3931 SE 80th Street Ocala, Florida 34480
I was born at grandfather J. T. place at the intersection of
Millionaire Road and Starvation Alley. The farms on Starvation
Alley were not known to be the most productive, but on Millionaire
Road several of the farms had oil and gas wells. This made the
farming more lucrative.
However, not long after I was born, Dad and Mom took me home to
the farm on Sand Ridge. I grew up and lived there until I was
twenty years old. Then I began to travel the world in my
Uncle’s Navy. My Uncle thought I looked like an electrician, so
I was one for four years.
But, in ’46 I came back to the farm. You have heard, of
course, that you can take the boy out of the farm, but you
can’t take the farm out of the boy. Stirring the soil gets in
the blood.
Well, I tried to do custom work and to farm also. I made a
living but not much money. My Uncle Paul said that the clay land
that I was farming did have one good point. He said that when I was
through plowing at the end of the day, if it looked like rain I
could just hook on the end of the furrows and drag them into the
barn, because they had not broken all day. .
As I explained in a previous article about descendants of the
‘Doodle Bug,’ I sold the farm in Ohio and moved to South
Florida. There I began to design and build equipment for
agriculture and light industry. Among other things, during the
’60s and 70s I built several different types of trenching
machines. See, I’m back to stirring the soil again.
In the area where we had moved to in 1977, they were installing
sewer systems in the towns and subdivisions near us. What I saw
here was an opportunity to make some extra money, if I only had a
trencher.
As I mulled this over, (my wife claims she can see the wheels
turning in my head) I decided to build a tractor that would have a
trencher attachment, but would do other jobs too. The photos here
show the results of my labor.
The tractor was originally powered by a 20 HP Onan. This did not
give me the power I wanted at the attachments, so I opted for a
larger engine and wound up using a four cylinder Jeep engine. When
does an engine become an antique? My engine is from a 1947 CJ2A
Jeep. It is rated at 32 HP at 2000 RPM. That old flat head four
cylinder really purrs through the Cherry Bomb muffler. It has been
a very satisfactory power plant.
The engine drives three hydraulic pumps. At the front of the
engine there is a double U-joint drive to a Vickers variable
displacement pump. This pump is plumbed to a Char-Lynn 4000 series
motor. This gives a true hydrostatic transmission. The Char-Lynn
drives into the differential of a Spicer-Dana axle. Without any
other gearing this gives me zero to six miles per hour in either
direction. It also gives plenty of torque. If you run up against an
immovable object the rear wheels just dig holes. By the way, the
rear axle has a limited slip differential.
At the rear of the engine is a gear pump driven through a flex
coupling. This pump is rated at 20 gallons per minute at 2000 RPM.
The output of this pump is plumbed to quick couplers at both the
front and rear of the tractor, to power the attachments. Also at
the rear of the engine is a belt drive to a Vickers power steering
pump. This pump supplies the power steering, the three-point lift,
the dozer blade lift, and the boom control on the trencher.
Let me digress here and tell about the power steering unit. For
several years I have used a power steering unit that has been very
satisfactory and relatively inexpensive. On the older models of the
big Buick cars, GM used a Saginaw power steering unit. This unit
does not use a hydraulic cylinder. The whole mechanism is built
into the gear box. It requires just two hydraulic hoses from the
pump to the gear box. If the pitman arm doesn’t point in the
direction I need, I just cut it off its tapered hub and weld it
back on to suit me. At the salvage yards, where I trade, they call
this the three bolt model. (There was also a two bolt).
This Saginaw unit is easy to mount, easy to plumb, and can be
powered by most any power steering pump. I’ve used this setup
on several different pieces of equipment, including some older
model farm tractors that did not originally have power
steering.
This tractor is one of three that I have built with the engine
at the rear over the drive wheels. This design has an advantage
over a front mounted engine on small utility tractors, in that it
uses the bulk of the tractor’s weight to increase traction.
Think back to the Allis-Chalmers Model ‘G.’
At one time this design presented the problem of where to put
the radiator, as the cooling fan had to be, more or less, in front
of the engine. Nowadays though, with the electric driven fans the
radiator can be mounted most any where it’s convenient. As you
can see in the photos, my radiator is mounted up over the engine.
This helps keep it clean since it is above most of the trash and
dirt. There are also two hydraulic oil coolers.
There are two separate hydraulic oil reservoirs, one over each
rear wheel. They also serve as fenders. The fuel tank is forward of
the rear wheel on the right hand side. The box on the left hand
side is the battery and tool box.
The tractor has a standard three point lift on the rear. On the
front is a special lift that handles the dozer blade and the lawn
mower. Pulling two inch pins lets me change from one to the other
in just a couple of minutes.
