Low hour and original hour tractors

I don't know about you, but I often find it hard to believe that a tractor that is 50 plus years old and been on a farm most of it's life, has not had a tach cable break or tach failure. In most cases, this was not a high priority item, either due to lack of funds, or just too busy to replace it.
Unless the seller has lived with the tractor since delivery, I do not believe the "low hour" stuff except in certain rare cases.
The other down side is that a tractor that has had regular running at operating temps is much better than one that has sat for long periods or only started for a few minutes at a time.
Just my $.02, I respect everyone else's opinion on this.

I have a Ford NAA with 620 actual hours on it. Yes, it set a lot. Was owned by a doctor's wife for a long time.Then owned by a landlord who only bush hogged with it. He was pretty rough on it.Bought it from his girls when he died.

I would imagine that the tractors that had mounted cotton and corn pickers that were only used for that purpose on family farms would have been low hour tractors over the years. We had a farmer friend with a 4020 under a cotton picker and the picker was never taken off while he had it. He farmed around 150 of cotton.

730, I have to agree with you. I usually check wear on foot pedals, throttles and so on because low hours equals low use. I think these are more reliable signs on older equipment. When comes to trying to sell equipment many people don't mind telling you a down right lie if it will put a couple bucks in their pocket. Others don't know.

I've gotta admit,I traded one in one time that showed 6000 and some hours on it. I'd bought it new. Trouble was,the needle broke on the tach when it had just shy of 6000,so I ran it on up there then put a new tach on it. So it had close to 13000 when I traded it off.

Lots of low hour compact utility tractors around- people get 'em for mowing and little jobs around the "grounds", not unusual for them to accumulate less than 20 hours a year.

I have bought and sold tractors for 35 years.
General appearance such as wear in the clutch
pedal bushings, drawbar and hitch wear, front
end wear, etc. Too many adjusted tachs around.
I knew one jockey that set up an electric motor
and flex shaft to run some of the older tachs
backwards.

Must keep in mind also that hourmeters on needle type tachs register time at rated engine rpm. Half throttle chore tractors may have a lot more hours.

I recently picked up a couple honeys- in the fall I got a '53 SMD, original owner's son, and they had a lot of tractors- 1082 on the engine hour meter, and the tractor looks like it- pedals and such look like new, NO wear, sheet metal is cherry, shift knob & wheel nice, tight wide front, etc. They had an MD set up with multiple hyd valves and 18.4-38's so this one didn't get used much.
Just at Christmas I picked up a sweet little '50 8N, original owner's son again, nice Calistoga ranch tractor, just used a little for mowing, etc., doesn't even have wheel weights, 1042 hrs- and again, it looks it. Everything's nice, pedals, sheet metal, proofmeter works perfect, hitch works crisply, tight steering, good brakes. Looks like it had a dealership bluebelly paint job done a long time ago, as everything was immaculately detailed and painted, but you can see the original red showing through in a few places. It's also been kept inside most of it's life. They also had a 9N and an NAA that look like they were rode hard- this one had a miss and had started smoking about 10 years ago, and had just been moved around since, they had never bothered to work on it as they had sold most of the property and didn't need it. Just had a broken plug wire, and the "dead" cylinder was loaded up with oil from not firing. Borrowed a wire off a core engine, fresh plugs and clean the points, and a Seafoam treatment, and she's purring- starts & runs really nice. Never even fouled a plug as it burned the oil out of the "dead" cylinder

Dryland crop tractors [i:654c4848f0]show[/i:654c4848f0] very little wear. They were put in third gear at daylight and ran all day. Every day.

I don't think 8N's ever came with an hour meter, not sure about the Farmalls. Dave

Ours did , down by the right knee.

Really really hard to verify hours !

One of the best tractors I bought was a one owner JD 50 and he assured me the hours were correct. Electric hobbs meter showed something like 3000 ? he also told me that was the second time around ! so it had 13,000 hours ! which is realistic if you added it up over the years. That tractor wasn't worn all out like alot of others so who knows how many millions of hours those worn out old A's and B's had ?
And this guy took care of this tractor and when something broke it got fixed and not cobbed.

You can't trust ASIAN hours or culture ,, My YANMAR had less than 900 hours , looked good,straight, was imported from japan as grey market...... has 1500 hours on it now and is sitting in my shop waiting to be overhauled ,, damthing ran hot and used oil from day one and was the hardest sundubich to start in cold weather on the place ....... NEVER AGAIN >>>>

You're right, I imagined it, there's not really a Proofmeter that says 1042 and appears to be unmolested on the side-distributor 8N, as Dave said, right by my right knee LOL
And I must have imagined the hour meter on the SMD that says 1082, right down by the distributor drive- and I also imagined that my gramps was an IH dealer, and sold M's new- silly me

That's how it was mechanically measured, though, engine hours- an hour at rated speed is 1 engine hour, 2 hours at half speed is also 1 engine hour

I bought my Massey 165 from a local dealer, they gave me the phone number of the previous owner who bought the tractor new. I called the PO. Hour meter showed 7400 hours (yeah it's a lot, but the engine was rebuilt in the 80's, the sheetmetal is straight as an arrow, and it had never been in manure as the PO stated) but come to find out, that the tach cable was broken for a few years. It's probably got well over 8000 hours on it, but at least I know that, and it gave me a really good bargaining chip with the dealership. Be wary of what hour meters say. In my case, the PO had nothing to lose or hide, which worked out great for me. Come to find out that the tractor spent most of those hours running a forage box, so it never really worked very hard and was well maintained. You sure can't tell it's got that many hours on it.