Tuesday Tractor

[Majorman]

1959 Fordson Power Major working with a 1932 Sunshine Stripper/Header in wheat in 2014. I parked up to take the picture. Great memories of a fun day driving the harvester with friends.
Tuesday Tractor

 

[woodbutcher]

Thanks for the puzzles. Sunshine must have been a large supplier of ag equipment over there.

Butch

 

[ADB-Ia]

So did the stripper/header just strip the wheat off the stalk instead of cutting the stalk below the heads? I've never seen that for small grain harvesters before.

 

[Bob Bancroft]

Yes. That's apparently the preferred method in Australia. I think the Baldwin brothers (Gleaner prior to AC) experimented with one here.

 

[Majorman]

Picture of the 'comb'. I had never seen one, but I was allowed to run this machine for a day with another friend. Very efficient method of harvesting, only the ears get threshed so there is little need for a complicated separating mechanism, just a shaker and a fan. Very little grain loss too.
Later versions had a knife below the stripper fingers to cut the straw for baling if it was needed.

When H. V. Mckay's Sunshine Company was taken over by Massey Harris, they replaced the fingers with a conventional kife and fingers but still only harvested the ears.

 

[ADB-Ia]

Interesting! Thanks.

 

[Athol Carr]

The early Sunshine header had a beater (fan) behind the comb stripping the heads off the stem. The later Sunshine header such as the self-propelled AutoHeader had a knife below the comb to cut the stem just below the head. Very little straw going though the machine simplifying the separation process.

 

[Matt in Oz]

Hi Woodbutcher

They were huge there is a whole suburb near Melbourne in Victoria, Australia named Sunshine where HV McKay had his works. They had housing for workers and other things makes interesting reading.

 

[larbear]

The harvestor attached to the Major in the first pic is it set to run at what? 766 rpm on the pto?