International Haytools

Bill VA

Well-known Member
Prior to the black days of IH in the late 79's and early 80's - it looks like IH had a full line of haytools, from sickle mowers, haybines, rakes and
square balers. I suppose at one point these were sold lock, stock and barrell to New Idea and production continued with essentially an IH
design, paint and decals?

Question is - were the above haytools made in IH factories until they were sold and if so - what happened to those facilities.

While NH and JD dominate, and part support for IH haytools might(?) be betting long in the tooth, I get the impression that by the time IH exited
the haytool business, their hay equipment was as good as anyone's.

Bill
 
If IH hay equipment was as good as the others they would not have stopped making it.The knotter on the IH baler was different than all others and when it worked it worked but was very hard to fix when it didn't work. The 1190 haybine was not as good as the 990 that it replaced. The early IH round bales were not the best either.The forage harvesters were good and the 56 blower was one of the best ever built. IH forage boxes were made by Kasten but they were fairly good if shedded and cost about half of what a Deere model was. The hay and forage equipment was not bad but they had very little that was ahead of the other companies. Tom
 
The haying equipment was part of the ag division sold to Tenneco, part continued to be built - the IH 445 and 435 became the Case IH 445 and 435 baler. Their self propelled swathers became Case IH self propelled swathers. I don't know if their big round balers survived the merger. The old balanced head mowers continued to be sold (for a while) as Case IH mowers. Time passes and models change and or dropped for contract built equipment.


Basically anything older than a 440 or 430 baler (meaning a 45, 46, 47 or similar) has the IH knotters and they are/can be a PIA and that was when they were new - 40+ years later I don't see them working any better with a lot fewer people knowing how to work on them. The earliest 440 and 430 balers also had the "IH" knotters. After the first year (or two) of production IH started putting the "all twine" knotter on their balers - basically a return the tried and proven Deering knotter, same knotter used by JD. A lot of the earlier 440s and 430s and SOME 47s and 37s were retrofitted with the Deering knotters - when it was done the baler got an "all twine" decal slapped on it. The 440 and 430 balers are very good balers and are comparable to anything of the era put out by JD or NH - problem was IH's reputation for building "bad" balers was made in the previous two decades and a it takes a while to change that reputation and time wasn't something that IH had.
 
I liked their sickle bar mowers. Not sure I would rate anything else they made at the top of the heap.
 
My understanding is IH sold the hayline in 82 or 83 to New Idea which included machine tooling,patents,unsold inventory at Memphis works,choppers to my understanding were built in the Hamilton Ontario factory and weren't included in that deal..

I believe drawings or prototypes of future machines was also in there in the New Idea deal.
New Idea I think as part of the deal was to supply IH with machines in red paint to sell for a set number of years,This is where you start to see some cousins,like New Idea 507 and 509 moco's and so on,they're the same thing as a IH 1190,I know the plan worked for awhile but something soured because a couple years into the Case IH chapter New Idea was dropped.. and CIH bought a 50% slice of Hesston,and all Hay tools were IH red painted Hesstons...

IH had a good hay line up,but the market was dominated by 2 major competitors,the investment to stay competitive was too great for IH at that time,1981-1984 were bad times for them, they had some awesome ideas on the drawing board,though...
 

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