FWA

For Case-Nutty and all other Case diehard fans. As you know most bigger Case IH tractors are fwa. And a times some show pictures of a 930 and 1030 with fwa. Well did you ever wonder how fwa came about.? It was not with Case. In a issue of Ageless Iron it told about it in its review of MM. It said MM introduced the fwa units in 704’s in 1962. That was not true MM had them on their GVI’s and maybe on there GB's with the six,before the 704 and that was not the beginning of fwa on MM. To my relocation this is what happened. In my town of Sidney Nebraska we had some very good tractor dealers,(Case, John Deere, MM, Oliver, Massey Harris, and maybe some others that I can’t recall) The ones with the most sales were Case, John Deere and MM. The MM and Case dealerships were on the same block. The MM dealership was Foland Farm Machinery run by Doyle Foland. His sons Kenneth and Dale still have it. I would say in the late 40's or early 50's a farmer from Kimball County (Wayne Kennedy) wanted more traction on his MM-G. So he went to Doyle and they took a front end from a Army six X six and put it on the MM-G. it worked so well Foland put it on for other farmers in our area. Foland than took the concept to MM and they than put it on production tractors. Also the first six cylinder Engines in MM was put in the same tractor for the same guy in the G that they put the fwa. It was a LP unit from their stationary engines . MM took that from Foland and put in their first ones with a six. . All this, I believe, took place before the fwa and Six cylinder engines were introduced in the big two (Case, JD, ) I think Oliver had a six in some of their tractors.

thanks for the information Jimmy, I love hearing history on these things, I was told yesterday about a Wallis that had a 6 cylinder engine, not many were made but that would have been before MH bought them and I do not know if it was before CASE had bought Wallis or not
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   The front axle that they used had an offset differential.  They cut a hole in the side of the transmission, welded a plate to the housing and then installed the gearbox with shims to get the correct backlash.  Drive shaft ran down the side of the tractor.

  I have a copy of the build cards for the first experimental Oliver 1800 and 1900 Four Wheel Drive tractors.  The 1800 was built on November 27, 1961 and the 1900 on the 29th 1961. One went to Green Giant and one to Del Monte and used in their rental fleets, then brought back to the factory to correct anything they had concerns with.  Both were sold retail and are now in collectors hands, 1800 in Minnesota and 1900 in Ohio.

What about the GTX??

Minneaolis-Moline made the FIRST front wheel assist tractors. The first ones were made in the first ones were made for the US Army during WWII, as well as experimentals before that. The First "Production" FWA tractor was a Gvi, later marketed as a G-704 in 1961, as I recall from company paperwork. MM Beat Oliver by 2 or 3 months in the release of FWA tractors. Massey-Ferguson also beat Oliver in marking & selling them, as MF had a sales & Marketing agreement with MM. They repainted MM's for MF and made a few minor cosmetic changes. the first Oliver "test" tractors were out a while before they were "Production". MM dealers in Montana had been converting "G" MM's to FWA since the late 1940's, & all thru the 1950's.