[AT] Horsedrawn grader on eBay

[Larry D Goss]

What's really strange about your story, Greg, is that when I was growing up 
in northern Indiana, what you describe as a maintainer was known as a road 
grader, and the single blade machine that was self-powered was known as a 
maintainer.  Ah well, that's the way it goes sometimes.  I hated it when the 
county came by and graded the road because that meant that for several days 
it would be rough pedaling with my bicycle until the stones got kicked out 
of the tire tracks again.

FWIW, back in the late 30's there was a single blade attachment for a John 
Deere L that did the work of the Adams machine.  It had the large wheels on 
either side for adjusting the "bite" and some other levers and wheels for 
other adjustments.  It did everything like the horse-drawn equipment except 
slant the wheels.  I have VHS conversions of the home movies taken by my 
uncle when a contractor landscaped the front yard of his new house with that 
rig.  The driver got too close to an open excavation and lost the whole 
tractor down in the pit.  The movie shows some of the work required for the 
recovery effort.  OOTD (One Of These Days) I'll have to burn that footage to 
a CD or DVD so it can be viewed by others.

Larry

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Greg Hass" <gkhass at avci.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2007 1:29 PM
Subject: Re: [AT] Horsedrawn grader on eBay


>
> Funny how different areas have different names for different equipment. In
> our area years ago a maintainer was a machine with 4 blades about 8 or 10
> inches high and 8 feet wide. The blades were all at different angles and
> moved the dirt back and forth. It was about 16 feet long and had four
> wheels and was controled by one hydraulic cylinder. It was pulled by the
> strangest tractor I had ever seen. This was over 40 years ago. I have 
> since
> learned, from memory and from old tractor shows that the tractor was one 
> of
> the old Minnie-Mo's that had a cab and looked half tractor and half car. I
> saw on a TV show that these tractors were actually designed to work the
> fields by day and take the wife to town by night. If memory serves me 
> right
> I think the show said these tractors had a road speed of 35 MPH.  P.S.
> Several years ago my cousin bought one of these old maintainers at a road
> commission auction. He still uses it to grade the lanes around the farm.
> Greg Hass
> Michigan
>
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