Tractor & Farming Heritage March 2015

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BIG PERFORMER Ford Versatile 946

100 NOT OUT Wallis Cub

PRAIRIE GOLD

The Minneapolis-Moline story

for sale inside

No. 137 MARCH 2015 www.tractormagazine.co.uk

AND FARMING HERITAGE MAGAZINE

RISE OF THE

MUIR HILL

AT WORK

DAVID BROWN Vintage harvest ◆ EICHER

Tractor of the Sixties

THE FORDSON SUPER MAJOR LOOK OUT FOR

BIG ALLIS

A-C HD15A crawler

BITTEN

BY THE BUG

PUMA ◆ FARMALL CUB ◆ SUPER DEXTA ◆ NUFFIELD

Welcome

Steve Watts’ rare Massey Ferguson 65 row crop parked up during the 2014 National Vintage Tractor Road Run at Bridgnorth.

J

ust as this edition goes to press, the organisers of the National Vintage Tractor Road Run 2015 have told us that both Police Scotland and Cumbria Police have approved the final route for the run, so it’s all systems go for the event on Easter Sunday.

Meanwhile, Buccleuch Estates and its tenants have kindly allowed access over their land as well as the use of a field for the lunchtime stop, which is also good news.

Bearing in mind that the weather may still be cold in early April, the organisers, Canonbie Vintage Club, say an important part of the day is to provide good hot food, ensuring a contented run back to Gretna. Therefore, The Green Tea House, Moniaive, will offer a hot buffet

for £10, including a generous donation to the NVTRR. Alternatively, the Brackenhill catering van will have a tasty selection of home-produced bacon/sausage roll, burgers, chips, snacks and hot/cold drinks.

There will be ample parking (for a small donation) on the field for spectators wishing to view the assembled tractors too – all vital information to ensure everyone enjoys the spectacle.

The run will take place on April 5, this year hosted by Canonbie Vintage Club, Scotland, and is based at Gretna Green, Dumfries and Galloway. For further information contact Peter Hannah on 01387 371412.

In other news, the founder of the event, Ashley Godsall, has also exclusively revealed to us that the 2016 National Vintage Tractor Road Run will take place in Devonshire, and we will bring you further details of the event as and when they are available.

Meet the team...

Ben Phillips

Dave Bowers

Jo Roberts

J Whitlam

Tractor restorer - aka the tractorlad.

Feature writer with a keen technical eye.

Professional heritage Writer and farming writer based in Wales. video producer.

Tony Hoyland

EDITOR

Richard Lofting Stuart Gibbard To link to our Facebook page, just scan the image (right) with your smartphone.

Alternatively, go online and visit www.facebook.com/TractorMag

tractormagazine.co.uk

Roving reporter and technical writer.

Author, historian and tractor specialist.

Also thanks to Alan Barnes, Dan Casanova, Dave Taylor, Fred Needham, John Blake, HR, Graham Hampstead, Peter Hammond, Jean Brown.

March2015Tractor

3

CONTENTS

TRACTOR AND FARMING HERITAGE MARCH 2015

Regulars 3

Welcome

18

News

20

24 78

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

Graham’s Grumbles

Not so much a grumble as observations on modern life as seen by an old codger, claims Graham Hampstead.

34

Cut a long story short

Farmer Fred Needham’s Thistle Cutter caused a real buzz at his local show last year with many asking what it was for, now he tells us all.

36 COVER STORY

Tractor Talk

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

42

Make way for the BIG Allis

COVER STORY

The Cub roars again

The Farmall Cub is the diminutive tractor with the rugged efficiency, so it’s going to take more than a considerable time in storage to dim its spark.

46

86

Next Month

COVER STORY

88

Grand scheme of things

Heritage

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

Graham Hampstead reveals some of the projects he has lined up for 2015.

138 Last Word

It’s a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ now that Farmer Brown has taken to his ‘den’.

YourTractors 6

12

The imposing Ford Versatile 946 is more at home on the prairies of North America, so how rare is it to find two of the behemoths at work over here?

Bitten by the SAME bug

COVER STORY

Meet the collector with a passion for the Italian brand whose SAME DA30 DT steals the show wherever it goes.

