Musings of the Ford N series

I have been reading some of the posts over on the N board and it makes me remember back a bunch of years ago as a partsman. Random thoughts. It seemed like the vast majority of the people who came in to buy parts had a strong preference for the side mount distributor 8N's. I don't recall much discussion as to the ground speeds of each N series and their effectiveness for a job such as mowing or back blading. I can remember around 25 years ago that the Rochester paper for Saturday would have 6-8 listings for Fords with half being 8N's and maybe one NAA or 100 series tractors. I know 500 dollars could mean a lot back then to quite a few people but I remember guys coming in to get filters, spark plugs, and so forth telling me about how they out muscled a few other guys on an 8N by offering a few hundred dollars more than the asking price to get it. Funny thing was that most times there was a 100 series tractor available for the same money on the same weekend but the "cute" 8N was the one they felt they had to have, what they told the wife that they were getting, or wanted to please the father or father-in-law. I kind of wished that I had the forethought to have gone out to Yoder and Frey's and buy several at a time to sell here. I had access to sale information from out there and it seemed that good side distributor 8N's sold for 1500-1700 dollars on average with guys here fighting for the "privilege" of paying 3500 dollars for an 8N that was anything but a cream puff and may have included a set of poor condition chains or poor condition rotary cutter. It would have been my luck that the minute I did this that the market would have shifted away from those tractors. Compacts were out with good offerings by Ford and Deere plus Rochester still had many good paying jobs to afford those compacts. Just some musings on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

If I could get $3500 for a side mount 8N here in Florida I would sell half of my collection. $2000 buys a nice around here. All anybody wants is a green compact with a loader on it. The little N's were and are still good tractors but they just don't have the bells and whistles that everyone wants today. Not having live hydraulics was there biggest fault. But Ford sold close to a million of them so for the time not a bad tractor. My grandfather farmed 100 acres for years with one and he always said it was a lot better than walking behind a team of mules!

It's pretty much the same thing here nowadays. Like I was saying the 3500 dollar mediocre 8N's were around 25 years ago here. It really did not matter as at the time I lacked the money to go out to Archbold, OH to buy tractors and also to take a chance that the Ford gas tractor market would hold up. The Deere 50 series compacts had already been out for over a decade by that time.

I do not buy them anymore for resale. The price has dropped drastically in the last 6 or 7 years. It has been years since I even had one in my sales yard. Same for the 100 series, not much market for the old Fords anymore, I still have one in my collection and I am sure it will go at my estate sale when I no longer care.

The Ford 8Ns and the letter series JD or IH are dropping in value like crazy. Part of the cause is that the fellows in the age bracket that buy tractors did not grow up on any of these 1950s tractors. They want some thing that functions much better than a 70 year old tractor. It also comes down to marketing. The "new" compacts are heavily marketed. You can buy them in packages with affordable month payments. ( I can argue on the affordability part)

Another thing is dealership support. Any of the above mentioned tractors would get you funny looks or outright distain if you go into most "modern" dealerships looking for help and parts.

I agree. It seems like the people buying small tractors in the last 10 years have gotten much wealthier. The market for the small Kubotas, Mahindras, JDs, seems to be doing well. I still have a few N tractors left,and consider them to be as useful as I ever did, and have no desire to part with them. There is a fellow in Yorkton Saskatchewan who still rebuilds a few a year for resale, He only rebuilds the later 8ns ,his prices range from 2,700 to 6,500 (Can.)

The local NH has not turned their back yet on the gray and red tractors. The green and red dealers are good on parts with green doing better on in stock items. I don't think either green or red really are aching to have the 1950's tractors in their shops. I don't work as a dealer mechanic but my understanding is there quite a bit of "scaling" depending on the difficulty of a repair job. Which is to say the pay is better for the mechanic when he takes on a more advanced piece of equipment. In the real world it means an old 1950's tractor is left for a lower paid part timer to work on or an approved subcontractor.

I walked into the local Ford dealer here just last Nov. I needed a muffler for an Ford 861 tractor. They did not have one and it would be 3-4 days before they could have one. The price would have been around $75. Customer wanted OEM parts but also wanted it NOW. LOL So I found a Stanley one at a local farm supply dealer.

While I was at the Ford dealership I talked to the guy and GALS behind the parts counter. I told them I was going to be restoring a Frond 981 and would need parts. The fellow piped up and said that they would not have much to help me with on that OLD of a tractor. Now this ford dealership is in heavy grain country. So there is not a lot of older Ford tractors around here anymore either.

Not much locally survived from the Ford days to the NH we have today. Go to other parts of the state and you will see NH dealers that were Ford at one time with NH, Gehl, or Hesston for a side line. The multi location Case dealer took over after the merger with IH so other than parts books not much went over to the Case stores in terms of experience or enthusiasm for older IH products. A dealer's past will influence how it treats certain product lines that it inherits.

the N series has its place, for one its cheap compared to some others, also it can use all modern 3 point implements unlike some others, though its 1st gear is too high for a rototiller, some on the n board do manage to make it work well, it mows well ,provided you install a over running adapter on the pto shaft, so you can stop it,it can be hauled behind a 3/4 ton or larger truck on a car trailer easily, the problem is most of us who have one now also had one around the place when we were kids and its therapy to get out on a summer evening and mow ect with it, the N series makes a good first tractor restoration as it has virtually every single part reproduced in the aftermarket, and its about as simple mechanically as a tractor gets. we're getting older now, and the N is hitting the 'me' generation who grew up in the city, now they have 5 acres and want a small tractor, after they price a new kubota or john deere,they see the cheap little N and buy it, not realizing the N is not designed to do the same work as the new sub compact tractors are and it takes a person faimiler with machinery to run the old ford,it doesnt have safety switches on every handle or button, if you dont think, it will hurt you or worse, not to mention you will have to work on it, regularly the side mount is easier to do points on when its on the tractor, by persons who dont know that on the front mounts 2 bolts and 1 wire and the whole thing drops off in your hand so you can work on it on the bench, it only goes back in one way so getting it out of time is virtually impossible, but the N has its hp limits too, people used to using a tractor with 50 hp or more are not going to be happy with a N series, you cant run them the same way