Tuesday, June 12, 2018
Went to see a man about a tractor
My friend Benjamin has been looking for a tractor to mow the eight acres of fields he has . Since I have been playing with dad's old 1952 Ford 8N he sought my advice on the matter . After a week of perusing Craig's List we narrowed it down to a couple and agreed to go look at the closest one in Freeport on Saturday .
This one is a 1948 model
Ben gave it the once over while I discussed the particulars of the brush hog with the sellers .
Took it for a spin after unhooking the PTO drive shaft so I could work the three point hitch without flinging rocks at the audience .
Sure seemed light on the front end compared to ours with the muck bucket
I asked the boys if they had a means to deliver it up to Richmond for
Ben and they agreed to throw in the delivery for the $2500.00 asking price along with a three point hitch skidder post and some additional accoutrements . Trading tall stories and shooting the breeze with the sellers , we learned the tractor actually used to belong to Charlie DeGrandpre at Wolfe's Neck Farm just down the road from mom and dad's . Thus making it the exact tractor that inspired my dad to buy ours . With that sign , and given I could find nothing wrong with it , I knew this was The One , and advised Ben that he should buy it . But he wanted to go look at a Farmall up in Phipsburg next so we left without an agreement , and after swinging by mom's place for a short lesson on ours , Ben went off to Phipsburg .
But by next morning I had an email in my inbox with this photo of it sitting in front of Ben's house .
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Always good to have friends with tractors, even if you have a tractor of your own.
ReplyDeleteThe do come in handy . Mine does not have a brush hog but then we don't have the fields that Ben has.
DeleteOne Thing about the older tractors - They're EMP proof!
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, its just a good old Ford model A engine, dead nuts basic, no electronics at all. Points condenser, and a coil. The only concession to modern times is that it has been converted to twelve volt electrics.
DeleteThat must have been a very popular tractor type, as I see them here in North Georgia all the time. Having a tractor and bush hog would be really nice.
ReplyDeleteYes those Ford 8N were, and continue to be popular today because for under three grand you can get the same functional set up that in a more modern tractor will cost between seven and fifteen grand. And they are dead-nuts simple to work on. So they are convenient and affordable for someone that does not need them for professional use. The Ford 8N was the first one to have the three point hitch that now all other agricultural type tractors use. I am still amazed that I was able to drag that fourteen foot long, thirty six inch diameter log with ours as I wrote about in my previous post.
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