The good looking fellow on the left is my friend the Rev. George Goodwin, of East Worcester, New York.  We posed for this picture at the end of a fine spring day spent working on the clutch of his 1942 Farmall M, Big Red, the handsome machine in the middle. George has had to saw off the muffler so he can get the tractor into his shed, and it's a mighty tight fit on the side through the shed doors, too. The M is dwarfed by the tractors that began to come along in the late 60s, but in its day it was a BIG tractor, and nobody knew what an internal combustion engine was when that shed was built. Matter of fact, there's probably more metal in one place on that M than the folks that built that shed in the late 18th century ever saw in their entire lives. Getting the clutch repaired so that it would disengage was a matter of fixing it so George could move the tractor safely in and out of the shed without fear of tearing down the whole farmstead. That greasy derelict over on the right would be me.

I met George on the  Farmall board at  Yesterday's Tractors  (YT), an online magazine for enthusiasts of old tractors of all makes. It was the YT board and and other web resources that helped me get up the courage to buy and rebuild the first tractor of my own, the SuperC.  The YT Boards are a terrific place, populated with a lot of really nice folks. You can post a question or search their archives, and find quality help solving just about any problem you might encounter with a tractor.

Prior to finding YT, I found some real inspiration at  T. W. Cook's outstanding site , which is a gold mine of information, hints, and links to the resources that make rebuilding a tractor possible. His site is specific to Farmalls and the H he restored in particular, but is well worth a visit from anyone with even a passing interest in old iron.

My SuperC

I opined to Gayle a few years back that it would surely be handy to have a tractor around the place.  I have a lot of fond memories of summers on the farm in Central Ohio where my mother was raised.  It was a Farmall kind of a farm. There was a BN, an H and, for a while, an Oliver that was later replaced with a Farmall 400.  From the time I was small, I can remember riding in my grandfather's and great-grandfather's laps, "driving" those machines. Some of my favorite times were riding on the left axle of the BN, hanging onto the fender, with my feet resting on the  front of the drawbar, and listening to my great-grandfather recite rhymes and jingles that he'd learned as a boy while "we" cultivated beans. My contribution to the day's effort would be to hop off and pick up newfound rocks for removal to the stonepile. When I reached the age of ten, I was promoted. My first real tractor duties included shuttling the hay wagons and gravity boxes between the field and the barn. From there to pulling the baler and, later, the old tagalong combine. My favorite was discing up the fallow ground -- wouldn't those tractors bark when I'd get into the heavy stuff!  For a young fellow there's few things any better than flipping the seat back to stand up and wheel a working tractor.

Gayle deserves a lot of the credit for indulging my dreams. She liked the idea of having a tractor around. More than once she came in from her Saturday morning errands to report on a tractor she'd seen for sale out along the road someplace. I'd go have a look with her, but they all turned out to be the wrong "color".  In tractorspeak that means they weren't Farmall Red. I even came across a newly restored Farmall H, but it was a narrow front, which would pose problems working on our hilly 40 acres. (The tractors in Ohio were narrow fronts, so they look more "natural" to me, but a tractor with a wide front axle, while still requiring care to operate, is somewhat safer on the sidehills.)

At the end of Memorial Day weekend of 2001  I was traveling back to the Catskills from visiting my brother and sister in Northern Virginia. On a whim, I decided to stay away from the New Jersey corridor and instead went back up I-81 to Binghamton, before heading cross-country .  It was getting late when I passed through Downsville, New York, and there, beckoning in the evening light from the parking lot of a small hardware and antique store, was a wide front Farmall SuperC with a six-foot sickle bar mower mounted on the back and a For Sale shingle hanging from the grill.

I reported my find to Gayle and, armed with her promise of an early birthday present, returned to Downsville the next day to investigate and dicker.  A 1951, it was, with rotten rear tires and rims, blowing smoke and oil, dirty but sound.  By the end of the week she was parked next to our barn ready to be cleaned up.

