On a side note, I just watched the video that I got for Christmas, "An Interview with Harold Brock, Chief Designer of the Ford 9N Tractor". (Seemed like a great guy, God Rest His Sole.)
In the video he explains why the early tractors had the cast aluminum parts.
Basically Henry Ford had them on such a hurried schedule (concept to manufacturing in 6 months), they didn't have time to build sheet metal dies to make the hood and grill, so they went with the aluminum cast until the dies were designed and built.
He also mentioned that Charlie Sorensen's son owned the aluminum casting company making the cast grills and Sorensen instructed Brock to not design a new grill from steel. Brock got a grill, brought it to his office and showed Sorensen that if you stepped on it it would very easily break and then Sorensen finally agreed to have Brock redesign it.
The original grill design was based on the new Mercury car at the time.
I enjoyed the video, the world was a different place back then. The video is a little less than 2 hours.
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Today's Featured Article - Madison's County - by Anthony West. Philip Madison has been a good friend of mine for quite some time. He has patiently suffered my incessant chit chat on the subject of tractors for longer than I care to remember, and on many occasions he has put himself out, dropped what ever it was he was doing, to come and lend a hand cranking handles, or loading a find onto a trailer. Although he himself has never actually owned or restored a tractor, he was always enthusiastic and always around helping with other peoples projects.
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