[AT] 1970's farm equipment

Fri Oct 25 08:01:38 PDT 2019

Spencer,

I haven’t seen any other replies on this subject from any other members. At times I wonder how many responses I don’t see but anyway your thinking is pretty good. The outside citrus shields for the standard fenders were an option on both the AO and AR and the rest of the AO special fenders would fit on a AR so no it wasn’t fenders. The brakes are what I was referring to. Differential brakes were STANDARD on the AO and OPTIONAL on the AR.  So if one sees an unstyled AR with differential brakes it is easy to say that maybe somebody just put a AR hood on a AO. The hood is the most obvious difference between the two other than the rest of the AO sheet metal. The spark arrestor muffler can be installed on either model as well so sometimes the only way to know whether a 1935 or 1936 AR or AO is really an AO is to have an archive search done with Two Cylinder Magazine.  I owned one for about 10 years and when I bought it I gambled that it was really an AO.  Turns out it was. Why is it important in the John Deere world that it is a 1935 or 1936 unstyled AO rather than 1935 or 1936 AR?  Only around 650 1935/36 AO’s were made and 1000’s of AR’s were made. I don’t remember the exact numbers right now but low production means higher value.   Even though it was probably the lowest production quantity tractor I ever owned, I tired of it. I never really like driving it. Very slow and very clumsy and it never really lit my fire like I thought it would.  So after owning for around 10 years I sold it for about double what I paid for it and got a 720D that has all the bells and whistles I like.  And let me tell you when I put that sucker to work there are times it does really light the fire. Especially when a 3 bottom roll-over JD model 825 plow is hung on the back. Maybe it’s because I spent all my teenage years on a 70.  There isn’t anything low production about my 720D other than it is a 1958 model. JD made no further two cylinder engine improvements after this model, it has Dual Hydraulics which make the front rockshaft kind of unique, Roll-O-Matic and full three point with 3 frame weights on the front. I kind of like bells and whistles that add capability to the tractor.  Just the opposite of the tractors I was raised with on our farm. The 70 I spent my teenage years on was about as stripped as you could get. No Power Steering, No Roll-O-Matic, No Live PTO, etc. Maybe that is why I covet the extra options now. Cross cultivating with a front mounted 4 row cultivator and no power steering for 16 hours a day makes a skinny kid’s biceps grow. Thank God for Differential brakes. Now we have come full circle back to brakes. Funny how that happens.

Dean VP

Snohomish, WA 98290

From: AT <at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com> On Behalf Of Spencer Yost
Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2019 4:01 PM
To: Antique Tractor Email Discussion Group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Subject: Re: [AT] 1970's farm equipment

I am pretty sure the orchard fenders were not even standard on the AO(and also an option for the AR at least early on), so I don’t believe it was fenders.

The brakes others mentioned I didn’t  even recall as different  but sounds likely.  I was thinking exhaust  but that seems too inconsequential and so easily modified no one would use that for definitive ID anyways.

Inquiring minds want to know!  I’m holding off Googling until I hear the answer.

When I was buying a lot of John Deere tractors for a collector I worked for, me and the other guy doing the buying buying could - between the two of us - tell you 95% of everything you ever needed to know about John Deere tractors and their subtle differences, idiosyncrasies and history. Now I doubt I remember even half of it. Funny how it just slips away when you stop using it.

Spencer

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 23, 2019, at 3:58 AM, deanvp at att.net <mailto:deanvp at att.net>  wrote:

Interesting tractor which was made for a very short period of time.  Since we are seeing who can pee the farthest, what was a very desirable standard feature on the 1936 JD AO that was also available on the 1936 AR as an option which sometimes makes them hard to  identify correctly ? 

Dean VP

Snohomish, WA 98290

From: AT <at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com <mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com> > On Behalf Of Moe Fretz
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2019 7:37 AM
To: Antique Tractor Email Discussion Group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com <mailto:at at lists.antique-tractor.com> >
Subject: Re: [AT] 1970's farm equipment

Tractor related?????????

Some how we've gone from Antique Tractors.

To discussing (bragging) about all

the engineering courses we've taken or should have.

To offshore manufacturing quality.

To the help line accents.

And now we are into computer IT stuff we know about.

Could have, would have installed. up grading, what have you.

Not much tractor related stuff in the last few days.

My 1936 John Deere AO qualifies as an antique.

It does have any software needing to be upgraded.

No help line available or needed.

And you don't need to be an engineer to figure how it works.

$-------&
Moe F.

Ontario, Canada

On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 9:55 AM ustonThomas Mehrkam <tmehrkam at sbcglobal.net <mailto:tmehrkam at sbcglobal.net> > wrote:

In the 70s we all had to take corporate value engineering classes. "How to engineer all the value out." Some people did not have enough sense it ignore the BS.

