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Where did they go?

S

Straw Boss

Well-known Member
I've been told the all time most popular tractor ever built back in the day was the Fordson with more than 550,000 built by 1928.
So why is it you never see one? They are seen at the big tractor shows nowdays, but when I was growing up years ago, I saw about every make and model of common tractor on neighbor's farms, farm auctions, dealer lots and machinery jockey yards. Usually scouted out anything rusty in the tree groves as well and I don't remember ever seeing one. Did most of them get scrapped by WW2?
 
Only ever seen one. the ford tractor dealer in the next city had one underneath The ford sign
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Tractor data says they made close to 750,000 Fordson Model F up to 1927. That would have made them 15 years old when WW2 geared up the scrap drives. I suppose one was worn out by then plus there were more powerful and modern like the Farmall H starting in 39, making the decision to scrap the Fordsons a pretty easy one.
 
The Fordsons in our neighborhood were all worn out by 1937 and were traded in for new tractors. After that they became scrap metal for the war effort. WWII (The Big One). That's where about 99.9% of them went along with a lot of other stuff. They'd (mostly Jewish junk dealers with Illinois license plates) come by regularly looking for scrap iron.
 
Your picture is one of the original Fordsons. Fordsons were quirky, much like their creator. They had some bad habits. One was the infamous back flip which was caused by the design of the rear end which featured a worm gear drive. Front end would come up and worm itself right over onto the unsuspecting farmer. Also sometimes caused by the farmer inserting a fence post or such into the wheel to get unstuck. Henry Ford was concerned about this and came out with a set of fenders that remedied the problem by stopping the tractor after it had reared up about 30 degrees or so. The fenders were a $50 option until they finally became standard but raised the price of the tractor. My uncle got one of the last ones without fenders and boasted about the money he had saved. Another bad habit was Jumping into gear while sitting in neutral with the engine running. Another bad thing was that it was hard to start when hot. Many a farmer came in from the field at noon and left it run while feeding the cows or getting something to eat and then seeing his tractor traveling across his front yard on its own. I forgot to mention, it had no parking brake. The brake was applied with full down clutch which wasn't the case when you shifted to neutral and let the clutch out. One day my uncle had his Fordson idling in the yard while he was working on something and his Fordson jumped into gear and headed straight for the silo. It plowed into the silo, climbed right straight up the side of the silo and then flipped over backward, rupturing the fuel tank and catching on fire in the process. They said that, in spite of it being made almost completely out of steel, it was an almost unrecognizable pile of twisted, burned metal. He had to go into town and buy a new tractor. We still laugh about it to this day. (;>))
 
A Fordson was the first tractor I ever drove. What I remember most about it was the clutch ran in oil, so the thing had to be warmed up until the oil thinned and the clutch would release. Before then, you just gritted your teeth and jammed it into gear.

I really don't look back at it with nostalgia.
 
By the time I was old enough to notice tractors I guess all the Fordsons were gone. I do recall a couple of uncles had one. Remembered as temperamental . Pull or roll start tractors. My guess at the most prolific tractors in this area would be the John Deere D or McCormick Deering 15-30. I've got a 15-30 in my yard and don't have to go far to see a few JD model Ds as well.
 
Those early tractors were probably only a little better than a team of horses but we had to start somewhere
 
Remembered as temperamental . Pull or roll start tractors.
Click to expand...

Is it actually possible to pull or roll start a Fordson (since they have a worm gear final drive)?

Or is it just the early models with the worm gear on top that acted like that?

"The design of the rear was patented for its ease of manufacture and service.[16] Brakes were not provided on early Fordsons, as high-ratio worm sets generally transmitted rotation in one direction only, from the worm element to the gear element, because of the high power loss through friction. To stop the tractor, the driver depressed the clutch.[15]"

Source:

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Fordson
 
Seen this beauty in Fort Sumner New Mexico.. in 2012..

It had been set up to operate on Propane....?.....Butane...?

