Tractor & Farming Heritage Magazine September 2014

Tractor SEPTEMBER 2014

32 S

BMC TRACTORS

PEA HARVESTING

3 reasons Nuffield’s the best The machines take over

READERS RESTORATION

Fordson F challenge

GE PA TRACTORS

OF FOR SALE

SEPTEMBER 2014 www.tractormagazine.co.uk

■ MASSEY FERGUSON 178 ■ FORDSON MAJOR ■ FERGUSON CLUB ■ M-H MEMORABILIA ■ INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER 585 ■ NUFFIELD UNIVERSAL

AND FARMING HERITAGE MAGAZINE REPO RT

IH 585

A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH

BLUE

FORCE

1000

£34,500

OVERTIME

AT CHEFFINS SALE

WORKSHOP

9 PAGES OF ESSENTIAL PRACTICAL ADVICE ◆ PICK

UP BALERS ◆ NVTEC CLUB FOCUS ◆ MF 1155

No. 131

September 2014

£3.90

CONTENTS

TRACTOR AND FARMING HERITAGE SEPTEMBER 2014

Regulars 3

Welcome

18

News

20

24 80

COVER STORY

All the latest news in the world of tractors and heritage.

Graham’s Grumbles

Hi-tech innovations are the subject of this month’s grumble – oh how times have changed!

38 COVER STORY

Tractor Talk

Your news, views and comments about the vintage and classic scene.

Vast collection – tiny cupboard

Jo Roberts takes another trip to see collector John Farnworth’s vast collection of tractor related memorabilia, but now it’s time to move on to ‘the smaller stuff’.

88

32

40

114 Next Month

Preview of the October issue of your Tractor & Farming Heritage magazine.

YourTractors 6

Down in the woods

Meet the man who believes veteran tractors should still be making a living and not just for the showground.

12 COVER STORY

28

30

4

Dave’s Tractors

Dave Taylor tells how he was almost turned from the blue to the red with the temptation of a gleaming Massey Ferguson 178.

Promoting THE system

Our Club Focus spotlights the Ferguson Club, established in 1986 to promote interest in the work of the late Harry Ferguson and Ferguson products.

TractorSeptember2014

A red among the blue

Readers’ Tractors

Tim Watson tells us of the restoration race against time that he and brother Jon faced to get their Fordson F ready in time for the show season.

Page 86 71

COVER STORY

76

Heritage 48

52

Part of the furniture

Tony and Anne Rimmer have been slowing down to the speed of life at their new home in France; Tony gives us another aperitif of their daily rural life.

Cream of the crop

COVER STORY

The events leading to the advent of the FMC 679 pod picker in 1976 that changed pea harvesting forever.

56

Picking up on balers

COVER STORY

Nuffield is best

George Blaylock owns a large Nuffield 10/60 and a BMC Mini, so what better tractor could he get to represent the BMC range than this Nuffield Universal Three.

Introducing…

A preview of the Notts NVTEC Working Weekend in August is as good an excuse as any to review one of the largest tractor groups in the land.

44 COVER STORY

80

A vast collection

Welcome to the Notts NVTEC

It was always going to take something special to disturb the Fords that ruled the roost on this farm, but the IH 585 was a force to be reckoned with.

146 Last Word

Jean Brown finds that there are some people who shouldn’t be left in charge of boiling an egg!

With the name of the game to get as many Ford tractors and their derivatives into one place at one time, it was always going to be a fascinating show.

COVER STORY

A battered back end

The saga of Graham Hampstead’s Super Dexta restoration continues…

Blue Force 1000

62

66

70

The recent Fife Vintage Club’s Rally featured more than 20 varying makes and types of pick-up baler, Peter Small tells us how the machines developed.

Home Farm diaries

More heritage memories from the farming literature of yesteryear.

Highland Folk Ways

We continue our story of Isabel Frances Grant and how her passionate dream to preserve and record Scottish history and Highland folk culture was finally fulfilled.

Workshop 92 COVER STORY

96

Bare essentials

If you’ve bought a tractor and it only needs a cosmetic restoration here are a few things to do if you know they’ve not been done already.

The proper treatment

If you’re looking to keep that just finished lustre longer on your painted parts workshop expert Richard Lofting shows how.

106 New Products

All the latest tractor and farming heritage related product and equipment releases.

Women at the wheel

Stuart Gibbard looks at the part played by the lady tractor drivers during the First World War.

Tractor Archive

Marketplace

September is one of the best months of the year, the combine is almost back in the shed, and thoughts turn to HR’s favourite jobs.