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android <https://go.onelink.me/107872968?pid=InProduct&c=Global_Internal_YGrowth_AndroidEmailSig__AndroidUsers&af_wl=ym&af_sub1=Internal&af_sub2=Global_YGrowth&af_sub3=EmailSignature> 

On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 7:08 AM, Thomas Mehrkam

<tmehrkam at sbcglobal.net <mailto:tmehrkam at sbcglobal.net> > wrote:

Windows 10 convinced me it was time to retire.

I developed software mainly for Unix and Linux with some Vax VMS?? DX10 
one of T.Is systems and many real time OS for Motorola 68000, TI 9900, 
Power PC etc.?? Much of the early work in machine language. With some 
Windoze thrown in. XP and 7 was ok.?? Almost great compared to XP.

XP convinced me it was time to retire. The worse of Microsoft's crap 
OS's. Even worse than writing assembly and Cobal for Univac 1108 
systems. :-{?? We built a Seismic Acquisition system that could record 
data from 40,000 stations at a 2MS sample rate.?? XP brought that to a 
stand still. The network stack sucked we went down to maybe 5,000 
stations. :-{

On 10/21/2019 11:45 AM, Phil Auten wrote:
> I usually need to write stuff like that down, and I am/was a 
> computer/IT tech. Now, where'd I put my pencil?
>
> I've been out of the computer biz,except for fixing my own, since 2011 
> and I am amazed how much it has changed since then. I have two working 
> computers, both laptops. The one I am on now is the newest and it is 
> running Vista (yuck). The other one is about a 2006 model and runs XP. 
> That one I need to redo and load Linux so it will keep up.
>
> Phil in TX
>
>
> On 10/20/2019 11:39 PM, deanvp at att.net <mailto:deanvp at att.net>  wrote:
>> James,
>>
>> ?? Every time I go shopping at the local Costco I marvel at how many
>> foreigners we have here in WA?? I'm sure driven by the High Tech 
>> industries
>> like Microsoft and Amazon. It used to be the Oriental's that were
>> predominate. Now it seems to be East Indians. I'm sure much of our 
>> technical
>> knowledge is eventually ending up back in India.?? However, that 
>> doesn't seem
>> to apply to those who work in the technical support groups we call 
>> for help.
>> I have completely given up on calling any kind of help line for 
>> anything.
>> First because they really don't know very much and secondly their accent
>> combined with my loss of hearing makes understanding them almost 
>> impossible.
>> I will work Google search until I find the answer I'm looking for. I 
>> just
>> went through that recently.?? Some time in the past I changed from double
>> click to single click file opening on my mouse. Long enough ago I had
>> forgotten how I did it.?? For me the obvious place to look was on the 
>> setup
>> of the mouse. Wrong.?? I put up with the change far too long and 
>> finally I
>> had enough.?? But couldn't remember how to fix it. Google came to the 
>> rescue.
>> In Win 10. one has to get into File Explorer, view, options, change 
>> options
>> to get to that setting.?? How in the hell I found that the first time is
>> beyond me?? But all is now cool again.???? Simple but frustrating.
>>
>> Dean VP
>> Snohomish, WA 98290
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: AT <at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com <mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com> > On Behalf Of James Peck
>> Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2019 11:18 AM
>> To: Antique Tractor Email Discussion Group 
>> <at at lists.antique-tractor.com <mailto:at at lists.antique-tractor.com> >
>> Subject: Re: [AT] 1970's farm equipment
>>
>> I worked for a GM division a little in the late sixties. The focus 
>> then was
>> on making all components so they ended their life at 10 years. The items
>> that lasted longer were made too well.
>>
>> [Henry Miller] The 1970s when efficiency experts ruled every thing 
>> with the
>> bean counters. Cut cost and quality were number one. The auto world 
>> had it
>> worse than most because they suddenly had to meet emissions rules 
>> that they
>> didn't really know how to do and so rube Goldberg contraptions were 
>> designed
>> to that standard with predictable results.
>>
>> Modern just in time is often very inefficient, but the cost savings
>> elsewhere make it vastly more cost effective. Consumers have also 
>> caught on
>> to the idea that quality is sometimes worth paying for. Where the above
>> doesn't apply is a race to the bottom that we can't win. China, like 
>> Taiwan
>> and Japan before them is starting to drop out of the game. Africa is
>> probably next in my opinion: Vietnam and Pakistan play a bit but they 
>> are
>> not large enough and to beat China and they are not far behind China 
>> into
>> getting out of that hole. India could win for a while, but they have 
>> a lot
>> of smart people who know how to make quality (training on the job in 
>> the US
>> or Europe) and would rather skip the cheap junk period.
>>
>> .
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