Route 4, Box 1043, Eufaula, Oklahoma 74432
I have been reading, with great interest, your issue of November
1988 in which there is a great deal of information on Henry
Ford’s Fordson tractors.
Many facts unknown to us have been revealed in the piece by Jack
Heald, such as, it had never been disclosed to us that such a
tractor as the MOM had been a predecessor of the real Fordson.
I grew up in Oklahoma’s wheat country, Garfield County. My
dad had an early Fordson, one of the first in Garfield County, and
I seem to recall that another man had owned it briefly.
Dad grew up in a blacksmith shop, the son of a Swedish immigrant
blacksmith. So, the addition offenders and canopy to the Fordson
came easily. Also the addition of a Taco flyball governor gave the
tractor enough additional power that a third plow was added to the
Oliver two-mold board plow that was recommended for the Fordson to
handle.
The governor was driven by a gear that replaced the timer rotor
on the front of the cam shaft, and the timer was then applied on
the top of the governor, with rotor turning as on the cam
position.
That Fordson did much work. The picture, enlarged from an old
Kodak snapshot, shows that the tractor is being driven with harness
lines, as a team would be driven: a pull on the left line to turn
left, a pull on the right line to turn right.
Also, Dad rigged a rope and pulley to release the clutch from
the binder seat, so that he did the entire driving job by himself
from the binder seat.
I do not know the year this was done, but it was in the 1920
decade. I was too young to go to the field, but my older brothers
did the shocking of the wheat behind this machine.
One thing I have not seen in any essay in GEM is the kerosene
pre-heater coil that had a place in the exhaust manifold. The small
gasoline tank for starting purposes is evident in many pictures of
old Fordsons. Kerosene was an efficient fuel in those days, but it
had to be preheated to vaporize for that use.
Perhaps in some future publication I will see the pre-heater
coil again. I can remember some of them lying around the shop or
junk pile while the Fordson was doing its work.