Help dating McCormick O4

[CWAMuseum]

I am a volunteer at an agricultural museum given the task of cleaning up records dating back 45 years. Please have patience with me as I'm not a tractor expert. This tractor has a plate with model BH and serial number O 701. The closest I come to finding it is OBH701 on TractorData.com. Is this right? Is this tractor a 1940? I presume it is OS4 since it has no sheet metal covers over the tires. How do I know when to call it a McCormick-Deering and when just McCormick? The Jensales serial number reference book has O4 and OS4 under McCormick, with a separate section for McCormick-Deering. Yet in TractorData, if I've found the right place, it is listed as McCormick-Deering.

 

[rustred]

you have a 1940 O4 mccormick deering. it is actually the 200th one built. i would say someone has removed the rear tire shielding. mccormick deering was used in the forty's till 1950 i believe then it was just mccormick. it should have engine shields also.

 

[used red MN]

Not an expert, but I think that is the 201st McCormick standard “orchard version” built making it as you have indicated a 1940 model. If you look at tractordata in the McCormick section it shows a W4 which is the more common tractor for agriculture. The attached is a previous post discussing the use of both the “McCormick” and “McCormick Deering” names on a W6 which was just a larger model. It may be a bit muddied by the fact that the inquiry was being made by someone over seas and the consensus is that the labeling for tractors sent over there had variations compared to the US models.
Seeing photos of the pages in the Stiener book might be helpful.
McCormick or McCormick Deering thread
I think that tractor had the full orchard sheet metal on it at one point. See the bolt holes at 10 and noon positions on the panel behind the rear wheel. Also notice the brighter red patch in the paint, that indicates that this area was shaded from sun for some time indicating sheet metal was covering that area. Also there is a bracket sticking out at about the 8 o’clock position, another indicator.

 

[DanielW]

Too bad someone removed the orchard fenders and side shrouding - that's the coolest & most interesting part of the O's. It definitely had them at one point as RustRed says - you can see the lower brackets on the wheels and the hinge barrels along the hood where it would have had the engine shielding. And the holes on the hood were for the 'O' model with side-shrouding, to give more airflow once the side shrouds were in-place. Any chance it's a recent donation and you can find where it came from, and possibly ask if they have the missing sheet metal? It's a long shot, but it'd definitely make it a more unique/valuable tractor.

 

[Jim Becker]

To recap and add a bit: It is a 1940 McCormick-Deering O-4. It is missing the original extended sheet metal shielding. Had it been an OS-4 without the shielding, the serial number tag would have had an "S" in the serial number prefix. The missing sheet metal is very expensive to find/replace, which may be part of the reason it was donated in the first place. The serial numbers of this model were shared with the W-4 and OS-4. So, serial 701 would be APPROXIMATELY the 201st built of all those models combined. (Note that the first OS-4 wasn't built until late 1944.) The "Deering" name was dropped in about 1949.

 

[CWAMuseum]

I can't thank everyone enough that responded with the great information. I now know what to put on this tractor's sign. I am teachable, and every new tidbit of information helps me the next time. To answer DanielW's question, this is a 1987 donation so it's probable the person who donated it has passed as have all the museum people who were here at that time. There is no way to know for sure if it was donated with the sheet metal, but it likely was not.

I do have one more question about this one - why does the serial number plate have BH as model?

We have over 150 tractors, and over 30 crawlers, and several small garden tractors I haven't even begun to count. I've been able to figure out most of these, but there are some that puzzle me. I will be asking more questions.

 

[buickanddeere]

I am a volunteer at an agricultural museum given the task of cleaning up records dating back 45 years. Please have patience with me as I'm not a tractor expert. This tractor has a plate with model BH and serial number O 701. The closest I come to finding it is OBH701 on TractorData.com. Is this right? Is this tractor a 1940? I presume it is OS4 since it has no sheet metal covers over the tires. How do I know when to call it a McCormick-Deering and when just McCormick? The Jensales serial number reference book has O4 and OS4 under McCormick, with a separate section for McCormick-Deering. Yet in TractorData, if I've found the right place, it is listed as McCormick-Deering.

View attachment 130789View attachment 130790

Tips on how to obtain a Date .
Sorry , I could not resist .

 

[Absent Minded Farmer]

I can't thank everyone enough that responded with the great information. I now know what to put on this tractor's sign. I am teachable, and every new tidbit of information helps me the next time. To answer DanielW's question, this is a 1987 donation so it's probable the person who donated it has passed as have all the museum people who were here at that time. There is no way to know for sure if it was donated with the sheet metal, but it likely was not.

I do have one more question about this one - why does the serial number plate have BH as model?

We have over 150 tractors, and over 30 crawlers, and several small garden tractors I haven't even begun to count. I've been able to figure out most of these, but there are some that puzzle me. I will be asking more questions.

BH is the factory model designation. A Farmall H is FBH. The high clearance model was FBHV, with the "V" stamped on the tag. The O4 was usually tagged OBH, with the "O" stamped in place. There are always variants in the serial tags. Yours, for example, should have the O4 in the box on the left & OBH next to the serial number. Both "O's" were usually stamped on. A lack of suffix letters indicates it was a distillate powered tractor with no other internal modifications i.e. different fuels, pistons, gearing, etc. For example.... if yours was ordered gasoline only, it would have an X1 after the number on the tag.

The missing fenders is a common thing with those orchards. They get banged up, unsightly & hard to open..... then off they come & go onto the scrap pile. When I spent a couple years in far northern WA, I had found a few spots along the river, that had a cache of old vehicle & tractor fenders just laying in the rocks with the other scrap. The one spot had an old bus body from the '40s.

Mike

 

[CWAMuseum]

Absent Minded Farmer said: Yours, for example, should have the O4 in the box on the left & OBH next to the serial number.
My response - exactly! That is what confused me when trying to look at the TractorData serial number list. They were all OBH, and this tractor doesn't have that, perhaps because it is early in the production of the O4. That's when I reached out to this forum. One of our Farmall H's matches what you said and was easy to figure out as 1949. But now I know what the X1 at the end means. Thanks! The Farmall M has FBK, but to date it as 1944, I didn't have to know what the "k" meant. Likewise one of the Farmall C's, even though model is FC, I knew it was a "C" and is a 1948.