101 What’s on

Red Power

108 Sales & Auctions

Stuart Gibbard reports on the Massey Ferguson 1155 tractor – a formidable V8 contender in the North American race for power.

Your guide to heritage days out throughout the season in our comprehensive event guide.

COVER STORY

Old Sump Plug is working ‘Overtime in the heat’ to bring you the latest Cheffins’ sale, while Jo Roberts give a roundup of the general auctions. tractormagazine.co.uk

56

TRACTORS FEATURED THIS ISSUE

Picking up on balers

PAGE 115

TRA CLAS CTOR S SECT IFIED ION

BMC Mini......................................................12 Caterpillar D8.............................................66 Ford & Ford derivatives.........................32 Fordson Dexta...........................................88 Fordson F.....................................................44 Fordson Power Major ...............................6 International 585......................................40 International B-414 .................................48 John Deere 1630.........................................6 Massey Ferguson 1155..........................70 Massey Ferguson 178 ............................28 M-H780 Combine ....................................71 Nuffield 10/60 ...........................................12 Nuffield Universal Three.......................12

12

3 reasons Nuffield is best

6

113

Woodland veterans at work

Affordable Workhorses

92

Bare essentials

71

Tractor archive

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tractormagazine.co.uk

52

Cream of the crop

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Highland Folk Ways September2014Tractor

5

YourTractors

Woodland veterans at work Preserving a particular tractor’s historical integrity is not Nelson Harbour’s main aim.

He prefers his older machines to be ‘workers’, not something for the showground.

Nelson bought the Fordson Power Major around 15 years ago; it was in a sorry state and was rebuilt from the ground up to working condition.

WORDS & PICTURES Alan Barnes

F

orester Nelson Harbour from Sussex has probably been in woodlands since he was knee high to a bluebell. Today Nelson is still at work in his beloved Sussex woodlands and for a few days this spring I managed to catch up with him as he set about the task of removing some fine oak trees from some woods owned by a local farmer. e trees, probably around 60 or 70 years old, were now in prime condition to be felled for their valuable timber and with the necessary licences and permits in place

Nelson and his colleague Vince were able to start work in mid-March. at is certainly one aspect of the business which has changed over the years and it oen seems as though you need to cut down a couple of extra trees just to make the paper needed for all the different forms that are now required! e early part of the year had been very wet although Sussex did not experience the severe flooding which had affected other parts of the country during the winter months. Even so the ground conditions in the two areas of woodland where the work was to be carried out were far from

satisfactory which accounted for the delay in starting to fell the trees.

Nelson said: “Normally we would plan to finish before the trees start coming in to leaf but this year we are several weeks behind. We should manage to get everything cut down before the end of April though. “en it will be a matter of hauling out the timber and tidying up the ground allowing nature to take over once again. It may look a real mess at the moment but come here next spring and these newlyopened areas will be a mass of bluebells and other wild flowers.” ➤

YourTractors

Dave’s

TracTorS

Massey Ferguson 178

Dave Taylor tells how he was almost turned from the blue to the red with the temptation of a gleaming Massey Ferguson 178 – an association that also holds dark memories.

WORDS Dave Taylor PICTURE COURTESy AGCO Ltd

A

er a spell driving the Vickers Vigor bulldozer, where the required skill was the ability to push lorry loads of clay into a big hole as quickly as possible, it was nice to go on to do something that le a mark and showed how good you were.

My next job was for our next door neighbours – two brothers, Bob and Mick Fox – who were the biggest farmers in the village, mainly focusing on arable but also keeping some sheep and beef. eir equipment was always very tidy and up to date but they had one major failing – they were Massey men! All the other tractors in the village – apart from an odd Nuffield, International and Field Marshall – were Fordsons. eir tractor driver, George Sabin, also had a small farm in the next village and even he had a Fordson.

For some reason nobody in their team was fit to do the ploughing in the autumn, back problems if I remember correctly, and me and another farmer’s son were draed in to drive their tractors to get the ploughing done.

It was ironic really because I was still on crutches recovering from a broken pelvis but, I didn’t care – I was back on a tractor.

I was given George’s Diesel Major with a two-furrow 14in Ransomes plough to work with and Richard, the other lad who was a bit older than me, had their Massey Ferguson 175 with a three-furrow Ransomes plough.

Precision

Now, I should explain that Mick and George usually did all the tractor driving and they were perfectionists. ey would always work at 90º to the road so that they were judged on how straight their work was and there was no mercy if you didn’t keep a straight line.