The lawn mower takes a 4 foot cut. It is driven by a hydraulic
motor with an output of 17 HP The two twenty-eight inch blades
overlap one inch. A No. 50 roller chain drive keeps them timed.
This mower has probably mowed several hundred acres, as we used it
in custom mowing for four or five years. We mowed lots up to six
acres in size. Today we still mow three acres where we live. Under
decent conditions we can mow about 1 acres per hour.
The dozer blade can be angled to the right or left. A two inch
ball is mounted on top of the blade. This sure is handy for pushing
trailers around. It also serves as the hookup point for what we
call the ‘yard crane.’ The yard crane is mounted on an old
trailer axle. The 10 foot tongue is three inch pipe and the boom
poles are two inch pipe. The adjustable brace pole is 1 inch pipe
that telescopes into two inch pipe. We use
3/16 inch aircraft cable on the winch.
Maximum lift is bout 1500 pounds. This is one of the handiest and
simplest pieces of equipment you can have around the shop building.
It can be used with any tractor or pickup truck that has a two inch
trailer ball. A front mounted ball is by far the easiest to use.
Back when I didn’t know any better, I used to manhandle
anything that weighed up to 150 pounds or so. Today, if it weighs
any more than a battery, I wrap a chain around it and hoist it on
the yard crane.
The trencher attachment is powered by a 20 HP hydraulic motor
through a No. 80 roller chain drive to the head shaft. The digging
chain is a standard No. 120 roller chain with an attachment link
every 6th link. I fabricated the cutters from inch steel and bolted
them to the chain with four 5/16 grade five
bolts. By changing to different sizes of cutters we can trench six,
eight, ten, or twelve inch widths and up to 40 inches deep. I have
no idea how many thousands of feet of trench this chain has dug,
but it is still in good condition. We did one job of 7000 feet of
trench, 12 inches wide and 32 inches deep, that had tree roots in
almost every foot of the way.
I mentioned earlier that I had built several trenchers. One of
the things I have learned from experience is that a digging chain
that is hydraulically powered will last two or three times as long
as one with a straight mechanical drive. The hydraulic drive
cushions the shock load on the chain and cutters. If the cutters
hang on something solid, for instance, like a steel pipe, the
relief valve opens and stops the chain. This prevents tearing up
the cutters or throwing the chain. My unit will chew through roots
up to 1 inches in diameter.
With all this hydraulic power available, it was a simple matter
to come up with a log splitter. The splitter uses a hydraulic
cylinder with a three inch bore and a 20 inch stroke. The reason
beingit was a cylinder we already had. Anyway, it will handle about
98% of everything we have thrown at it.
This tractor has now been in regular use for 20 years. Very few
days go by that it isn’t used or something. If the pictures of
the tractor do not look like it’s been around for 20 years, it
is probably because, as I was preparing this story, I decided that
everything should have a new coat of paint.
A new 32 HP ‘Orange’ tractor with hydrostatic drive, but
no attachments will set you back about $15000.00. The total cash
outlay for my tractor was less than $2000.00. This was because
everything (except the steel, the hydraulic hoses, and a few other
parts), was salvage or surplus. Of course I don’t count my
labor, as this was a labor of love.
Now then, as I was writing this story I received confirmation
that we are to have a special section set aside at this year’s
‘Ageless Iron Expo’ for homemade, shop built tractors,
Doodle Bugs, etc.
The Expo is scheduled for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th of July, at
Ankeny, Iowa. This special display will be for anything from
shop-built yard tractors on up in size and shape. (Model size
equipment will have their own display area.) If it is
self-propelled and does some job or work, bring it. Maybe it’s
not a tractor. Maybe it’s a forklift or a sweep rake (buck
rake). I once saw a self-propelled manure spreader at a show. Maybe
it’s a radical modification of a farm tractor, like two
tractors built together. Even if it’s of Rube Goldberg design
we would like to have it in our section. Maybe all it does is make
folks ask, ‘What does it do?’
Since I have bugging the folks about having such a display, they
said, ‘Okay, you be in charge!’ You do not have to reserve
space, but I would appreciate it if you would give me a call at
(352) 368-5885, or drop me a line about what you can bring. I would
just love to have some idea of how many of you ‘home grown
engineers’ will participate.
As Tennessee Ernie Ford used to say, ‘the good Lord willing
and the creek don’t rise,’ I plan to show the tractor
described in this article. It won’t be bright and shiny like
the pictures, since I am using it nearly every day. Don’t worry
about having your display fancied up. If it works we want to see
it.
Hope to see all of you at Ankeny in July. Give me a holler. Be
careful, but have fun with your toys!