28

Going mobile

31

32

Your first set of wheels is a landmark, but starting your own business at the same time with a Fordson Major…

Super Dexta lives up to its name

Australian readers Maurie and Allison Cole tell us about their trek to join up with the Great Snowy River Tractor Stampede.

Big yellow machines

COVER STORY

The numbers 101, 161 and 171 can mean only one thing to tractor enthusiasts – Muir-Hill.

54

First World War farming

56

The reliable one

Versatile performer

COVER STORY

4

48

Retired farmer John Blake looks recalls how farming was shaken up by the demands of the First World War.

COVER STORY

Ben Phillips opts for dependability with his selection for the 1960s tractor of the decade – the Fordson Major E1a.

60

Lots to be thankful for

62

Auctions of today can be frantic affairs, so what was it like to run your own ‘old fashioned’ farm sale back in 1998.

Mining for Prairie Gold

COVER STORY

Stuart Gibbard explains the complicated makeup of the Minneapolis-Moline Power Implement Company.

Send in your tractor snaps – you never know, you might win the prize we’ve got up for grabs.

67

Tractor Archives

Tunisian tractors

72

Show us yours

What better way to brighten up these winter days than to fish out the holiday snaps, especially if they include tractors.

TractorMarch2015

COVER STORY

Superior engineering

Many years have passed since the David Brown name has appeared on any new tractors; but there are still some working the land at this Lancashire farm.

Crawler tractors are all the rage – but what to do with them – especially when they are as big as Steve Richards’ AllisChalmers HD15A.

COVER STORY

72

Bringing in a vintage harvest

More heritage memories from the farming literature of yesteryear.

Superior engineering

Wallis Cub – a centenarian that was making headlines back in 1915 and still turns a few heads nowadays.

84 Back on the farm

74

Home Farm Diaries

It’s 1973 and it’s March again. It can be a cold and bleak month, but Home Farm is buzzing and there is a lot to do.

Workshop 92 COVER STORY

98

If Noddy owned a tractor...

Ben Phillips thinks these little German tractors have a character all their own, and this Eicher ES201 Puma certainly has the continental charm.

Sealing the deal

Richard Lofting had been putting off replacing his Nuffield’s front crankshaft seal for some time, but now its time to get the job done.

Marketplace 103 New Products

All the latest tractor and farming heritage related releases.

104 Sales & Marketplace

We round off the 2014 auctions with a trip to the Newark Showground and a Ransomes rarity at a Hobbs Parker sale.

107 Tractor Classifieds

Hundreds of tractors for sale in our comprehensive Tractor classified section.

Having trouble finding a copy of this magazine?

Why not Just Ask your local newsagent to reserve you a copy each month? tractormagazine.co.uk

YourTractors

Big performer takes centre stage

Ford Versatile 946

With its 14 litre Cummins engine, the imposing Ford Versatile 946 was originally built for use on the wide open prairie farms in North America, so how rare is it to find not one but two of the behemoths hard at work over here?

WORDS & PICTURES Alan Barnes

Y

ou would think that a tractor powered by a 14 litre Cummins engine would make enough noise to be easily located in even the largest field. As I stood at the edge of a hedge line, the sun was breaking through the early morning mist on what looked liked being a fine August morning.

Part of the field where I was standing had been ploughed but there was no sign of the tractor working in the area; then in the distance, a large flock of gulls appeared and as they wheeled overhead the cab of the tractor appeared over the horizon.

From the lane where I had parked my

car, the field had looked pretty large but I was unaware that most of the field lay over a slight ridge and this fold in the land had effectively muffled any noise from the powerful engine of the Ford Versatile 946.

Farming and contracting

The tractor was one of two such machines owned by Richard Reed who farms near the small village of Ancroft, which is a few miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland. His business is divided between farming his own acreage under the BL Farms Ltd banner while he also provides contract agricultural services as Reed Contracting. He had been kind enough to give me a ‘licence to roam’

around the farm to photograph the tractors in action. With harvest in full swing, this was certainly a busy time and with full advantage being taken of a fine settled spell of weather the combines were cutting wheat. As soon as the fields were cut, the two Versatile 946 tractors would be let loose to prepare each field for sowing the next crop.

With their double wheels and massive bonnets the tractors are certainly imposing machines and they were originally designed and built for use on the wide open prairie farms in North America and they tend to make short work of the average size English field, especially when two of them are working together. ➤

The Versatile comes into view near Ancroft followed by a flock of feeding gulls.

