Old Farm Engines

[Vir Campestris]

You mean an Allen Scythe?

We've got something a lot like it at our sailing club. No way will an ordinary mower cut Norfolk Reed 8 feet high. This thing just chops it off at the ankles.

Andy

[Weatherlawyer]

WTF do you mean if? What's the matter with you head? Don't you?

[Davey]

Try this place, in Iowa. I went to one of the Open Days back in 1978, and there were about 100 working Traction Engines, and 500 stationary engines in a field, it was great fun!

East Anglia, back in the UK, has a gathering at Henham Hall in September.

[Andrew]

The original grey fergy had a 4 cylinder petrol engine that was based on the same engine used in Standard cars, because they made them in the beginning (AFAIK). Later ones had 4 cylinder diesel engines. The diesel version had an interesting starter button. You had to press a brass plunger, on the side of the gearbox with your right ankle, and then push the gear lever into a special position.

When Massey Harris bought the company, the later Massey Ferguson 35 and 35X had 3 a cylinder Perkins diesel engines.

[damduck-egg]

It's a little more complicated than but it does depend on whether you class the original ones built by Ford in the US as the original or the later ones in the UK after the bust up so I'll pass on that.

The ankle start was because with one hand holding the gear lever in the start position and hence not in gear you needed another hand to pump the cold start pump which sprayed diesel from a small separate tank over a heater coil in the air intake and you might still need another hand to hold down the decompression lever. This cold start components were made by an outside supplier called KI-Gass who supplied similar systems to aircraft engines of the era and some prewar cars. I believe they made a fluid to go with the system it but in the Ferguson tractor plain diesel was fine.The small tank only held a few pints so on a cold day you fill it with some diesel that had been kept in a warmer place. Cause farmers being farmers never RTFM so the early Diesel Fergusons got a reputation for being poor starters. later versions used a thermostatically controlled valve which dripped fuel onto the heater coil. That said I can't recall ever having to use it on ours but it was kept in a reasonably weatherproof shed alongside the cows so it never got really cold.

G.Harman

[JimG]

Yes. Back in the late 50's, the farmers with the grey Fergies were getting them converted to the P3.144 Perkins. This was 144 cubic inches. This carri ed on via the Massey Ferguson 135 and subsequent models for about 30 years. It was built under licence in dozens of countries around the world. A derivative was the F3.154 which was fitted to the Ford Dextra.

The P3 was certainly one of the most successful diesel engines ever made. M illions have been built and it is still in production.

[cryptogram]

Didn't they fit a 3 cylinder Perkins?

Yes. I have one.

[cryptogram]

The V of the lugs has to point forwards at the top of the tyre to enable the self-cleaning effect. It does look 'wrong' but it's right!

[bert]

In article , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

We are talking about the engine which powered the little grey Fergie.

[bert]

In article , [e-mail] writes

So when did the Standard Fordson, become commonplace? (The one with single pedal for clutch and brake. I can remember driving one as a kid in the 50s - no elfin safety in those days) It had metal wheels with the lugs for grip. Tyres were an optional extra

[damduck-egg]

On Mon, 2 May 2016 22:39:47 +0100, bert wrote:

It was introduced in WW1 as the Fordson F being purchased from the US by the Government, a lot of horses had been sent to the battlefields of France. It started to become common place on larger farms during the 20's especially has Henry Ford moved the factory first to Ireland and then Dagenham by which time the tractor had been modernised to the N type which was produced until 1945 with again vast numbers being built to improve agricultural efficiency during the war and quite a few variants for the construction industry and the services ,the RAF had many to tug aircraft and bomb trolleys around. A huge number became available after WW2 and after that is when they really started to displace the Horse even on small farms. As mentioned up thread my dad got one around then. The Fordson wasn't much more of a horse substitute though it could have a pulley for driving saw benches and threshing machines etc thus replacing traction engines and some later ones did have an optional PTO shaft with a minimal guard put just where if your foot slipped off that pedal you remember you stood on it. For small farmers like my dad you adapted the old horse drawn implements from shafts to a central hitch point and carried on using them though the ability to haul more weight than a horse did allow some more modern equipment such as balers or small towed combine harvesters which had their own small engine to power them .

The Fordson has been called the tractor that won the war but like Churchill towards the end it days were over. Ferguson's tractor with it's new features such as the 3 point linkage and hydraulic lifting and designed for a PTO from the start made it obsolete at a stroke. Another reason why Fordsons were cheap to acquire afterwards.

Ironically as Ford had moved his entire tractor production to Dagenham including those for the US market the farmers of the US had turned away and bought other US makes to the extant that they needed a really good innovation to reestablish themselves in the US which is why they grasped Harry Fergusons design with gusto and started production in Detroit under the Ford badge just before WW2 and it was the fallout afterwards that lead to the post war ones being built in the Standard factory which was spare from having been a wartime production unit rather than in the Ford UK plant.

What isn't often mentioned that the very first Ferguson tractors were built in the mid thirties jointly with David Brown who later lent his initials to Aston Martin models after he bought the company. Ferguson and Brown had different ideas and went their separate ways. If they had stayed together would Aston have made four wheel drive before Jenson used the system? G.Harman

[Tim Lamb]

In message , bert writes

My father had one. Probably issued by the War Ag. Committee during WW2. I remember it had a cast plate behind the steering wheel which claimed

1928 as the year of manufacture. At some stage a geared arrangement was fitted to power a lifting draw bar, probably for ploughing.