A year or so ago, I ran across "gun oil," which is a very light oil in a spray can. I use it in the fall when I put away my lawn mower, tiller, trimmer: I shoot just a little of this oil in through the spark plug hole and turn the engine over. Don"t KNOW for sure that this protects against corrosion, but I suspect it does. Incidentally, I let these things run out of fuel before I do the oiling. That way, no gas condenses in the cylinder to wash off the oil.
An engine that has sat as long as your tractor has is probably VERY dry in the cylinders. A little oil sprayed in the plug holes would probably be a very good idea. Follow up by turning the engine over a few times with the plugs out.
I don"t know where the idea came from that these tractors are dangerous. I drove three of them for at least 15 years, and never thought they were dangerous. It is probably true that a modern, low-built 4-wheel utility type is more stable. The F-12 may SEEM underpowered, but in its day, it was pretty efficient. It was one of the earliest tractors to go for a small engine running pretty fast, instead of using a big engine turning slowly, as had been the common practice in the twenties and even up through the thirties in many cases. On rubber tires, the
F-12 would pull two 12" plows in second gear. It wasn"t supposed to have that much power when it came out on steel, but the rubber tires transformed it. Easy to drive, and fairly comfortable as tractors from the early 30s went.
Tough as nails, too. The only weak link was the fuel pump. You could expect to have to put in a new diaphragm eventually, but ALL fuel pumps from the thirties were like that, thanks to what ever the diaphragms were made out of back then.
I never knew if the downdraft carburetor gave enough extra power (compared to the typical updraft type) to warrant the extra expense and complication of a fuel pump. The F-12 was pretty slow when you wanted to get somewhere with it. It came out on steel, and had only 3 speeds, which was pretty typical of steel-wheeled tractors from the thirties. IHC later came out with a 7-mph third gear, and aftermarket companies sold overdrives that would have given a road gear and probably something between the road speed and the normal 4 mph in third gear.
I used to cuss at the 4 mph on the road, but I still admire the tractor for its quality and its real utility on a farm. We used ours for everything--plowing, disking, harrowing, planting, cultivating, mowing, raking hay, pulling a wagon and hay loader, pulling a baler, pulling a wagon to load the bales, running a small thresher, even pulling bales up into the haymow with the old rope-and-hayfork system. IHC had a pretty good system of implements to mount on the tractor (cultivators and mower was all we had, but you could get planters, plows, listers, and so on).
That little straight pipe sticking up above the hood is a noisy thing. A light muffler makes the beast more civilized. The pipe is pretty light, so I don"t know how much stress it could take from a heavy muffler.
The F-12 was one of the very first tractors designed for really small farms as well as for use as an auxiliary for light work on larger farms. I don"t have the information here to show that it was THE first such tractor, but it certainly was one of the first. Other companies soon had tractors that were similar in size, like the early John Deere B, and later on, the light tractors from Oliver, Allis-Chalmers, Silver King, Massey-Harris, all of which followed the original Farmall formula for wheel placement, mounted implements, and so on. The Ford-Ferguson broke the mold, with its wonderful 3-point hitch and hydraulic control of the mounted implement.