Bob...
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Pa talked about Grandpa buying a Fordson. Pa was a ?24 model, but don?t recall what year the Fordson was. Pa told of Grandpa?s love of horses, but the age of his team and march of progress brought a Fordson to the acreage. Pa was always somewhat of a mechanical guy, but said the Fordson was miserable. He said if they needed to grind feed on Tuesday they had to start a corncob fire under it on Sunday. I suppose with reviews like that the desire to save them wasn?t particularly strong.
 
My grandpap had a Fordson. He said it took longer to get it started than it did to do most jobs with the horses. It would not turn over by coasting it down a hill because of the worm gear rear end. It was used for running the Blizzard ensilage cutter at the silo when filling the silo with corn for a few years until he got his first N series Ford. I have thought it is likely that the farmers were not very knowledgeable about engines back then, which didn't help any with the starting problems.
 
Everybody hated them. Hard to start cold, wouldn't start hot, couldn't pull start, and on and on. Dad had one when I was little, I never saw it run, eventually it disappeared.
 
Be interesting to see the thrust bearing size if they ran worm gear drive on the 400+ new tractors......

Paul
 
?...most popular tractor ever built back in the day was the Fordson....?
Why is that so if, as described below, they were so horrible to operate?
 
My Grandpa said it was a great day when him and my Great-grandfather were "rich" enough to buy a used Farmall M and retire the Fordson. He said they tried to sell it for awhile, but ended up cutting it up for scrap after he got out of the service in '54. He said they left the scrap yard with $2.25 and thought they ripped the yard off.
 
My father and grandfather must have thought the horses were better.They tried a Fordson out but didn't buy it kept farming with horses until they bought 2 Allis Chalmers
B tractors and related equipment to get them started 'tractor farming'.The B model was easy to start and basically replaced one horse,but the driver didn't have to let it rest at the end of the row like when using a horse.
 

It was the only tractor being mass produced on assembly line at that time. If you want to see a few different models and different mounted equipment come to Deerfield Fair Deerfield NH. Late September.
 
Its not the worm drive that caused issues with rearing up, it was the configuration of the hitch. A modern American style drawbar is such that the leverage is reduced as the tractor rears up so it will spin out easier.

Some of the euro standards like the pickup hitches or the German really high mounted pintles above the pto would still have this rearing up behaviour, probably why they are all pretty well setup with front hitches to pickup weight blocks!
 
I grew up with a 1927 Fordson F. My father had it and 2 teams of horses when I was born in 1952. He bought a 1952 8N 3 years later. It was the only operational Fordson around the area. There were plenty of McCormick Deering 10-20s still in use back then. The crude carburation system and fly wheel magneto did cause hard starting. The ignition system was replaced by a conventional magneto when the Irish built model N came out in 1929. They kept the worm drive differential thru WWII. The E27N, introduced right after the war, had a bevel gear diff. We used the Fordson for belt power thru the summer of 1967. It is still in the family. I hope to restore it someday.
 
Looks like a 2-lead worm and 34 or 35 tooth wheel. That makes it around a 17:1 ratio. Qualifies as self-braking. It would be difficult to backdrive,
 
There probably are more around than you give credit for. I expect you will find that several collectors in your area have one, but they bring something that cranks with a starter button to the shows. And a lot of the older collectors may not even be physically able to crank them any more.

That is one thing that has changed a lot about tractor shows. Back in the '70s, the 'old tractors' in this area were Fordsons and 10-20 McCormick Deerings. The tractors you see at shows today were still earning their keep back then.
 
Still a lot of them in museums and held by collectors here in Australia.

My father switched from horses to Fordsons in the early 1920s, then to Case C and L in the early 1930s. I asked an uncle about the reason for switching to Case and he said that they could not stop the Fordsons boiling no matter what they did to them (much hotter climate here than Ireland where they were built). Neighbour bought a Model C Case in 1930, dad and uncles went for a ride on it, and went to town the next day to order a C and a L (or so my uncle told me)
 
My old neighbor bought up all he could for $25, because he could get $50 for the brass worm drives and $10 for the rest of the tractor. Don't know how many he scrapped, but considering the prices, it was a very long time ago. I suspect most folks were happy to see them melted down. I'd still like to have one, someday...
 
I?ve never understood the reason for the high hitch points. More brilliant foreign engineering I guess.
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