70 Mile tractor ride

The 1963 Case 830 I drove in the front, my dad's pretty 1959 Case 800 in the rear. This is in my dad's shop right before we pulled out, I blame the blurryness of the picture to it being 5:30 AM



Old Abe (official nickname for Case's emblem) on the front of the 830, the late late 50's and early 60's Cases had a pretty neat front end IMO. They also made fullsize statues of the Old Abe for choice dealerships that are now worth thousands of dollars.



This is shortly after I started the 21 mile journey to where the ride actually started.



The sunrise shining thru the humidity over some gently rolling hills makes for a neat picture on the way to the starting point.



After we met at the A-C museum (sorry no pictures) on our way out of town. I tried to take a picture of the tractors going up the hill in the distance... but the camara focused on the shiny new exhaust pipe, chrome is good.



The MC is an early John Deere crawler, it would be fun to play with for awhile. This is the John Deere museum just outside of town that was our first stop. This is also what Will's would look like if he would happen to thow a little paint over his primer/rust.



Nice little M highway mower, it looks better than new and I had never seen one before.



Lindeman was a company that bought John Deere B's and converted them to a crawler, they did so well than JD bought them out and based their future crawlers off of their design.



On the way to lunch at a small farm equipment company. You can see all the tractors in front of me, and there was roughly that many behind me as well, rough counts usually came up to about 60 machines. If I would have had a way to keep my 8k# hunk of iron on the road I would have attempted a rearward shot.



These two led the way, they were from the A-C museum. I am a bit of a A-C nut (moreso than Case) so these two were fun to look over, not many of them around our area.



This is some of the tractors, they went on around the building (where I was parked) I couldn't get a picture of our side, by the time I got there they were getting ready to leave.



I like their trucks and a few choice cars, but their farm equipment has always struck me as strange, as this one armed front end loader. This was at our last stop, a Ford museum.



I didn't know Ford tried the combine business, must not have been much to write home about, as it was a new one to about everybody there.



1970 IH 1100 (light half ton) pickup truck, only has 55k miles on it and is spotless.



Quite honestly the ugliest pickup front end I have ever seen. Sadly it is a 1960 Ford pickup.



Ford car with a retractable hardtop, it was a neat car although I don't remember the model.



Another Ford car that has a really neat two tone paint job.



Here it is all in one picture, a 1963 Case 830 Diesel with a dual range transmission (as opposed to Case-O-Matic like the 800) The previous owner didn't have the hood on it when we got it, and from the difference in paint hadn't for quite awhile.

wow long drive for a tractor, or just time consuming

philzilla said:

wow long drive for a tractor, or just time consuming

Click to expand...

It was 20 to get there, 30 for the actual ride and 20 to get back home... for a total of 70. The drive was about 10 mph, but I could run 17-18 mph on my own, so it was just a tad over an hour to get there. I had more throttle left but I didn't know what RPM's I was turning and didn't want to blow it up. It was a lot of fun.

We literally just pulled the bale stabber off of the 830 and tightened up the steering for the drive, we need to get the tach and speedo fixed for next year. For a bale mover (pretty much all it had done up until this point) they don't really do much though. We are also looking for larger rear tires, 16.9-19's to replace the 15.5-38's which will make it go a little faster too and look better.

We were gone for about 12 hours, including the stops. Left at 5:30 and got back at 5:30.

awesome pics man, looks like a good time

I am also a AC lover! I inherited a 1941 Model C. It looks terrible, but runs solid, and pulls its weight around the house. Original everything, save a rebuilt Wico Model X magneto. Pulled 80-foot logs and my truck and who knows what else. I want to strip and paint it, fix it up real nice. New gauges, decals, seat, etc.

Fine choice in tractors. I have a '47 C. It was my first one I got in 7th grade as a pile of parts from a neighbor. It took us two trips to bring it home and piece it back together. It looks good from a distance, but the puff can paint job I did my freshman year isn't perfect... and is the wrong color of orange (it is the later brighter orange) My brother has a B which has the same engine, there is no give up in them, which is an A-C thing. I have never been around one that was underpowered.

Kind of a bad picture of it but is the only one I have on my computer. If it makes you feel any better when I got mine (in the day before digital cameras) it looked much, much worse colorwise but was still pretty straight.



If you are going to play in the woods with yours you might switch your rear rims (leave the cast center where it is) around to give it a wider stance (would look like mine) Due to the dropboxes on the axles giving these things a high CG they are kind of tippy, lots of guys were killed by them when they dumped over. A trike will never be all that stable, but every little bit helps. Just loosen the bolt on each wedge and the rim should come right off.


One of my other babies is a 1953 WD-45 that my great grandfather bought new, it is a lot of fun to play with too. None of isn't perfect, but I still use it so it doesn't really need to be. Besides all the dents on the '45 were put there by either my great grandfather, or my grandfather.



The C was way out for this drive, top speed of 7-8 mph would have got me many dirty looks. I could have taken the '45 but the operator platform leaves ALOT to be desired. Seems they designed a super awesome tractor and then designed the seat in less than a week.

You're right, these engines can't be stopped. I ran mine on three plugs for a week, didn't know #2 was fouled out. Burns a little oil, but for being almost 70 years old, I'll let it slide!

I don't really "play around with it in the woods," I just got the truck major-stuck pre-winch, so that's all the rescue equipment I had.

thats a hell of a trip, awesome man

Check this link out, it's a slideshow of a tractor pull my son and I attended last September:

http://Bob-Ayers.smugmug.com/photos/swfpopup.mg?AlbumID=3482405&AlbumKey=rPUvi



Here are a few more, incase you haven't checked out the photo link:

Nice pictures! I have done some pulling too, I have sat out the last two years though. Dropping a $50 bill on gas to get anywhere plus the raising hook fees (to cover the sleds delivery) takes a lot of the fun out of it. Then factor in the the increasingly liberal term of (stock) and it takes even more of the fun out of it.

Me on the '45 showing how to do it (notice me backing off the throttle to keep the front down, I need an exted weight bracket):

great pics!
tractors rule!

Nice pics everyone! I grew up running this kinda stuff, so it was great. Dad's got mostly International: a ton of C's, two MD's ('48 & '52), a 1950something Minneapolis G (massive engine, but low compression), and a 1964? Oliver 4x4 with a 4 cyl. Detroit, which was his newest until he splurged and got an 80something White this spring. His uncle had a couple John Deere 420 & 430 crawlers. Those things were a blast! And nothing sounds like those old 2 cyl!