[AT] Update on the MF 1155

Sun Feb 24 11:39:14 PST 2019

Tractors of that year and size don't bring that much here.  We parted 
with ours about 12 years ago for $3500.  About what we gave for it 20 
years before.   My 7030 Allis was $4000 back in 2007. John Deere is 
another story, but that's Deere.    A Big IH is about 20% less than 
Deere.    Here, the 4wd tractors are in demand.   No-Till has cerated a 
demand for the 4WD tractors. When you get in a soft spot with those big 
drills, that front axle pulling can save a day of getting something to 
pull it out...

Cecil

On 2/24/2019 9:33 AM, Indiana Robinson wrote:
> Son Scott did buy the MF 1155. I figured that he would. He has wanted 
> one for too long and this one was in too good of general condition for 
> him to pass it up. He had asked me to go with him when he first looked 
> at it when there was no one around. It was sitting on the lot of a 
> dealer I have bought stuff from for a very long time. Not constant 
> purchases and not big stuff. I never farmed very big, couple of 
> hundred acres most of the time. The farm is a lifestyle thing, I made 
> most of my income from other enterprises. Still it takes a lot of 
> equipment to do the job. Over the years I bought a couple of combines 
> from him, a 20 something foot wide harrogator, a wider set of wings 
> for my big disk, field sprayer etc. Several years ago we bought a 
> Vermeer round baler from him. He always treated me well. When I 
> started dealing with him he was a small independent dealership and a 
> farmer like a lot of other small dealers were. Today he and his sons 
> have a huge operation with one huge building that is absolutely full 
> of classic tractors that are not for sale. Over the years he has 
> bought most of the farms that surround him and he now has his own 
> system of private roads from one to another. We became business 
> friends over those years and I was always impressed that when I walked 
> in he always treated me the same as if I was one of the biggest 
> farmers in the state. That is the way you should do business.
> Anywho... Scott had his mind mostly made up but wanted me to go along 
> to help check it over carefully with it running and him driving it to 
> check each function. We studied it pretty carefully for maybe 2 hours 
> or more and if anything had popped up he would have backed away but he 
> was confident enough that we went in a semi with a low-boy. I had to 
> meet him at a local shopping center because it is pretty tough to get 
> even a 40' trailer in to this farm and this was a 52' trailer.
> Everything seemed OK and they were willing to drop the price $500. He 
> asked them to pop the duals off and load them on the truck.
> Kind of a funny bit of irony here... They have large industrial 
> battery electric impact wrenches so they don't have to drag air hoses 
> around. Worked really great but to get the duals off they had to jack 
> the tractor up a little. Yep, pneumatic jack and an air hose dragged 
> out to the apron where the tractor was sitting.  :-)
> It all went well, of course Scott loads and hauls big stuff almost 
> daily, sometimes several times a day. He spends more time behind a 
> desk these days  but he is still on job sites most days.
> The 1155 is quite wide. It has power adjust (spin out) rear wheels but 
> also wide slide out axles. He is considering cutting down the axles 
> some so the don't stick past the wheels. Thinks it might save some 
> doorways. The duals are clamp on and don't use the axles. I doubt he 
> will ever use the duals.
> I have a little Case VAC that has the wide axle option and I'm still 
> considering chopping those... (shrug)
> We have 3 ways to get to the farm here, none of them semi friendly.  
> :-)   Coming in from the north requires  going through an oddball 20' 
> tall rail-road underpass that was built long long ago as a bridge over 
> a fair sized creek and then back in about the 1920's people started 
> driving around one side of it in dry weather on a gravel bar. It 
> wasn't even a road then. Later a heavy one lane "U" shaped concrete 
> "shelf" was poured around there for traffic. Scott comes through there 
> fairly often with a tri-axle dump truck towing a tri-axle trailer with 
> a backhoe/loader or maybe a good sized excavator but it is not suited 
> for a semi at all. The other two directions are only slightly better 
> due to utility poles in too close to the corners and narrow culverts. 
> Scott considered parking on the wider road and unloading the tractor 
> and me driving it home but then we would still have had to deal with 
> the duals and it was a cold day.  :-)  He managed to get the longer 
> trailer "buttoned" past the corners with only minimal damage to the 
> road ditches which were about like quicksand.
> He has already been working on the 1155 for several days now off and 
> on. I can about guarantee you that the first thing he did was rework 
> all of the wiring.  I noticed yesterday that he has the hood off and I 
> think the whole exhaust system. It had some minor exhaust leakage 
> where the manifold mounts to the heads and I know that he ordered a 
> batch of gaskets for it. I know that he was planning on putting some 
> money in it trying to get everything just right.
> It is important to understand here that while this tractor will not be 
> an actual "trailer queen" this pretty much falls under the heading of 
> "a toy he always wanted" like his Harley or his 4 wheeler and not a 
> tractor to farm with productively. He works very hard and makes very 
> good money and he plans his fun stuff too. I am not sure of the value 
> of this tractor, the big tractors (this is 140 HP and about 20,000 
> pounds ballasted) have never been on my wish list so I have not 
> followed them. The 10 to 60 HP tractors are my choice and I like the 
> smaller ones more all of the time like my Cub, Pony, VAC, Allis C etc.
> I don't guess he would mind me saying that he paid $7,000 for it. It's 
> a nice tractor and when he asked me I told him that if he didn't like 
> it after he bought it or something failed badly he could probably at 
> least part it out for more than that...
> I'll have to see if I can convince him to take it to Portland. Then if 
> he uses the semi he can haul a couple more for me.  :-)  :-)  :-)
>
>
> .
>
> -- 
> -- 
>
> Francis Robinson
> aka "farmer"
> Central Indiana USA
> robinson46176 at gmail.com <mailto:robinson46176 at gmail.com>
>
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