Ed S.
Well-known Member
- Location
- Middle Tennessee
NOTE: This is an updated and extended version of the post I made after I’d owned the tractor for ten years.
Twenty Five Years with my 8N
I got my start with Ford tractors at an early age.
Some years later, I started a new job in The Middle West the day before 9-11, and not too many weeks later, I saw a 1950 8N sitting by the road with a For Sale sign on it.
It reminded me of the '52 my Dad had when I was young, and as we were looking for a farmhouse with some acreage, I decided on the spot to buy it, even though we were still in a furnished apartment while we house-hunted.
I think I paid around $1200 for the tractor, and I stored it at a friend's until we eventually bought a 15.5 acre farm and moved in one late December day while light snow fell.
Someone at church offered me a few old implements out of his hedge-row, and this Southern boy managed to get the tractor good and stuck during our first snowstorm while trying to figure out how to plow the driveway. Not long after moving in, we started gutting the farmhouse. We would finish remodeling the last three bedrooms not long before I retired and we moved back South, eighteen years later. It did turn out nice!
I hired a young man from our church to do hay on our field, and each year, I'd pick up a new implement until I eventually had enough to take over haying on my own. Sometime in 2004, the tractor developed a knock in the engine, so I started disassembling things to see what was going on. After removing the hood and front axle, I discovered the front crank pulley was loose, which had been causing the noise. Rather than tighten it up and put it back together, I "pulled the thread that unraveled the sweater," and sent the engine off to be rebuilt.
In the meantime, another friend had a '50 frontmount that had quit running. I asked if I could use it for a "few months" while I worked on mine, to which he agreed. A rewire and new battery and coil got it going, and I ended up using it for nearly four years doing my various work around the farm.
I asked my friend occasionally if he needed the tractor back, and he always replied, "nope, keep it as long as you need it." Well, early in 2008, he finally said he thought he could use it to move hay racks and such, so I knew I couldn't procrastinate any further. My tractor was disassembled, but had not made it past the "pile of rusty parts" stage. I did an assessment and got everything organized out in the shed, and that's when Operation 8N started (here's the first post from April 1, 2008).
Continued in the reply to this post (due to the new board's limit of 10 photos per post)…
Twenty Five Years with my 8N
I got my start with Ford tractors at an early age.
Some years later, I started a new job in The Middle West the day before 9-11, and not too many weeks later, I saw a 1950 8N sitting by the road with a For Sale sign on it.
It reminded me of the '52 my Dad had when I was young, and as we were looking for a farmhouse with some acreage, I decided on the spot to buy it, even though we were still in a furnished apartment while we house-hunted.
I think I paid around $1200 for the tractor, and I stored it at a friend's until we eventually bought a 15.5 acre farm and moved in one late December day while light snow fell.
Someone at church offered me a few old implements out of his hedge-row, and this Southern boy managed to get the tractor good and stuck during our first snowstorm while trying to figure out how to plow the driveway. Not long after moving in, we started gutting the farmhouse. We would finish remodeling the last three bedrooms not long before I retired and we moved back South, eighteen years later. It did turn out nice!
I hired a young man from our church to do hay on our field, and each year, I'd pick up a new implement until I eventually had enough to take over haying on my own. Sometime in 2004, the tractor developed a knock in the engine, so I started disassembling things to see what was going on. After removing the hood and front axle, I discovered the front crank pulley was loose, which had been causing the noise. Rather than tighten it up and put it back together, I "pulled the thread that unraveled the sweater," and sent the engine off to be rebuilt.
In the meantime, another friend had a '50 frontmount that had quit running. I asked if I could use it for a "few months" while I worked on mine, to which he agreed. A rewire and new battery and coil got it going, and I ended up using it for nearly four years doing my various work around the farm.
I asked my friend occasionally if he needed the tractor back, and he always replied, "nope, keep it as long as you need it." Well, early in 2008, he finally said he thought he could use it to move hay racks and such, so I knew I couldn't procrastinate any further. My tractor was disassembled, but had not made it past the "pile of rusty parts" stage. I did an assessment and got everything organized out in the shed, and that's when Operation 8N started (here's the first post from April 1, 2008).
Continued in the reply to this post (due to the new board's limit of 10 photos per post)…
