Thank You Grandma for funding this restoration. Those boys learned more than you can imagine. I was one of those boys that lived on a farm. We rebuilt and repainted those old tractors also. My Dad's thoughts were if your not doing anything, your not learning anything.
I came for the M but stayed to watch your kids grow up! You didn’t just restore a tractor - your restored my faith in kids that will always remember working with their family & will grow up to be real men!!!
Remember always,An American Patriot Farmer will never let us down without food on the table.That tractor is,I cant find the words at the moment.Celestial.
It looks good! My uncle, Reed Benedict, started farming in the Columbia Basin Project (Soap Lake, WA) in 1957. The place had a house and machine shed and that was about it. He bought the place from the estate of the previous owner who died in an accident on the farm. It came with two Farmall Ms and a few assorted implements but that was about it. He had a feed lot and grew corn and hay for the cows and wheat to sell. He was into breeding also and had a small Black Angus herd. Along with my aunt, Beverly, and two cousins, Rich and Dean, they worked the farm through the 60s and 70s. Rich and Dean went off to college and worked the farm with their Mom and Dad in the summer. Rich was more suited to be a chemical engineer but Dean earned a degree in Mechanical Agriculture and gradually took over the farm in the 80s and did it all by the 90s. Dean married Joyce and they had four children, one of whom, Peter, seems to have what it takes to make a go of it and is looking to take over the operation. What does this have to do with Formal Ms? Those two original Ms are still on the farm and were in regular use through the 90s. They still work great and start right up. They are semi-retired but see use for things like towing trailers and water tanks. It gets hot in the Columbia Basin and the cab with a/c and more power to do more work with a modern machine is welcome but the Ms were good, honest workhorses which could do what needed to be done. Great this M is back together and still working.
Great job! Not only a show piece, but a work horse. That's the best part of restoring a tractor is putting it back to use. Love it, way to go. Be proud of yourself you did a great job.👍
Man that was worth every second of time to watch, I just finished my tractor on a full restore and it takes a lot of time but the end result is well worth the time, well done my friend..
My Dad had a Super M. Good running tractor. The clutch was extremely hard to push in, the gas lever as we called It never stayed where you put it in rough ground. It was a beast to drive (narrow front end) when I was 12 or 13 years old. At that age I loved it.
What an amazing build. Young man, you have the sincere admiration of myself and hundreds of others, watching. What patience! Our compliments to your pop, for letting you take the lead, on this great project. Not all dads TRUST their kids enough to let them be so ‘HANDS-ON’, with such a large project. Our compliments, again! Ted in NJ
As a teacher who also has a skillset, this video was great. It is good to see young people who actually want to do something and make something and be productive. Keep up the great work.
This is the Coolest Video I’ve ever seen restoring it is the best thing ever , 😊, I come from a farming family , we had 4020,4440 ,7520 , I went to work for a friend he had the 1066 , to it was the best , cool video, and great job.
Nice! That was definitely my favorite part, when I could put that tractor that I had completely rebuilt back in the field, doing the same sort of work it probably did back in 49
This brought back some memories. We started out with a Model H then traded up to a Model M. Dad bought the M as a project tractor and it was the second project that I was involved with as a kid. The first one was a little 9N ford tractor. Dad did a beautiful job of cleaning up the M. We farmed with it for about 2 years then Dad made the mistake of trading the M for a B414 diesel. That tractor was never what Dad hoped that it would be.. I learned a lot of mechanical stuff helping Dad with the tractors that he would bring in and rebuild. Good memories.
Great job on restoring that beautiful old Farmall and of course the best part was watching it being put to work once finished. Also excellent video production and music! Well done!!! (ps, loved the tiny John Deere inside the dust collector....)
That’s great, my Pops has a cub that I really need to get running. I had the M parked next to it the other day and it was kinda neat to compare the sheer size difference between the smallest Farmall of the time and the largest
Thanks I have watched all of your videos on your M, (you did a splendid job by the way) and I noticed that we had the same wide front. Mine was pretty rough and it took two font ends, some custom bushings and a bunch of spare parts to make mine like new. Heck I probably have 5 parts tractors that contributed to the build. It looked pretty nice at first but It was a real basket case on the inside.
Great video, and the tractor turned out beautiful!! The Glyptal inside really brings out the quality and time you put into the restoration! Great to see the youngins getting into the hobby!! Nice job!!
Yea I’m still not sure why I spend so much time making the components on the inside look as good as the components on the outside, but I just couldn’t put a part back in If didn’t paint the exposed cast surfaces with Glyptal and have all of the machined surfaces clean and polished. Maybe that’s why my restorations take multiple years haha! Thanks for the compliments, you did a fine job on your H and I’m looking forward to the reassembly videos on your D.
Honestly after seeing all that fresh glyptal on your H, I sorta couldn’t resist! Really though I think it does help with oil drain back and will probably prevent rust in the bell housing.
