[AT] Off topic - Front loader

ATIS yostsw at atis.net
Fri Jan 29 08:26:56 PST 2016


Thanks Steve.  One interesting note:   The current owner said many of the common maintenance items, such as filters, are different.  Apparently to force owners into the Farmtrac dealership and not to the Ford aftermarket  parts market.  My inspection seemed to indicate major parts and systems are pretty much Ford.  The local dealer still stocks maintenance items.   You have to wonder how long that will last though.

By the way this one is a 2009 model

Spencer Yost

> On Jan 29, 2016, at 9:38 AM, Stephen Offiler <soffiler at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Fascinating.  After reading Steve W's reply there, I Googled using the
> string "farmtrac ford history".  I quickly ran out of time but the gist of
> it appears to be the 5xx Farmtrac is largely build on old Ford/NH tooling
> in India.  (And irrelvant to Spencer but other Farmtrac series are based on
> other older designs and tooling, e.g. Kioti).
> 
> What you might have here Spencer is a potentially solid machine that can
> serve you well, long into the future, *IF* you do a bunch of homework
> upfront and figure out the provenance of all the major systems.  That way,
> when you might need something 5, 10 years from now, you'll have a good idea
> of which trail you need to run down.  Doing the homework will give you
> confidence (or NOT, depending on how it goes) to move forward on the deal.
> And it could be fun!
> 
> SO
> 
> 
>> On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 6:31 AM, Steve W. <swilliams268 at frontier.com> wrote:
>> 
>> ATIS wrote:
>>> Thanks again for everyone's thoughts and advice on this. I have
>>> decided against the skid steer. Finding a decent used one is
>>> difficult and every bit as expensive as a decent tractor with a front
>>> loader. Plus I'd really rather have just one machine in production to
>>> maintain. Now when it comes to collectible antique tractors, you
>>> can't have too many. :-)
>>> 
>>> I've looked at a bunch of tractors. The best one that I have seen by
>>> far lately, in terms of condition and price, is a 545 "Farmtrac"
>>> brand tractor.  Looks just like a ford 3610 with  different sheet
>>> metal.    Pic is below.
>>> 
>>> Anyone have any experience with these?
>>> 
>>> Normally I wouldn't pay much attention to an orphan brand, but I know
>>> Farmtrac and Long tractors crossed
>>> ownership/brand/licensing/something paths somewhere in the past and
>>> Long has a deep history here in North Carolina.   Plus a very good
>>> local dealer used to sell them and are quite knowledgable still.
>>> They insist parts are "still generally available".   Of course they
>>> told me not to buy it and instead buy one of their new $30K tractors
>>> (-:
>>> 
>>> Any thoughts?   Thanks in advance!
>>> 
>>> Spencer Yost
>> 
>> 
>> Should look like a Ford. It is a Ford! Farmtrac is owned by Escorts Ag.
>> They are the Indian company that made Fords and New Hollands for years.
>> When Ford dropped those tractors Escorts bought the rights to them and
>> kept making them. They also bought the Montana brand and Long. They now
>> make the Powertrac and the Farmtrac brands. (Look on the block, many of
>> the earlier ones have NH cast in the block....)
>> 
>> 90% of the parts are Ford interchangeable. Some of the filters are
>> oddballs though, but it isn't hard to get replacement filter blocks and
>> bolt them on so it uses common filters.
>> 
>> Free parts catalog.
>> http://www.farmtrac-tractor-parts.com/files/FTS545-555.pdf
>> 
>> --
>> Steve W.
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