[AT] Update on the MF 1155

Sun Feb 24 16:39:09 PST 2019

Hey Spencer and all,
Believe it or not, dad bought a 966 here recently. Acording to the
serial number, it was one that came out of the factory with a narrow
front.
He bought it with a wide front, but found a good narrow front to put back on it.
He wants to have it all painted up and all that crap that his son
doesn't care much about. :) Lol.
The mechanical work has all been done I think. That is what matters
most to me. I care more about mechanicals and tires, not about the
paint jobs.
And Spencer, when it comes to my father, everything is for sale...
Tyler Juranek
IA

On 2/24/19, Spencer Yost <spencer at rdfarms.com> wrote:
> I am not sure of the age of your son Scott, it sounds like we must be pretty
> close in age.  When I think big tractors I think of those Massey’s too. More
> so, I think of the “six” series Farmall and IH tractors. Like the 706 and
> 966. I still  keep an eye out for them. It’s a pipe dream, I never will own
> one. Recently I saw this on craigslist:
>
> https://greensboro.craigslist.org/grd/d/coats-ih-706-tractor-plow-and-disk/6818930052.html
>
> If I was stupid rich or just plain stupid I would buy it.   On my puny 15
> acres I don’t even have enough room to turn it...
>
> Spencer Yost
>
>> On Feb 24, 2019, at 10:33 AM, Indiana Robinson <robinson46176 at gmail.com>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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