Agricultural capers

[scooters]

Always sad to see loved chod go. The International Harvester B250 was sold this afternoon. got a call first thing this morning asking if I could be around for a viewing. Dragged myself off the death bed, Mrs S drove me in the CX to the farm (not allowed to drive yet). When we got there I met the buyer who runs a transport business in Bishop Aukland. Next job was to get the tractor running, it hadn't been run for 3 months. No photos Im afraid because of the torrential rain.

 

So, after releasing the hydraulics from the loader, jacking it up and holding the rams with bricks we were able to open the bonnet and have a look at the work I left back in October. New glow plugs were in place and glistening with vaseline like a....well, we'll leave that picture. We dropped in a freshly charged land rover battery and whilst steve (the buyer and I) freed up the sticking tyre valve so we could inflate one of the big back ones, mrs S was instructed to hold the glow plug lever, it didn;t matter if we ran the battery flat on glow plugs as the starter motor was borked anyway. 

 

Once the block was so hot you could feel it at the bottom and all the tyres inflated we dropped the bonnet, plugged in the vertical exhaust pipe, tied a fuck off big rope to the front and the other end to the back of a Mk2 Shogun, put the tractor in 4th. I was helped up behind the wheel and Steve towed the tractor up and down the farm track. After the first attempt failed we then realised we had not opened the fuel cock - doh. as steve did a U'ey with the tractor on the main road (it has a V5 one of my greatest regrets was never getting the opportunity to drive it into the centre of Edinburgh.) we lined up again and this time I popped the clutch and with a ROOARE and a belch of smoke (nice and white) the engine burst into life. We unhooked the car and then spent the next 30 mins remembering all the loader/draw bar and PTO controls. The loader is hilarious when compared to a modern JCB. You have a 2 tap controls, a lever and a in release. If you tighten the tap it holds the pressure and allows you to use the lever to set the height of the bucket.The bucket is free swinging with an angle lock for the teeth angle. To raise the loader you close the tap and pull the lever up - Being a 1950's tractor the tap is on the hydraulic valve block that sits under yer goolies. The lever is below the seat on the right hand side. To lower the lever you gently release the tap and the bucket slowly drops. So the loading technique requires a great deal of practice:

 

approach your load, release the tap to bring the bucket teeth into position. When it is at the right height, close the tap to lock it in place - into 1st lift the clutch and push the bucket into the load. Then move the lever up to the desired height. Reverse the tractor, then drive the load to where you want to dump it: if you are french the load will be manure and you will dump it on the door step of a Bank/the Elysee Palace/the mayor's new cabriolet etc. To dump it you simply yank the pin release wire which pulls a sprung toothed pin out and the bottom of the bucket drops down spilling the contents onto the desired dumping ground. A wee tractor like this can move about 200 kg of earth or sand in each bucket if you are loading it properly, the telehandler we use can load 2 tonnes in its bucket! but it is modern and unreliable having eaten 8 starter motors this year alone! To re-position the bucket you loosen the tap, the loader arms fall and when the bucket hits the ground / the bonnet of the mayor's car etc it clicks back into position. Whilst this will do about 200 kilos per load it would have replaced manual work so would have been a huge bonus in 1957 to the first owner So we played with it for a bit, getting wetter and wetter. By now my vertigo was coming back with a vengeance so we loaded the IH up and said our farewells.

 

It never ceases to amaze me how tough old agricultural kit especially tractors are. This bit of kit is 60 years old, it has worked pretty much continuously, it has sat all winter on a windswept hill side and with 5 mins fettling was back into operation. Try doing that with a car! Its actually really easy to run vintage tractors because they are made of indestructible materials there are loads still in service as well as being restored as classics. You can get parts for most of the common makes in main dealer tractor shops as well as all over the internet. It is easier to find a part for a 1950s tractor than it is a 1990's ford.

 

I'm regretting letting it go but we needed the money.

 

By now I was feeling pretty ropey as the vertigo gripped. On the way home we picked up the kids a happy meal, then the fucking window wouldn't close - switch failure. I got soaked trying to sort it - eventually diagnose the switch, so removed the pne from the passenger window and fitted that - the wirring of the motor was a wonderful sound indeed! Back in bed - wet winter tractor capers are not the best idea when suffering from the lurgy.