First post here, but I did a lot of reading of the posts before buying this tractor
So I'm the proud new owner of a Ford 601 series tractor. I've owned an 8N when I was much younger growing up on my dad's farm as a fun
tractor for myself in junior high/high school. I just bought an acreage to build a new house on and needed a tractor for the usual maintenance. I
found a good deal on a Ford 601, previous owner just had a ton of maintenance done to it in the last couple of years including a complete
rebuild of the select-o-speed (yes I bought one of those).

So my question is about the restoration I am going to be doing on it. It currently has hood decals that have 601 select-o-speed on them and
they are white. Looking at the various features my tractor has it actually appears to be a 671 version (select-o-speed with independent PTO
and 3 point hitch, gas engine). My questions are should the correct hood decals be 601 or 671 and does anyone know where to find the white
hood decals? All I can find are red ones. The body on the tractor is in pretty good shape, one little dent in the grill, but I plan on taking it back to
as original of paint colors and look as possible (reddish orange and gray).

Anyone have any thoughts on me calling it a 671 or on the colors of the paint I should use?
 

I don't know the time frame, but believe some SOS tractors would have had the model, e.g. 671 on the decal. I think these may have been the '59 models but not sure. I know some also had just the series, e.g. 601 on the decal. My granddad's 871 hood decal was 801.
 
I believe that they changed some time during the production run of the '01 series. From what I can gather, the early ones had the individual model numbers on the decals and the later ones just had the series number, I guess some bean counter decided it was cheaper to have one set of decals for the entire series.
 

Thanks for all of the comments.

I still haven't been able to find the white hood decals like in the picture I'm included here. I probably won't get to too much paint and decal work till this winter, but want to keep the hunt going for the right looking parts. I see a lot of people only have went with the red decals, so if all else fails I will also. I'll probably stick with the 601 decal since that was the original look.

I'm fixing up the 501 sickle mower that I got with it now, luckily my dad still farms near me and I can use his sickle section tool to make short work of redoing the sickle sections this weekend, but it is going to take a lot of elbow grease to work off the rust and get it looking nice again (Yes, I actually like using a sickle mower for road ways). The 6 ft ARPS blade isn't in too bad of shape. An afternoon of cleaning it up and it will be ready for paint.

Looks like the first major purchase will be some 11x28 rims to replace the ones currently on the machine. They are starting to rust out around the valve stems and I'd rather get ahead of that rather than be stuck. I'm finding replacing those will be about $400 with shipping. I can remount the tires myself, so that shouldn't make the project too costly.

Any tips you guys have let me know. I'll keep updates on the forum as the project moves along.
24696.jpg
 
It's my understand that ford used the exact model number on the hood decal from late 1957 to somewhere around 1960. After that they change to the series in the decal. So I'm betting your tractor is a 1960's model or later.

Kirk
 

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