[AT] old tractor inventions

[Greg Hass]

A couple of uncles on my mothers side were great tinkers although that 
didn't apply to their farming as they were always at least a month 
behind on everything, but that's another story. Someone on another topic 
mentioned an F-20. Well, I was quite young, but I remember an F-20 that 
they had. The first thing they did was take the front axle from a truck 
and make it into a wide front for the F-20. Next they made a cable lift 
loader for it. They used a very short PTO from the tractor to a small 
car transmission. Connected to the transmission was the rear axle and 
rear end from a small truck. They left the rims on the axle and used the 
rims to wrap the cable around. The rear axle they used was one of the 
very old ones that had mechanical brakes to which they attached a brake 
lever. To use the loader they got the bucket full and put the 
transmission in gear to raise the load (mind you this was 60 years ago)  
and when it was raised enough they would pull the brake lever and put 
the transmission in neutral and drive to where they were going and dump 
the load. The loader would lower by gravity once they released the 
brake. Sadly, my mothers side of the family was known for being careless 
and 2 or 3 years after building the loader, one of them had drained the 
oil and water for some reason and left it sit for a day or two and 
another uncle started it and headed for another farm without oil or 
water and that was the end of the F-20.
           Greg Hass