[AT] Adding electric starter

[charlie hill]

speaking of hard to start tractors, I've got a story for you.
I think I've told it here before but it's worth repeating.

Growing up I had a friend and neighbor who's dad was a tenant
farmer and had no land of his own.  He had a big family.  He was
a good farmer but poor, perhaps not the best manager.  He had two
tractors that he and his sons used to tend about 100 acres of land
including maybe 15 acres of tobacco and the rest in corn and soybeans.
The tractors were a Farmall A and a slightly newer Super A.    They would
plow all of those 100 acres with 1 bottom 14" plows, working shifts, 24 
hours
a day in the spring.

I used to help them harvest tobacco in the summers when I wasn't busy on our 
place.
The old A they had was so worn out that it didn't have enough compression to 
start.
Sometimes you could start it with the hand crank but it meant turning the 
crank round
and round at a high rate of speed for 4 or 5 minutes, non stop.  The good 
thing was it
didn't take that much effort to turn the crank with the engine being so 
worn.  If that failed
and it often did, they would chain it to the Super A and pull it around and 
around the farm lot
in high gear until it built enough heat in the engine to get the compression 
up where it would fire.
It looked like a scene out of Green Acres most of the time!

Once you got the old A running the instructions from the farmer were:

Do NOT cut it off.  Do NOT put any oil in it until it STOPS SMOKING!  Then 
only put 1 Quart in it.
When the thing sat running idle it blew continuous smoke rings,  If there 
was little or no
wind blowing the smoke rings would go up one after the other with each new 
ring passing through
the old one as it expanded and faded away.  it was mesmerizing to watch the 
thing.

Needless to say, all those boys left the farm as fast as they could get away 
and find a paying job.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: Herb Metz
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2017 8:04 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Adding electric starter


Ralph,
After reading your 7:21 p.m. post, I certainly place You and your brother in
the "tough dudes" category.<grins>.
Herb(GA)



-----Original Message----- 
From: Ralph Goff
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2017 7:21 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Adding electric starter

On 2/9/2017 4:26 PM, John Hall wrote:
> Electric start on a Gravely is the ONLY way to go!
>
> I've seen photos of a few starter add-ons to old tractors. Most look
> like they were done in a farm shop with minimal equipment. Its one of
> those things where necessity was probably the mother of invention. Never
> seen one using the rear PTO, think I have seen it done on the belt
> pulley before.
Speaking of belt pulley starting reminded me of how my brother and I
used to start a tired old Cockshutt 40
over 40 years ago. We were using it to pull a bale trailer hauling bales
for a neighbour. It had a typical small
and well used 6 volt car battery on it that would just give one
reluctant revolution of the starter at a time. So
we found we could give it a little help by standing by the belt pulley
with it engaged. Wrap right arm onto the pulley
and pull at the same time as pushing the starter button with your left
hand. It helps to have long arms. I know some will
call it dangerous but we never had an incident or even a scare using
this method. It was just the little extra boost
that the tired battery needed.
My dad used to start these tractor with the crank but I think the crank
lugs were broken off this tractor.
The ironic part to this story is that we were using our 40 because it
was the "easy starting" tractor compared to
the neighbour's DC4 Case which at times was impossible to start and thus
unreliable on the job. The old 40 never failed us.

Ralph in Sask.

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