Massey Harris was the Company that pioneered and developed the Self Propelled Combine. They also created particular innovations along the way that other Brands eventually copied. Fergieman
Who the fuck wants a tractor like that ? Other than for a display piece ? Fuck that noise. Takes to much time to start when now all you do is turn the key and half the job would of been done by now….
My Grandfather had the Big Rumley Oil Pull on his farm. It was gone before I ever saw it but I did get to see film of it running a thrasher with a belt with one twist in it from Flywheel. Was really nice to see one start and move!
I suppose the enormous coolers on this machines rely on the flow and draft of the exhaust fumes, channeled to the funnel, to draw in cold air, in order to cool the water pipes. Simple but a bit of a mountain in front of you.
These tractors were first built for the open plains farming it was there were first steam traction engines started Henry ford realized the need of farmers in the east for smaller tractors so in short farming tractors moved from east to west
In the days before logging trucks my grandfather used an oil pull tractor to pull sawmill logs out of the forest. What he did was attach a two wheel truck to the front of the log puller. The tongue of this two wheel truck stuck up in the air about 15ft high. As the oil puller moved forwards each tongue was connected to the truck in front of it and as it pulled the tongue down it lifted the front of the logs and after about ten or 20 trucks of say three logs each medium sized was pulled down the whole shebang moved off to the mill in a long train. As the oil puller huffed off the train maybe twice as much wood as a log truck could be transported to the mill at the turn of the last century.
This is so cool! I know this stands to reason logically, but It never occurred to me that this sort of early oil fuelled tractor ever existed. I was aware of oil-fuelled stationary engines, and steam traction engines and I've seen plenty of both at vintage farm machinery fairs, but never seen machines like this (in the U.K.). Is this primarily a U.S. thing where steam traction was ditched earlier in favour of oil fuelled machinery due to better fuel availability, and presumably ease of use, where you didn't have to worry about setting fires and waiting for water to boil?
You have to imagine there has been some gnarly accidents with these rigs in the past. Run over a toe with one of these it's gone 😮 not to mention all the exposed moving parts. Amazing the skill at running one of these.