Very rarely did you see them leaning on the mudguard when driving – always sat up straight and looking right down the centre of the bonnet. Richard and I were given different fields to plough and they’d already

28

TractorSeptember2014

been marked out, so all the judging was on the finish. I didn’t think I did a bad job but, since the slightest deviation was seen as a failure, nobody actually said so.

However, they always said “See you tomorrow Dave” so I guess that was praise enough.

I came back in one night and Mick directed me into another shed. e building I usually parked the tractor in was locked but I thought nothing of it other than hoping the tractor would start in the morning because it was bitterly cold.

I needn’t have worried – when I got in next morning the shed was unlocked and the door was open. Mick said: “Richard’s not in today Dave, you’d better take the Massey.”

Surprise

Well, that was the first surprise. e second was that when I got in the shed, the old MF 175 had been replaced by a brand new Massey Ferguson 178 and a three-furrow 14in Ransomes New eme plough.

What an outfit! I nearly converted from blue to red. I have to say it was a pleasure to drive but still freezing cold because there was no cab – that was for ‘poofs’ and you couldn’t see your line properly through all that glass.

I didn’t care though – I don’t know what happened to Richard but I finished all the ploughing with the new Massey Ferguson, even though the cold weather gave me excruciating toothache when I got back into the warm at night.

My toothache, though, paled into insignificance later in the year when something tragic occurred that could be related directly back to the ploughing. I was given a 40 acre field to plough; dead flat and almost square, it was a ploughman’s dream.

George had already marked it out and, though I say it myself, as the lands ploughed out, I was doing a good job on the finishes.

About two-thirds of the way across the field and about 40 from the hedge there was a tuy lump of grass which, considering the immaculate condition the rest of the field was in, seemed very strange.

I had aspirations of ploughing the tuy

This image from the AGCO Archives shows one of the first models of the Massey Ferguson 178 at the Stoneleigh Training School in October 1968. The name of the driver is unknown. lump under when I got to it with the plough, but when I was almost on top of it, I could see some cut stone and I realised it was a well. ere was a bit of wood laid across the top of it so I ploughed around it and le the landmark for another year.

Filled in

I mentioned it to George later and he said there used to be a cottage there many years ago but the well remained.

George explained: “I suppose it ought to be filled in but it’s handy to get rid of a dead sheep occasionally.” (Yes I know that must seem appalling but we’re talking about 45 years ago before most of the eco-warriors had been born).

Anyway, fast forward a bit – I’d finished the ploughing and was off my crutches and had taken a full-time job as a tractor driver in the next village. tractormagazine.co.uk

We’d had quite a lot of snow and when I got home one night, mother said: “ere’s been a lot going on round here today, one of the guests from the hotel has disappeared – went off hiking at the weekend and hasn’t come back. e police helicopter has been flying over the fields and they’re now searching all the woodland.”

Well, you’ve probably guessed what had happened. e poor guy had gone out walking in the snow. e chances are he wouldn’t have seen the tuy lump of grass or the piece of wood and, by what can only have been a million to one chance, he went straight down the 60 well.

It was another two or three days before they found him and obviously he was long gone. Hopefully, the fall killed him because it wouldn’t have been very pleasant down there with the dead sheep for company. Mick and I both had to go to the unfortunate fellow’s tractormagazine.co.uk

inquest and give evidence – Mick because he was the landowner and me because they surmised that I was the last one to see the open well. e coroner was very thorough but eventually decided that nobody was to blame and the verdict was accidental death.

However, he did comment that he couldn’t understand how the sheep could have fallen down the well and nobody had noticed.

A sad, sad tale and as a result many disused wells in the area were capped. Hopefully it’ll never happen again. But for a long, long time aer I kept thinking – if only! ✦

Tell us your stories

If you recognise any of the equipment in this feature or want to tell us about your experiences, do let us know, after all it’s what makes this magazine so interesting.

September2014Tractor

29

YourTractors iffs in the It is believed that there are only five Matbro Mast 00 in BF10 at side by UK, and three were on display side ted to the nstra Demo ition. cond red resto extremely good fully 100hp ted repor a public at the end of 1962, and developing ls mode 20 only said is it e, from a Ford 6-cyl industrial engin were ever built.

Very few examples of Fordson F Hi-Clearance models are thought to exist, so we were pleased to see Brian Nairn’s 1923 example.

In a sea of predominantly blue there were old gems for the visitor to discover such as this Fordson F (Hadfield-Penfield) of 1922 owned

by Derek Mellor and restored in 2013.

