Side Delivery rakes

Interesting that there two MFs for sale, one for $400 unrestored
and a $1500 one. One guy is from Duncan and the other from Chemainus not many miles apart . . . across from me on the big island.

SideDelivery

Fine old 3 pt hitch, pto driven rakes.

But, if my memory serves me right, they require a tractor with (ground speed pto)
option.
Do not remember if small Ford's have that option.

I think even older Ferguson tractors like T0 20, 30 had to have a special pto speed
reducer in order to use the rakes.

Later model T035 tractors have that ground speed built into the transmission.

We had one of these rakes, ran it on a '64 4000 with S-O-S, had independent PTO, but not ground speed as I recall, raked a lot of hay with that as a kid.

Billy,
Am sure you are right on the pto speed, but if not for the rake, why would Ferguson included the ground speed option on the tractor.

What was it used for?

I never had a MF rake, so I have no on hand experience, guess I thought I read that some where.

Bsck in the late 50's I used one like these on a 2-N. It was a little heavy for it and while transporting I ran it on the rear rake wheels. I had no ground speed pto and at times in a fairly smooth field I would rake in 3'rd gear. It was a good rake in any kind of crop as well as being quiet.

This model M-F rake was 540 RPM pto speed, that I do know. You could rake a massive windrow with it. I did that once on one of our fields to get the grass off it prior to a show, it was not going to get baled, thats all I had, worked well, not sure how a towed side delivery rake would fare on that task, which neither was probably intended for. Boy do I remember thinking about as to when to get on the other side of that windrow and reduce it, as its cast to the left, it was plainly getting too big to handle, one of the help was watching and shaking his head LOL ! The Ford tractors with select-o-speed, some models had all 3, ground speed, 540 and 1000 rpm if I am correct, ours just had independent PTO as I recall. You pulled out the handle, lower right of the dash to engage it. I'm in the dark on ground speed pto useage as well. Of all the implements I have used, ran or seen, I've never used anything that was ground speed operated through the tractor. I've only operated implements being powered through its own wheels, like the NH side delivery rake I used to rake hay with for the farmer I used to help doing hay for many years. All of our manure spreaders were pto driven, though there are plenty ground driven ones out there.

I will say the mounted M-F side delivery rake was a reliable implement, we had it for years doing about 3000 small squares, and it was in fine shape when it was sold.

Ok... The Ferguson rakes was intended to be ran in 4th gear behind either a Ferguson tractor or the Ford 8N. If you could not run them in 4th gear on either of those two tractors then Ferguson sold and recomended a pto speed reducer because running the rake in 3rd gear not only spins the reel too fast causing a short bearing life, but it also beats the leaves off of the hay. For the 9N/2N tractors Ferguson sold a 22" sheave that was to be installed in place of the standard 18" sheave. The 22" sheave slowed the reel down so it could be used in the 9N/2N 3rd gear. When Massey bought out Ferguson they continued the same series of rakes with the D-EO-20 becoming the MF 20 rake and the D-EO-25 rake becoming the MF 25 rake. Those rakes were intended to be used with ground speed pto as they came from the factory.There was a few options added in there also with the number of reel bars either in 4,5,or 6 bars and they also added a 15" sheave to be used with other makes of tractors that did not have ground speed pto. There was also other production changes during the run, with earlier Ferguson D-EO-20 rakes having an idler pulley and different teeth than the later ones. Also the earlier 3pt hitch on the rake was different than the later ones would have. If you have a Ferguson D-EO-20 rake with the cast spiders on it usually the date they was cast is cast on the spider. One of mine was cast in November of 1949, and the other was December of 1950. I can't remember the exact days right off.

Makes sense on the different size drive pulleys.

But, if all Ferguson had to do was install a different size drive pulley on their side
delivery rakes,

Then why go to the expense of building into the pto gear train the ground speed option,
that is bound to have cost them a ton of money, when there was no problem to solve.

The ground speed pto must have other uses that I am not aware of.

On my tractor I tried it once on a seed shower, too slow.

One of them has a $1100 paint job!

Great Jason replied with this, interesting information to learn from !

(quoted from post at 19:26:34 07/20/15) Makes sense on the different size drive pulleys.

But, if all Ferguson had to do was install a different size drive pulley on their side
delivery rakes,

Then why go to the expense of building into the pto gear train the ground speed option,
that is bound to have cost them a ton of money, when there was no problem to solve.

The ground speed pto must have other uses that I am not aware of.

On my tractor I tried it once on a seed shower, too slow.

Click to expand...

There was several other implements that used ground pto also. Some of them was a lot more common in England. Seems like they even had a fertilizer buggy that the wheels were powered by the ground speed pto to help keep it from getting stuck. It was quite a feature in the days before 4 wheel drive was so common.