Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Farmall 400 still at work

I knew fellows who died on tricycle tractors - Dad wouldn't have one (mostly because teaching young boys to operate was safer with wide fronts)

Yeah, but turn the wheel, stomp on the inside brake, and a narrow front tractor is zero turn.

Many hours here in the seat of 2 different size Farmalls ( F and M?). And then there was the old fly-wheel green machine JD. I loved driving that thing!

And if you happen to be in reverse, you can back one rear wheel up over the wagon tongue to which you are attached. (Don't ask me how I know this.)

I used to be able to back into position the second haywagon of a tandom job behind the Farmall. (That ain't easy!)

Now, I look for a space downtown where I don't have to parallel park....

So, OK - I did it today going to the Apple store on 5th in Anchorage, and the rear wheel was only half up on the curb. But I got it on the first try!

Ok, dammit. Since you went there.
Mine was a hay rake going forward.
Lucky I figured it out, just before it took me off the tractor.

yep, I think every farmer had heard of someone injured when those front wheels went into a rut, if it didn't happen to them personally

I had my thumb dislocated when my front wheel, on an old Ford tractor with no power steering, hit a tree and spun the steering wheel while brushhogging. I was able to give it a good jerk and get it back in but it sure did hurt for awhile.

The narrow front ends had some real risks. They were also easier to roll on a side hill. We have 2 IH Super M's with the TA in our barn. Both are 1954's. (the only year they were made with the TA) We used one of them 3 weeks ago to drag off some trees we cut down to make room for a new fence. It's tough to have even a small place without a good tractor.
kwg

A family friend’s dad had an M with the tricycle front end. Story goes that when he was about 8 his dad put him on the M pulling a chisel and told him to plow for a while, he needed to run the 3 miles to town and would be back shortly. Not long after he left the little fella plowed across a terrace burying the chisel up to the beam. But instead of spinning or stalling the old M started to stand straight up into a wheelie. Panicking he fed her more gas which only made the rate of climb increase and it wasn’t until it was standing on about a 45 degree angle that the thought occurred to him to get on the clutch. He said he just knew that it had punched that front axle all the way through the hood when it came down it hit so hard.

He somehow managed to get it out of the terrace and back heading the right direction before his old man came back and didn’t mention it until he was an adult.

Old fellow that is my parents’ neighbor has an old M that he more than likely bought new. He’s in his 90s and farmed forever. I was stuck on one of his places once when I was hunting and he brought it down to pull me out. I rode the drawbar from his barn down to where I was stuck about a half a mile away. We hooked it up with a 100’ log chain doubled over and he never even idled it up, just eased the clutch out and drug me right out of the mud hole.

The wide front doesn't provide any stability on a hill. It pivots. The stability comes from the back wheels. And was my old man the only one who kept after his kid to keep his thumbs outside the wheel?