Another Michigan built Ford this time a 2000; Phil Gibson’s tractor of 1963 attracted much interest due to the differences between it and the Basildon built counterpart. The engine is 2.2 litre 36hp petrol, with 10 forward and 2 reverse Select-O-Speed – this gearbox was fitted in the US approx. five years before over here.

The George Stephenson Hall housed many Ford variations such as this 1976 Ford 3600 petrol built at Highland Park and the US, it is now owned by Philip Gibson who believes it was employed on golf course duties.

Dough Hargrave’s 1982 Ford 334 Industrial used to work on a golf course in Derbyshire, it still gets some employment nowadays with a finishing topper.

Among the excellent exhibits brought along by James Hardstaff was this fine 1965 County Super 6 fitted with Boughton Winch.

Below: There were several tractors at BF 1000 that were shown at the Fordson 500 event 18 years ago. This was the first show outing for this 1954 Fordson Major since then. It was owned by Mr F Newton and since then his son D Newton.

This ex-USAF Ford 4000 was made at Highland Park, Detroit in 1970 and worked on US airbases in the eastern counties during the Cold War – it was run on aviation petrol which caused it seize at 332 hours over 40 years ago.

Fitted with Select-O-Speed it has since been restored by Sonny Smith.

This Roadless Ploughmaster 78S is the last Roadless built and has been restored by owners John Bownes Ltd. It was built in 1983 and converted by Roadless Traction Ltd and supplied new to the House of Goodness, Oxford.

The Fiat 44-28 rated at 280hp was built at the Versatile factory, Winnipeg in Canada, originally released as the Versatile 875 and changed to the Fiat livery in 1979 for the European market.

FarmingHeritage

WOMEN at the wheel

Stuart Gibbard looks at the substantial part played toward the war effort by the lady tractor drivers during the First World War. WORDS Stuart Gibbard PICTURES Stuart Gibbard, US Library of Congress

W

hen it comes to girl power, we all remember the massive contribution made by the Women’s Land Army during the 1939-45 conflict. e ladies carried out tasks in every sphere of agriculture – arable, livestock and dairy farming, land reclamation, market gardening, fruit picking and even rat catching; while the ‘Lumber Jills’ of the Women’s Timber Corps undertook vital work in Britain’s forests.

More oen than not, the hard-working women proved to be the equal of the men they replaced; and were sometimes more proficient! is was certainly true of the hundreds of ‘land girls’ who trained as tractor drivers. Some were so adept at their job that they were sent out to instruct

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farmers on the care and use of their machinery.

What is not so well documented is the sterling work of the lady tractor drivers during the First World War. Although the Women’s Land Army (WLA) existed in the First World War, it wasn’t formed until February 1917 and most of its 23,000 members were given little opportunity to drive tractors, which were in short supply and were usually entrusted to men from the Army Service Corps (ASC).

Substantial contribution

Women made up a third of all the auxiliary labour draed on to the land during the 1914-18 conflict with the remainder being drawn from the ASC and other infantry labour units, supplemented by prisoners of war and lads under the age of military service. e WLA was a fledgling organisation, funded and controlled by the

Food Production Board of the Ministry of Agriculture, with other essential work being assigned to the Women’s Forage Corps and the Women’s Forestry Corps. ere were numerous voluntary female organisations that became involved in war work during the First World War, but by far the largest body was the Women’s Legion, which was originally formed as the Women’s Volunteer Reserve in July 1914. Although not under governmental control, the organisation adopted a military-style uniform under the leadership of the noted socialite and philanthropist, the Marchioness of Londonderry, Edith Vane-Tempest, who acted as its president and chairman. e Women’s Legion, which had more than 40,000 members by September 1917, provided volunteers to work in hospitals, factories and canteens and to act as drivers for motor transport and ambulances. ➤ tractormagazine.co.uk

Women’s corps

The Women’s Legion was one of several female volunteer organisations that sprang up during the First World War to encourage women to become more involved in food production. These included the Women’s Institute and the Women’s Defence Relief Corps, both formed in 1915 to revitalise rural communities.

The most important of the rural organisations was the Women’s Farm & Garden Union, which had existed since before the start of the war to promote the greater use of female labour on the land. In the autumn of 1915, with the Government’s backing, it established a number of farms for training women workers.

Between 1915 and 1916, the Government implemented several schemes via the local ‘War Ag’ committees to induce women to undertake vital agricultural work. This led to the establishment of the Women’s Forage Corps to form work parties to procure and bale fodder for the army’s horses. Formed in 1915, this volunteer body later became part of

the WLA and eventually had 8000 recruits.

