by LenNH on November 21, 2008 at 09:11:51 from (24.61.134.129):
A while back, I wrote in, asking people who had used the old stuff on farms to describe what they were like. I wrote about the 10 or more years I had spent on a steel-wheeled 10-20, and a lot of people wrote in their experiences, as well. Well, here goes another. I got to use fairly extensively a "Regular" Farmall that belonged to a neighbor, and an F-20 that shuttled back and forth between my father's farm and a cousin's place. Both tractors were on 36" rubber. First of all, the original steel wheels were 40" in diameter, and the maximum speed of both tractors in high gear (3 on the Regular, 4 on the F-20) was around 4 mph (believe you me, that is about as fast as you can stand on lugs, and also about as fast as a steel-wheeled tractor will pull anything besides itself and maybe a spike-toothed harrow). The 36" tires moved the diameter up to 48" or 50" (my estimate), so there is a substantial increase in ground speed. I estimate almost 3 in first, almost 4 in second, about 4.5 in third on the F-20, and well over 5 in high on both tractors. The result of this change was that, since rubber tires waste less power, either of the tractors would pull the same 2-14" plow or 7-foot double disk in second at nearly 4 mph instead of 3. The faster speed meant a lot more work in a day. The other side of the equation is that these tractors are rough-riders, partly because the seat sticks out the back and you get to go up and down like a seesaw. I never got to drive one of these on steel, but my experience with the 10-20 suggests that at the normal 3 mph work speed, the ride wouldn't have seen so aggressive, even though you could feel the lugs penetrate the soil. Because of the increased speed, and because both tractors had steering that kicked back easily, you had to be holding on if you were in rutted ground. Dropping the front wheels into a rut or into a furrow could result in having the big, heavy iron wheel spin around like a flywheel. Could even hurt your arm if you were resting your forearms on the spokes while you were daydreaming about fishing like Huck Finn, or (blush) about some girl in your class who didn't know you existed (my case most of the time). These tractors were designed in the "old way"--big engine, running very slowly. Result, not a great amount of h.p., but a LOT of torque. I remember vividly trying to make the F-20 plow in fourth gear (well over 5 mph!). It had so much torque that it would not stall, even though the engine would pull down to maybe half speed. Try that with an H--she'd die on you as soon as you let the clutch out. The massive construction meant that almost nothing ever went wrong with these tractors (in my experience, at least). Huge gears, huge engine, huge crankshaft, and so on. There wasn't much to take care of: oil level, using those awful petcocks at the side of the oil pan (they usually got twisted off when somebody with a pair of pliers decided they weren't tight enough); a few grease fittings to service, AND shooting some oil on the felt wicks that lubed the valves--this at least a daily ritual. Tractors back in the 20s and 30s were not usually designed with the operator in mind. The Regular followed this philosophy: Find a place for the driver, wherever there isn't anything else. Anybody who has spent time on a Regular of F-20 will remember that there was no comfortable place for the feet, that the gearshift lever required a pretty good reach (I used to use my foot to shift from second to third!), and that the placement of the seat meant a lot of bouncing up and down. The governor on both tractors was of the "full-on or nothing" variety (IHC did put a variable governor on the F-20 late in life---sometime about 1938, I think--you can check SN if you're interested in when this happened). On the old governor (common to Regular, F-20, F-30, 10-20, 15-30, W-30 and so on until the change I just mentioned), when you throttled back, you got no governing. If the engine slowed down when you went up a slope, you had to add a little more gas with the not-very-sensitive hand lever. If it speeded up going down grade, you had to reduce power, and so on. I guess the designers were thinking of tractors as either all-on or all-off: full-speed ahead for plowing, full-speed to run the thresher. What about raking hay, pulling a haywagon through the field slowly in front of a loader, running a small belt-driven machine that couldn't take full speed from the huge belt pulley? The unmuffled noise from those big engines was great to hear, but probably not too good for the ear drums. We finally put a muffler on the F-20, and that made the sound pleasant and bearable. Automatic steering brakes meant that you almost never had to use hand or foot brakes for turning. In fact, until IH put foot brakes on the F-20 and F-30 around 1938, there was no way to apply the right brake by hand or foot (as you might want to do if a wheel got to spinning). I can remember to this day the sound and feel of these old beasts. I loved 'em then, and I love 'em now, but no, I wouldn't want to farm with one. The cousin who owned the F-20 eventually bought a brand-new Super H, and his first comment was, "Boy, just like driving a car!" That just about says it all. How about experiences of others who have farmed with these?
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