I noticed that somebody had changed the magneto out for battery ignition. I also noticed that this tractor still had the old distillate manifold. Dad had the engine on his H changed over to gas. This involved replacing the cylinder head with a higher compression gas head and a manifold that didn't have the heating chamber for running distillate.
Actually this tractor never had the magneto or the distillate manifold. It is a 1949 M Serial Number 201036 X1. The X1 signifies that it originally came with the higher compression cylinder head and the gasoline manifold. Also being that it is a 49 model it likely came with distributor ignition from the start. When I found a replacement hood for it I made sure it was the gasoline hood without the extra hole for the starting tank. The old manifold was very beat up and the video was quite blurry so it may have appeared as a distillate manifold. And yea those higher compression heads are nice for running on gas. I have a 1940 H with the distillate head that runs pretty well on gas, but it only builds about 70 pounds of compression. If I ever find a parts tractor with the higher compression head, I will definitely be doing a head swap on that H.
I needed to see this today. It gives me hope for the future... 😉 Great job and it's awesome to see you put the old girl to work!! We had an M and an MD on our farm when I was growing up. Really enjoyed the video... I'll sub and check out your others. 👍👍
Hey, just a thought, when wire brushing, use safety glasses. A friend had a friend who did not, a bristle broke off went into his eye ball. Infection, surgery and still lost the eye. Anyway, great job and a great learning experience. I did my 400 years ago and will never do it again lol. Sooo many parts to prep and paint! An older fella told me after I was done with mine, was to find another guy that has already done his tractor and buy it from him. He will be losing his shorts and money too
Thanks but working tractors in the field my favorite bit of the hobby. I wouldn’t have spent all the time on making a brand new tractor on the inside if all it had to do was drag itself around a tractor show.
Nice my granddad has a WD6 they are great tractors for sure! I have a 37 W30 the predecessor to your dads w6. I will probably be restoring the W30 once I finish up my Ferguson
@@gusthefarmer5608 Where is that? Looks flat. This is Ontario. Kind of rocky and hilly when you get away from the lower lakes. I often wondered how anyone grew anything in some places.
Yea it sounds like a gear whine, but actually it’s the new reproduction fenders rattling. It had a bit of a loud gear whine at first but it has quieted down to the normal Farmall whine as I wore the new transmission in. I know what you mean it sounds like a bearing is out but it’s just those cheap fenders.
That’s actually a fairly rare option on the early Ms, band brakes were standard of course (by early I mean anything before the last few years the m was produced). The last few years (late 51 early 52) they made the M band brakes were still standard but the disk brake options for them were the same as what the Super M used. Disk brakes were standard on the Super Ms. Basically those disk brakes were just a rare option just like the rest of the rare options I have on the tractor. By the way in the discription of the video I included a list of all the IH factory options I included on the tractor.
Yes I noticed a few options like the top of the air cleaner the adjustable rear tongue the rear fenders the wide front with the mounting plate that sets the front axle back farther the front wheel weights and the hydraulic controls. These are definitely things I like to see contractors whether they're restored or not me personally I like looking at tractors that are still in the work clothes
I wish I would have restored my 54 Super MD. Instead I sold it to a dairy farmer northeast of me about 125 miles. I went up there 5 years later to buy it back and the guy had destroyed it.
Oh that’s too bad, those gas start desels are really neat. My granddad has a 54 Super MDTA in need of restoration, I’m really looking forward to doing that one
Honestly, I didn’t really keep track of my time as it would be very difficult to measure as well as it took a lot longer than it probably should have because it was my first restoration project ever, and for the first few months I really didn’t know what I was doing. All I know was it took most of my spare time from 2 1/2 years. I didn’t get much done in the summer because of farm work tractor shows ect but I was able to accomplish a lot in the winter. I am currently working on another restoration now and it is going way faster.
We were trying to make 5th work, it would grind but wouldn’t go in because the gears were so worn out from that type of shifting. In the video Granddad was in 4th, tries 5th, found it simply wouldn’t work and went back to 4th. A good experienced operator can shift from 4th to 5th without much grinding. It’s true that shifting like that is what caused 5th to go out but since 5th was already out he wasn’t afraid to try it like that as it wouldn’t go at all with it still. With a good new transmission it now shifts 4th to 5th easily. I always make sure not to grind the gears as I was able to see what damage it did.
It may use less fuel but it has way more power. An M has about 33 hp on the drawbar but an H has only about 21 or so. The H was more fuel efficient because it couldn’t do as much in a day. For example we pull chisel plows with Farmalls. An M will pull 9 shanks with ease but an H struggles to pull 7. Don’t get me wrong I love Hs, but you can’t hardly call an H better than an M. It all depends on what you are trying to do. If I only had a two bottom plow an H would be better because of fuel efficiency but if an M is paired with the proper implements, an M will outwork the H every time.
