good old days

Posted by Donald Lehman on February 10, 2015 at 09:20:51 from (184.8.255.247):

Wes bringing up the subject of a JD 50 brought back memories of cutting corn back in the early 1960's. We had our S-88 on a NH 800 chopper with a two row head. We had two flat bed hay wagons (one 17.5 ft. and one 16 ft.) that we put 4 ft. high side racks on with a false end gate for hauling chopped corn. We pulled the bigger of the two with an 88 and the 16 ft. wagon with our JD 50. We had our $125 dollar Cockshutt 30 with the hole in the block on the belt running the blower. Our hired man at the time (Mac) drove the 88 and I drove the 50. At the time Pop's 88 was tuned to an honest 49 hp. on a dyno. The JD was around 30 hp, and you lost another 1-2 hp. through the power steering unit, so the 88 had a 20 hp. advantage over the 50. Mac was constantly ragging on me because he could get to the barn, unload and be back by the time Pop had a wagon loaded and Pop always had to wait for me. Being a kid, this always drove me nuts.

I piled an incredible mount of abuse on that poor old JD 50 trying to cut my turn-around time. Once you came out of the corn field there was a level portion of the road for a couple of hundred feet and then a short hill that elevated 6-7 feet. Mac simply shifted to 6th gear as soon as he was out of the corn field and away he went. The only way I could get onto 6th was hold the governor wide open until the thing peaked out, snap the shifter out of 5th gear and jam it into 6th gear (without the use of the clutch) and if I timed it just right, I could get over that next hill in high gear with the rpm's so low the front end would jump every time the engine fired. Then I'd hold the governor wide open from there to the barn. We used an AC table style blower and I'd fork corn off the back of that load like a madman. All of this idiocy did actually shave about a minute and a half off my turn-around time and I would be coming into the corn piece just about the time Mac was finishing off his load. I am amazed to this day how that poor old 50 withstood that abuse and didn't simply collapse into a pile of parts in the middle of the road. That 50 was also our loader tractor from around 1958 to 1967.

Those were the days.

Replies:

• Re: good old days uncle scat 17:23:27 02/10/15 (0)
• Re: good old days pete 23 11:31:12 02/10/15 (2)
  • Re: good old days S2710 11:57:53 02/10/15 (1)
    • Re: good old days pete 23 16:32:35 02/10/15 (0)
• Re: good old days gtractorfan 10:44:23 02/10/15 (0)
• Re: good old days Hoenes 09:58:56 02/10/15 (0)
• Re: good old days Mike M 09:57:58 02/10/15 (0)
• Re: good old days NY 986 09:44:49 02/10/15 (3)
  • Re: good old days tomstractorsandtoys 15:29:26 02/10/15 (0)
  • Re: good old days rrlund 12:51:01 02/10/15 (1)
    • Re: good old days NY 986 13:31:22 02/10/15 (0)

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