[AT] road grader

[jtchall at nc.rr.com]

My grandmother bought it from a grading contractor. Dad has told me that 
either the county or the DOT used to pull them with big trucks, Euclid or 
Corbitt I think. He also told me they used the same trucks to pull sickle 
mowers to mow the roadside with.

The grader we have is pretty advanced as far as features go. You have a 
steering wheel that allows you to offset it so it will track left or right 
of the tow vehicle. The front wheels and the back wheels can be leaned, I 
guess this helps when grading on a hill side? The rear axle is on an 
enormous gear rack so it can be shifted left to right. The front end is 
mounted on a huge ball joint so it can ride over bumps without affecting the 
grading. You can also shift the grader blade itself left or right. I believe 
the pitch of the blade can be adjusted by moving a bunch of bolts--not 
something you do on the fly like the rest of these adjustments. This one has 
about 2-3 feet welded to the left side moldboard, lets just say the guy that 
put it on was one heck of a welder---looks factory until you notice the 
weld.  You can imagine how much fun I had when I was little playing around 
on the operators platform. Don't know if the farmhands ever figured out how 
the blade mysteriously got let down every time they left this thing near the 
house!

Nobody here ever liked running it much other than my dad and uncle. Those 
two could do a wonderful job together. Thrown anyone else in the mix and a 
whole lot of hollering and bad attitudes would follow! I know of one 
driveway they cut through a field we used to rent. It must have been 3/8 of 
a mile long. When they got done you would have thought a professional 
grading contractor did the job, took about 3 hours. Over the years they put 
in some nice terraces, kept the ditches cleaned out and maintained a lot of 
farm road. You can do a lot more with this contraption than any 3pt blade 
set-up.

John Hall

-----Original Message----- 
From: charlie hill
Sent: Sunday, November 01, 2015 5:12 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] road grader

John when that grader was built an M Farmall was a big tractor.   It was
probably designed to be pulled by something heavier than an M but with
less HP.  They used to grade the streets in the town I grew up near with
one similar to that in the early 50's and it was old then.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: jtchall at nc.rr.com
Sent: Sunday, November 01, 2015 2:02 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: [AT] road grader

I think I have mentioned my familys presumably antique road grader here
before. We had a couple ditches that needed pulling between some fields and
the property line. Last Sat was nice and dry, not to mention I had the corn
out of the fields. We hadn’t used it in a couple years, lets just say it was
mighty stiff.  There are no helper springs on this machine so raising the
blade is a real chore. Heck picking the tongue up ain’t easy, it may have
had a spring to help with that originally. We offset it to track 3-4 feet to
one side so we could put it in the ditch and keep the tractor on sure
footing. In places I had to get off and walk behind since the tree branches
on the borders would have knocked me off the operators platform. Most of the
time I had so much pressure on the blade the right rear of the grader would
be off the ground. I introduced my son to the controls so he could see what
real work is like. I don’t think I have ever been in shape enough to run
that thing all day, 3 hours is enough unless you are lightly grading roads.
It does a great job clearing snow, provided you have somewhere to turn
around. FYI, my grandmother bought it for $75 way back when the biggest
thing on the farm was a Farmall M. I will say you aren’t going to do
anything other than road scraping with that small of a tractor. We had one
ditch we used to pull every couple years that required hooking both 4020
Deeres to it. The ditch was so steep you really had to hang on to ride the
grader.

John Hall





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