The foundations of the Women’s Forestry Corps were also laid in 1916. Later incorporated into the WLA, this organisation was employing some 400 women as forestry workers by January 1918.

During 1916, the Government offered a grant for the establishment of the Women’s National Land Service Corps (WNLSC) as an offshoot of the Women’s Farm & Garden Union. Formed by the leading agriculturalist and explorer, Louisa Wilkins, who was the wife of treasury clerk, Roland Wilkins, the object of this new organisation was to actively recruit women to work on the land, and to persuade farmers to accept female workers.

In 1917, Mrs Wilkins made a deputation to the Board of Agriculture, campaigning for a greater awareness of women’s role in farming, which led directly to the formation of the Women’s Land Army. The WNLSC continued to act as agents for the Land Army, organising the supply of volunteers.

A lady driver from the Women’s Legion demonstrates a Martins motor-plough during a day of agricultural competitions at Oakham in September 1917.

Land Army girls with an American Eagle tractor, hitched to an early La Crosse chain-lift plough.

Sylvia Brocklebank, the commandant of the agricultural section of the Women’s Legion. tractormagazine.co.uk

Members of the Women’s Legion with an International Titan 10-20 tractor.

September2014Tractor

63

GrahamHampstead

Brakes, hydraulics

and a battered

back end

If you’ve been following the saga of Graham Hampstead’s Super Dexta restoration then you’ll not be surprised to learn that the next area to receive attention had suffered from the same abuse as the rest of the poor old thing.

WORDS & PICTURES Graham Hampstead

A

ll the mechanical bits from the front axle to the back of the gearbox had been repaired, painted and stored away; that just le the back end, brakes and hydraulics which could now be grouped together as one lump for attention.

I knew I was going to find trouble because when I had removed the gearbox I could clearly see someone had butchered the top out of the hydraulic pick up filter that fits in to the pump body. e first thing I took off was the li top – I had removed the pick-up hitch and all the brackets earlier, so it was just a matter of removing the seat and then the edge bolts and liing it off.

I shouldn’t be surprised by now, but it came a shock to see the whole of the internal dra control linkage missing; I could see evidence of angle grinders having been at work inside, there were cut marks on various bits of castings. e dra linkage must have become seized up through lack of use and started to affect the position control linkage, but, rather than try to free off the various connections, someone had taken the top off and just cut all the seized bits out.

Got one in the shed

at does answer one question though, the hydraulic li will still work without that particular mechanism fitted. Luckily, I have quite a good stash of second-hand parts – I dragged out a complete li cover from the bowels of my spares shed and stripped it right down until I had all the relevant bits. It was quite a fiddly job getting everything installed and moving as it should, but aer a few hours I was happy with how it was all working.

Now I had the problem of setting the linkage up. Back when these tractors were in regular use all the Ford dealers would have had the correct specialised tools for setting up the two systems, dra and position.

I had disturbed every setting to get the two lots of linkage into the casting so I had to start from scratch. I drove my everyday Dexta

88

TractorSeptember2014

in to the workshop and removed the li cover and then started the time consuming job of estimating the adjustments – fit the li top on to the Dexta, start up and check the operation of the li, take it off again make a slight correction, try again, and so on and so on; as my old dad would have said, doing it “arse about face”.

Eventually the position setting was okay and I made a gauge to fit between the control valve adjuster and the li cylinder for future reference. I then started the whole operation again, this time to the dra linkage aer liing the cover on and off umpteen times I got the dra working correctly without it effecting the position control.

When the linkage was set up I had to make a second gauge as the adjustment is quite different from the first; I marked the two different depth gauges so now if I had to set up a hydraulic li linkage it would be relatively straightforward. e next part needing attention was the flow control valve linkage which, like the internal linkage, had been stolen by the fairies; the adjusting knob positioned on top of the external service valve was all that was le. is time I had to make all the parts, but I had this set up on my everyday Dexta so I had one to copy.

I removed both axle housings and pulled the diff out – it looked to be okay; these later Dextas were fitted with a diff lock, which has to be removed to strip the diff down. ➤

This month’s time and expenses Lift cover and rear axles – time 20 hours

Parts and services

Half shaft bearings x2 Outer seals x2 Inner seals x2 Linkage pins x2 Carriage Total this month Total hours so far Total cost so far

£39.92 £19.80 £12 £32.50 £15 £105.22 108.5 £735.18

My trusty everyday Dexta drilling kale earlier this spring; could it be a shiny Super Dexta next year?

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