[AT] International Harvester Book

Indiana Robinson robinson46176 at gmail.com
Thu Dec 17 18:51:00 PST 2015


I've been enjoying this flurry of tractor related list activity...
Enjoyed Dean's Deere / IH discussion.
Many years ago my father bought a very good used New Idea 2 row mounted
picker from an old friend. He had used it on a Farmall M but he was keeping
the M. Since it had the M brackets we started looking for a Farmall M to
mount it on. Since we had been almost all Ford and Ferguson's / MF's, a
couple of Deere crawlers and a IHC 300 Utility we had not had any other
experience with IH since the McCormick 10-20 in the late 1940's.
We did some research and decided that we wanted a Super M instead for
several reasons. We figured the cost would be similar. The Super M was a
good bit more HP than a common M, had a bigger clutch, had an inch thicker
radiator and it also had the live hydraulics and the improved gear range
(mostly a faster 4th gear). We found a pretty nice one at an auction and
bought it and a New Idea loader to fit it. We took it to the field to check
it out doing some spring tillage. It ran well but I found it a bit
disappointing. Hard to steer and seemed kind of sluggish. It would lug like
crazy but I was used to tractors that had sensitive governors and ran at
about 2,100 RPM at full throttle and were snappy performers with a well
matched load. We had a good mechanic friend that we used to use for some
work if we were too busy. We had him rebuild the engine (and clutch just
because) with over-sized pistons and sleeves and an "improved" governor.
Then we rebuilt the steering before fall and added power steering. Made a
huge difference... Very snappy. We used it like that for a year or two then
decided that it would be nice to have a Super MTA for picking for the TA
and the independent PTO. I was watching for one and found a decent one for
a good price and we took it down the same path. Full over-bore rebuild,
governor. It already had good power steering but we rebuilt the gearbox and
front bolster.
Our original intent was to mount the picker and just leave it on but we
really liked those beefed up Super M's for field work too so the picker was
mounted, used and removed each fall. Either of those tractors would pull
4x14's fine.

Been a lot of years ago now.



-- 

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com



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