I regret that I didn't document the rebuilding with stage-by-stage photos, but it was a great experience.  I hadn't torn an engine down to the pistons since I was a kid investigating the mysteries of a '64 Beetle. The  letter series Farmalls are marvelously simple, well-engineered machines, and the rebuild was a joy. Gayle just marvelled and generally stayed clear, but she did come up to the barn one day when I had the connecting rods all laid out to be pinned to new pistons, just to see how I was making out. She surveyed all the parts lying out in an order that I understood. "Do you know what all this stuff is?" asked she. Oh, ye of little faith! "Is it really worth all this trouble?" she continued.  I pointed out that if we added up what she had paid for the tractor and what I had spent on tools and parts, we'd still have less in it than I'd paid for that shiny green mowing machine in the shed, and that wasn't even discounting for all the fun I was having. Between waiting for parts and for the machine shop to return the engine head (a longer tale than this one!), the tractor was apart for about eight weeks. The paint on it is sound with no rust, so I'm opting for that fine patina that comes with age for the time being.

I've since fitted the tractor with a pair of front chassis weights and a three-point hitch. That's to allow for the rear blade I acquired for the rearranging of snow and earth.  I expect there'll  also be a post hole digger involved in some fence building.  No more snow than we had this winter, I was able to hitch up and move some around.

The BN

The disease is called Farmallitis, and its symptoms include a propensity for acquiring tractors painted in a majestic shade of red. The SuperC is one of the handiest, most versatile tractors ever made.  It will be my working tractor.  I had kept some notion tucked away, back where Gayle wouldn't find it, of one day putting new paint and decals on the old girl (that would be the tractor, not Gayle).  That way she could move with dignity through the fields, or really strut her stuff in town, doing civic duty in parades, maybe even a trip to the tractor line at the county fair.

Then . . .  I had a thought, a vagrant one at first, but it grew.  I called my Uncle Phil to see if he might know what had ever come of the old BN. He knew who had bought it and agreed to see if it might be for sale. Phil is a horse trader from way back and can generally be trusted to handle negotiations of such deals, but when a family member comes around looking for one of the old family tractors, there's not a lot of negotiating to be done.  Well, he found it and it could be bought. I paid more for the tractor than it would be worth to any other buyer, but not more than it is to me.  Even Phil got caught up a little. We were talking one evening after he'd had it hauled to his place and before I could drive out to bring it home.  He's not one to admit to being sentimental, but I could hear him smiling as he told me that one of his earliest recollections is of the day a big truck pulled in the drive to the farm with a shiny little red tractor on the back.

So here it is. It's a 1947 BN. The motor is stuck. A slice in the left rear tire and tube keep it flat. All four need replacing. I don't know if the grill can be straightened. She's such a mess that I can't even say that she's sound, but she still has most of her parts about her, and she's in loving hands. Given the extra work that will be needed beyond what the SuperC required, and my plan to make a first-class mechanical and cosmetic job of it, I'll be going more slowly this time. I'm going to have to learn a lot about bodywork and paint! This little tractor, for all the hard work I know it has already done and its special place in my heart, will probably live a life of parade duty and fairgrounds. As the pictures show, though, that's a little while off.

The Rebuild Begins
The Next Part of Tearing Down
Putting Things Back Together
 

If you want to try this at home . . .

I mentioned T. W. Cook's outstanding site  and Yesterday's Tractors  up above, and heartily recommend them to any one who would like to see more of or learn more about old tractors. For those who have an elderly machine already, the latter has discussion boards that can be especially helpful in getting and keeping it running.

From my own experience, I can recommend without reservation two parts suppliers who served me very well during the SuperC project. For new parts that are still available from CaseIH, a successor to International Harvester, Ken Updike and the folks at  Carter & Gruenewald , a dealership in Wisconsin, are hard to beat for knowledge and service. For new and used parts, Glen Mlnarik at  Little Red Tractor Company stands out as a small businessman who places a premium on service, and, like Ken, is willing to share his knowledge of and experience with Farmalls. He and Ken both worked to get me out of  more than a few tight spots to get my SuperC running.  There are, of course, any number of other very reliable suppliers, but these two deserve special mention in my book, and I am happy to recommend them.  I was surprised at the ready availability of parts for these machines that are now fifty years old and more. Links to many of the suppliers can be found, among other places, at A.T.I.S. , another very good website for fanciers of all makes of tractors.