International 2000 & 2001 loaders

[dfrisk]

TOM - I used to work not too far from Jefferson. Co-worker just about LIVED at Jackles. 'Course half his tractors were green. He had about every brand except an Allis.

He told me about a salvage yard up in Harrisville, WI, Lakeside Farma. SON & I drove up there one Saturday. Pretty well organized, the fragile stuff sat in old school bus chassis, on the floor, on the seats, on plywood setting on top of the seat backs.

My Super SGT won't happen for a while. I need to figure out if and how much reduction I have to put in front of the transmission, which means I need to decide on an engine! A little air-cooled Duetz would be nice!

 

[mhomrighausen]

FARMALL Letter Series Info

Scroll down for some info about the A, B and BN Series. An A was almost the same as a B except for the steering setup. The difference made up for the A being the single row crop and the B designated for two row farming.

My parents bought a 1947 FARMALL B with a fresh overhaul in the early 1960s for $485.00 plus tax. The dealer brought it out and my folks discovered one rear tire had a huge gash that wasn't in the tire when they saw it. The boot my Dad put in last a few years before they had to buy two new tires. My youngest brother now has that tractor. We literally wore out two ptos using that tractor. I think the reason a lot of them may be in baskets is they were used until they literally wore everything out.

 

[mhomrighausen]

All BN tractors had both rear axles four inches shorter making an eight inch at the rear narrower tractor than a standard FARMALL B. I check Guy Fay's FARMALL The Letter Series Book. I need to reread that pretty interesting stuff in there.

 

[dfrisk]

MARLIN - Have to agree about Guy's book. He did a really good job researching ALL those changes from series to series. I was amazed how many changes from the old H to Super H and same thing with M to Super M. I'd been around all those models for decades and unless you really got inside them you didn;t realize all the improvements.

Old Boss I worked for down in Freeport, IL grew up on a farm in Stockton which was ALL Red. "HER" tractor was a Super C. I hated to tell her that even an H and Super H was WAY too small for many things we tried to do on our little 160 acre grain & livestock operation Dad ran when I was a kid. Dad got a new 24 ft Kewanee peg tooth harrow about the same time He got the Super H. They both replaced a 20 ft worn-out Kewanee and the '39 H. The old '39 H played with the 20 ft in the 5 mph 4th gear but the Super H with clamp-on duals really struggled to pull the 24 ft in it's 6-1/2 mph 4th gear. Had to run in it's 5 mph 3rd gear all the time. also remember trying to rotary hoe corn one day with the SH. Same thing, had to run in 3rd, 5 MPH. And actually 9-10 MPH is a better hoeing speed. Dad's old '47 M had the M&W 9-spd and it was great for that type work!

BUT, to keep this on-topic, the old letter series with live hyd do make good loader tractors even with manual trip buckets.

 

[thoffman]

Dennis,
I'll bet you wish you had that 39! Did you ever get a serial # off it? Could have been worth some sreious $$$

 

[dfrisk]

TOM - Yes, that '39 was a decent looking old tractor. Dad had put sleeves & pistons in it about 1958. When I was really young I ran the '51 M that's out in the shop now because it had Char-Lynn P/S. The old '39 H had mis-matched rear tires, wheels dished IN and rear axles cut off about 4 inches per side, and the paint was faded to a dull dark orange. But as I got older Dad started fixing the old girl up as "Mine". Local mechanic for the auto, truck, tractor repair shop repainted tractors for $50 cash and the SM-TA and '39 H both got repainted in about '65 or '66. The wheels were dished "out" and a used pair of matching GY 10-38's were moounted with the rims modified so the H was able to be narrowed up to less than 72 inches wide. It had to pull the manure spreader thru our long hog house with a narrow drive. I ran it LOTS doing chores, mowing & raking hay, pulling the endgate seeder, going to town for hog feed. I put 300 hours on it every year which before it was painted up it sat almost constantly.

Then in May of '68 Dad stumbled onto the Super H at the one local dealer and traded the '39 off. The '39 had Super H decals and the white painted grill like Dad put on all our Letter series. I did see it about the summer of '75 sitting hooked to a sickle mower in a small grass pasture just on the south edge of Erie, IL. I was hauling ready-mix and slowed WAY down but didn't stop to look it over. I have NO idea what the serial number was. I can't even remember if it had the ser. # plate on the clutch housing or if the number was stamped on the front top right frame rail. It was a kerosene or distillate tractor, had the hot intake manifold, remnants of the shutter control but no shutters, and the hole in the hood for the starting gas tank, the groove in the rearend cover and proper uncomfortable seat, also had the gear shift pattern molded into the deck.

The tractor I'd REALLY like to find is the '54 Super M-TA Dad had from about '60 to '65. I have NO idea of the serial number on it either. Last I knew it was traded for the 450 at I think West Bay Implement in Galesburg, IL. There's no room left in my shop but if I happened to find that tractor I would MAKE ROOM!

 

[thoffman]

Dennis,

The white grill "Bars" painting was something done on the early H's & M's. If it had the serial # stamped into the frame it was a EARLY one. $$$!

 

[dfrisk]

TOM - The paint scheme Dad used was to paint the whole lower portion of the grill white. There's a seam by the "FARMALL" emblem at the top of the grill and that was the break between the red & white, and the white extended back to the back edge of the grill and below the raised rib across the hood that continued forward onto the grill. Kinda similar to the paint on a 350/450 but just a bit different.

About June of '68 after we were all done planting corn I washed & waxed ALL the tractors in the fleet, the '57 450-G, the '51 M, both of which had duals still mounted, and the '54 Super H which was only ours for a month or so, it didn't yet have the white grill or clamp-on duals, and then the CC 70, all lined up tire-to-tire. With the duals on the 450 & M that was a LOT of tire. ANYHOW, three of those old girls are still in my shop, and I'm not exactly looking for a 450 but if a nice one came up for sale I could be interested.

The old '39 H was well used. The shift lever was well worn and getting the bottom of the shift lever out of the shift rails was a regular occurance. With the tools in the tool box, claw hammer, big screw driver, small punch I could have the lever out and the rails lined up in a minute or two. Dad did have a couple people interested in buying it once it was fixed up but I think he only got maybe $300-$400 in trade for the SH. I'd seen typical H's sell at auction for less than $300.

The only BAD thing about getting the SH was the fact we weren't going to modify the rear wheels to fit into the hog house and that required a very decrepit old style jd B to be added to the fleet. It was Armstrong start, no hyd, no lights (therefore no radio) and compared to the '39 H an absolute PITA to run. Dad paid $90 for the B, I painted it the week before I left for college in Aug. '72, I think it brought $125 at Dad's auction in Dec. '72.

 

[vthomley]

I learn too much about a '39 H a few years ago. I had one, decided to sell it in 2004 - thinking it was a 1940 because when my dad and I bought it the guy listed it as a 1940.

Well I had it for sale and guy from Grinnell, Iowa called me, asked me to verify the serial number because from the pictures I sent him he could see the groove in the rearend cover. The '39s were the only ones with this groove. He bought it at my full asking price and I knew right then I should have NOT sold it... I never heard from him again.