Elwood Kit

On the "Tractor Talk" forum under "Calendar Question" is a photo of an M with a four-wheel drive Elwood Kit. Were these effective? Were they made for any other of the letter series?

I think that is a special deal added by a farmer. There was a guy up at the Mackinac Bridge crossing that has put several of those Elwood front ends under different tractors. He had one under a 560 he bales hay with. He showed me pictures of the tractors he had done this to. One was an Allis Chalmers like a WD or WD45 something like that. A few old IH tractors and can't remember what all he had done. He lived near Elwood IL where the guy lived that made then back when according to him.

Correction: It's under "Tractor Tales".

Was it a retro-fit of a steerable, axle/differential from an existing machine?

It looked like to me most of them were off a Duece And Half,and retrofitted on the M's it gave more traction,, but they didn't turn very sharp, so like usual there was a trade off !

Elwood was actually run by two people. The engineer that designed everything, the idea guy, and the BIG farmer with the money to pay all the bills. They hired the Elwood Chief of Police to manage their shop.

I managed Elwood as a supplier when I worked in material scheduling at Farmall.

The first IH approved fwa axle Elwood made was for the 560. Same axle fit all the way back to the '39 M. Never made an axle for H or W series, Just the M to 560. Elwood was located close to the Joliet Armory, Elwood used up all the frt drive axles for Fwa from their surplus army trucks before they went to Dana Spicer for axles. During the 2-1/2 years I worked with Elwood they used Three different styles of mounts for their axles.

Most interesting tractor I saw, I sent a pair of 10-bolt duals for a 1586 with 16.9x38 tires up to Elwood, and Hinsdale loaned Elwood a H186 Hi-Clear, and Elwood made a fwa Hydro Hi-Clear. Elwood built it special for Hinsdale, Hinsdale sent a car full of engineers down to look at it, run it, took lots of pictures, left, next day called Elwood and told them to disassemble it and return all the parts. I saw a picture,

First Axles were frt steering axle from a surplus Army 6x6. When surplus 6x6's were all gone they bought axles from Dana-Spicer in Minnesota. The switch to Dana-Spicer started before Elwood became the supplier to Farmall for the 86-series.

Elwood also made axles for Massey-Furguson, made a very few, maybe 5 for Deere's,

Thank's for all the information.

Thanks for the interesting history. I talked to a person at Rantoul who was displaying this 560 with an Elwood system and he also noted that they could be installed on M's as well.

This post makes me wonder again what happened to Warder, he had FWA 560 and was tinkering with adding an axle to 400 driven buy the brake pinion.

Only forward gears used with the front axle was 1, 2 and 3. Shifting to 4th or 5th shifted the drive to front axle drive box out of engagement.

The neat thing Elwood didn't put in the brochures about the early axles used on 560's was their axles reduced the stress put on the bearings in the rearend and differential that caused the big recall program. Same way their newer axles reduced stress on the 706/806 on up to 1486 & 1586.

Elwood developed an electric clutch to engage/disengage the fwa, when Hinsdale tested it they removed the ring gear from the differential on a 1486, the frt axle only pulled the tractor, tractor was set to wide open throttle in road gear, and when at max speed the fwa clutch disengaged, tractor slowed to I think it was 10 mph and clutch engaged fully accelerating tractor back to maximum speed and cycle started over. They wanted 1000 hours of this! Almost 42 days and nights constant. Couple dowel pins that engaged /disengaged the clutch pack were pressed in with only .001/.002" interference, one pin finally worked it's way out on the 41st day, disabling the tractor, stopping the test. Elwood's chief engineer knew what happened, IH Hinsdale let Elwood make new larger dowel pins, they ran test another 200 hours, 8-1/3 days more and approved the design. Just think of the shock of 145+ HP being coupled to the transfercase, drive shaft, and the whole frt axle.

(quoted from post at 03:16:10 11/19/18) This post makes me wonder again what happened to Warder, he had FWA 560 and was tinkering with adding an axle to 400 driven buy the brake pinion.

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I believe Wardner passed on a few years ago. Another member has his 560 now if I'm not mistaken.

But yeah, these were factory things. They bolted on in place of the belt pulley drive, and drove off the constant mesh gear I'm pretty sure. The drop box is a chain drive.

As I recall, it gave you 4x4 in 1, 2, 3, and maybe 4th.

Dr. Evil: I've been looking for one for a 560 for 35 years, never found one for sale I could afford. I do listen any time they come up in conversation. My question is how did they compensate for different gear ratios. The 560 1st gear is lower than a M and some 560's had heavy tillage 3rd gear. Plus different rear tire sizes. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks Lee