1955 860 Mission Creep (pic)

ROADMAN

Member
Pulled "Old Bertha" into the shop about 3 weeks ago to replace the rubber fuel line to 1/4" break line. I has a picture of the reroute posted by "Greg1959". Made the mistake of letting Bertha see the picture and she found out she was originally red and now she was blue. So to keep her happy, I tore her apart and put a new paint job on her. She"s a worker and runs great. Got a little blowby but nothing she and I can"t live with. I know how much ya"ll like pictures so I posted before and after pictures. Got a little overspray on the front tire on the right side but me and Bertha are happy.

Clay
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Looks nice.

I guess at her age, Bertha had no recollection of what color she was when she was young. :p

I'm told that my hair was red from when I was born until I was 6 months old, but I don't remember it. Been blonde as long as I can remember (until I started turning gray a few years back).
 
ROADMAN She looks Purdy.

I don't know if you did it or not but, where the fuel line runs through the font mounting bracket for the fuel tank, split a piece of rubber fuel and place it over the metal fuel line. Kinda like a grommet. This will protect the fuel line from rubbing against the metal bracket.

BTW, that's not my tractor in the pic I had posted. I think 'jimmyjack' was the one that had originally posted it some time ago . I just copied it because I liked how the fuel line was re-routed and did the same to my 860.

Greg
 
I did put a piece of rubber in the line. Got to working on the paint job and almost forgot to install the metal line :>). You can"t see it from the pictures but it worked out great.

Clay
 
Looks much nicer now! Step in the right direction.
Only thing is looks like manual steering- not sure how fat those front tires are whether they'd have clearance to the spindle if they were flipped around to be flared inward- but it would steer easier especially on rough or soft ground. Nice pics.
 
Yes it is manual steering and I mean "MAN"ual steering. No clearence to turn them around. I"ve been thinking about putting road tires on the front and see if that would help. Any suggestion on improving the steering would be appreciated. One thing about the "MAN"ual steering, it keeps the BIL"s away from it. LOL I"ve been using it for several year and have gotten use to it. I know not to get in any real tight places.
 
Road tires would make it easier to turn the steering wheel, but they wouldn't turn the tractor as well on dirt as the tri-ribs. The reason it's so hard to turn the wheel is that the tires are biting hard onto the dirt, so the amount that you can turn the wheel equals actual tractor turning force, whereas with smoother tires it is easier to turn the wheel, but the tires won't be able to turn the tractor as well. Sometimes it will just take turning the wheel farther to turn the tractor as much, but in some conditions the smoother tires will just plow forward and not turn the tractor at all.
 
Bertha is not used for plowing, just bushoging, maintaining the driveway and some heavy lifting. My entire place looks like the grassed areas you see in the pictures. With the weight of the loader and bucket, it don"t think traction on the front end would be a problem. Been thinking about adding power steering but don"t want to turn loose of the money.
 
Hello Roadman , If you can't turn the wheels around they are the wrong wheels . Ford had two different wheel offsets to begin with then more later . You should be able to find the correct offset wheel to allow the larger wider tire turned around in the correct position , the other thing is make sure the front axle is set at its narrowest position which is Ford's recommendation for any loader tractor , I believe it is 56 inches . The wider it is set the weaker it is which is how axles get bent and how radius rods get bent soon it will look like the back of a VW Beetle . Thanks Tony
 
I have a 1957 850 I"m gonna start on in a few months. I didn"t look to see if the rims are the same as the ones on Bertha. I"ll look and see. Thanks for the tip about the narrowest position. I think thats the way I got them set but if not I will.

Thanks
Clay
 
(quoted from post at 05:10:48 07/10/14) Yes it is manual steering and I mean "MAN"ual steering. No clearence to turn them around. I"ve been thinking about putting road tires on the front and see if that would help. Any suggestion on improving the steering would be appreciated. One thing about the "MAN"ual steering, it keeps the BIL"s away from it. LOL I"ve been using it for several year and have gotten use to it. I know not to get in any real tight places.

That loader has down pressure right? Lift the front, turn the wheels, drop the front back down, then go.
 
nice tractor.
like said, get the right rims, so you can narrow it up.
High ply used truck tires work well with the loader,
the balder the better within reason.

I have a few no power steering loader tractors, and even the ones with PS, get a HUGE counterweight as far back as I can get it (think lever)
Struggle to lift it, check chain it up to take the strain off, steers nice.
That mowing poses a problem though.
I'd experiment with check chains and toplink setup to get the mowers weight on the tractor all the time, with the rear wheel just 'skimming' on flat ground.

SHOWCROP good thinkin! even without downpressure, if you have hydraulic bucket curl, that will work too with an empty bucket to get you out of a tight spot without blowing a PS hose or seal.
 
SHOWCROP good thinkin! even without downpressure, if you have hydraulic bucket curl, that will work too with an empty bucket to get you out of a tight spot without blowing a PS hose or seal.

If you don't have down pressure, then curling the bucket down against the ground will just result in the loader arms going up, not the front of the tractor.
 
Thanks for all the advice. The downpressure idea is great. Don"t know why I didn"t think about that. I"m gonna get the right rims and put some high ply truck tires on Bertha. I do put my heavy box blade on it when not mowing and that helps a lot.

Thanks again
Clay
 
(quoted from post at 05:26:03 07/11/14)
SHOWCROP good thinkin! even without downpressure, if you have hydraulic bucket curl, that will work too with an empty bucket to get you out of a tight spot without blowing a PS hose or seal.

If you don't have down pressure, then curling the bucket down against the ground will just result in the loader arms going up, not the front of the tractor.

Thanks for the correction Sean.
no excuse, just working for the past few days with the pretty orange one to dig and the 5000 (no down pressure) to move the dirt. Got used to the orange one which does everything.
Like said, no excuse for the bad post. sorry
 

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