Cotton Pickers

[rustcollector]

For those who were looking for a picture of a cotton picker here is one found on Amazon a few weeks back. Those are M12H being assembled for delivery about 1948-1952 at a dealership somewhere???

 

[David Inman]

Very nice picture. Thank you.

 

[Jim Becker]

They have "McCormick-Deering" plastered all over them, so no later than 1949. I suppose they might have not reached the field until some early 1950 shipments.

 

[Wardner]

Perhaps one of those mechanics is Howard H working in his first job description. Sure does look like alot of work. Hard to imagine that some of those tractors were changed out after each picking season was over.

It is interesting that left/right position of the brake and clutch pedals was retained. Surprised to see what appears to be a chain-drive drop box on the right tractor. I thought the high drum cotton pickers used gear-drive boxes.

OTOH, when I was out in Bakersfield, CA, the cotton farmer, who I got the CP PTO from, had several pallets outside with chain-drive boxes on them. I would have bought a pair but we couldn't find the axle housings.

 

[cumminspuller]

Great pic. Thanks for posting. I bought a Deere book last weekend that had a couple of pics of the #22 Deere self propelled in it. I wish I had some storage space I'd like to have one or two.

 

[rustcollector]

Wardner,

The drop housings are gear drives. The chain drive housing on an MV is a thicker housing on the top. I have never checked the parts books enough to see if the axle housings are the same or different, but suspect that they are the same.

The brake pedals are connected directly with long rods with yokes on each end and an eyelet brazed onto the tractor pedals to give same amount of motion. The clutch pedal has a rod down to a shaft that runs across the frame on top of the transmission and a short lever then connected with a rod to the clutch pedal. Fairly simple and maintained engineering fundamentals even for that day.

 

[Wardner]

rustcollector,

The axle housings are different.

The gear-drive drop boxes have a slight hourglass shape. The boxes in the picture don't appear to have that shape.

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[Harold H]

Nope Wardner, that is not me, but as you say, "Been there done that". The drop boxes pictured are definitely bull gears. The chain drive castings were thicker. The one row pickers arrived at the dealers with all of the components in wood crates. Only the headers were already completely assembled except for some shields. We assembled all of the frame pieces and the basket pieces, prepared the tractor, then mounted the picker on the tractor. The one row picker could be ordered from the factory complete on a new tractor but most all were sold alone to be mounted on a new tractor at the dealership or on a tractor the customer already owned. When the two row self propelled came out they came completely assembled from the factory except for some minor shields.

Harold H

 

[Harold H]

You can see that the header pictured is still strapped to the wooden skid pallet on which it was shipped. It has already been attached to the lift arms. The two doors and two plant lift shields are laid out near their locations probably to be the next parts mounted. The pipes are laid out but I don't see the fan which will be mounted before the pipes are mounted. A large shield will be mounted in front of the exposed drive wheel. Then this picker will basicly be finished.

Harold H

 

[Loren in WI]

does anyone know how many of the high drum tractors they made? I have a super m high drum picker tractor and was wondering if anyone has some production numbers on the tractors or even the pickers?

 

[rustcollector]

Loren,

I have a spreadsheet of numbers of pickers by picker models from beginning to 1976 compiled from IH Archives engineering and production reports. This would give some insight, but nowhere near the correct number of a particular tractor model for that picker. Reason being that many of the pickers were installed on tractors already on the farm and perhaps a few bought from area dealers and modified for the cotton picker. Picker models fit several different tractor models. Email if you want to see a copy of the spreadsheet.