FarmingHeritage

THE BIG YELLOW

MACHINES The numbers 101, 161 and 171 will not mean that much to the average person in the street but to tractor enthusiasts of the mid 1960s to the early 1980s they can mean only one thing – the most powerful machines built by the firm Muir-Hill during that time.

With Dowdeswell six furrow semi-mounted plough on the back, this Muir-Hill 171 Series III is ready for work at the Blue Force Working Weekend in Warwickshire in September 2014.

The Series II range saw the 171 receive a much better, taller and more spacious cab than that fitted to the 161 but it took three years before it replaced the first model after the initial launch of the Series II tractors.

Workshop

If Noddy owned a tractor...

Joking apart, Ben Phillips thinks these little German tractors have a character all their own, and this twin-cylinder air-cooled Eicher ES201 Puma certainly has the continental charm.

92

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Inset: My partner Amy, who loved this little tractor more than most I do, demonstrates how small this tractor looks when a fully grown adult is sitting on it. It was tricky to get on and off.

As it arrived, a bit sorry looking but the vision of how it could make a lovely tractor is there. The one light was missing and the surround bent.

WORDS & PICTURES Ben Phillips

W

hen Peter Andrews contacted me regarding his Eicher I wondered how he had managed to get such a machine.

Yes imports are commonplace today, a lot of tractors are being brought into the country all the time, but I soon learnt Peter had owned the tractor since the mid-1960s.

He also owns a farm, which in those days grew fruit, and the narrow, low-line Eicher was useful between the trees. When the farm changed to dairy the tractor was still used almost daily to help feed the cattle and for spraying the crops. Even though more modern tractors were now doing most of the work, the little Eicher still had a place.

When it arrived it had been painted at some point in the wrong shade of blue, the wheels were rusty with traces of the original red still in places, the lights were all rotten and the seat was missing, but it ran and sounded lovely.

I had a demonstration on how to start it which involved opening a decompressor until the engine was turning over quick enough to start. It wound itself up – you could hear it building and building until it thumped into life, belching smoke from the side exhaust.

The smoke soon cleared and the ES201 engine ran well.

With this being only a cosmetic restoration getting enough, but not too much, stripped down was a priority. The fuel tank was straight in front of the simple dash and this was the most awkward part to remove from the tractor. The bolts were in very tricky places so getting spanners in was one thing but turning them was another.

Proper job

I persevered, as I knew removing the tank was needed to get the job done right. The four bolts holding the wings on that were located in the castings undid surprisingly easily so the wings were removed quickly. With the bonnet off, there was only the wheels to go until the Eicher was stripped down.

Before it was sandblasted I decided to cover the engine up as the power with which the sand is delivered would have damaged the aluminium engine covers and the fins that made up the cylinder liner. Amy taped cardboard tightly round the twin cylinders.

The tractor looked a lot better after the old paint had been removed and everything was treated to the usual red oxide and grey primer.

Regular readers will know I use Vapormatic paints but as this was a rarer tractor, I turned to Granit Parts, a German-based company that caters for these continental tractors. I first used its products when I did the Kramer tractor a few years ago.

There are two shades of blue listed for the Eicher so I took note of the right one found on the tractor that hadn’t been painted over. The paint was different to what I am familiar with and it took a while to get the best from it. ➤ March2015Tractor

93

NextMonth

AND FAR M I NG H ER I TAGE MAGAZIN E

Perkins Double ▲ Doe never made a tandem tractor based on two Fordson E27N Major skid units – or did it? We’ve got the story of a remarkable Perkins-powered conversion.

ON SALE MAR 10

CH

The Timberjack 230

Force II be reckoned with

If you go down to the woods today... your peace and tranquillity might be totally shattered by the roar of a Detroit diesel engine powering a Hercules winch on this mighty timber tractor.

Thirty years ago the Ford Motor Company revitalised virtually the whole of its tractor range with new features and a new look courtesy of the Super Q cab – a landmark in the history of the Ford tractor.

PLUS Massey Ferguson 165 ■ John Deere ■ Ferrari 75 ■ Graham Hampstead ■ Holt 120 ■ Power Major ■ Tractor of the Decade ■ Tractor Archives 86

TractorMarch2015

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