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Somewhereville, Earth | my ole man is a dairy farmer, runs 250 cows on 330 acres, milks on grass, 365 days a year (probably not common in USA, actually no longer common here in New Zealand either)
his main tractor is a McCormick MTX 125, that will do about 800-1000 hours a year, 90% of thaht is loader work
he depends on it to start and run each day, because its his only 4wd and half the farm is very steep (child hood memories consist of pushing a tractor to see how far we could climb, or riding a sliding tractor down a hill!).....
his second tractor for general farm duties is now a 1975 MF165 8spd with wet brakes, he just traded a 1972 12spd multipower dry brake version on it, some say the multipower is better, but its unsafe on hills, and not much cut on the howard rotovator, but we will miss it pulling the NH 286 square baler.........and the 3.5m trimax pasture topper at 15km/h!........
the MF he just traded runs at least 250hours a year, for the last 6 or 7 years, came to the farm as a wreck, it cost 3000NZ$ spent over 7000$ restoring it to a working machine, he even clear coated the paint work, which makes it shine when it was sold, truely worth the extra $ considering it spent its life in cow crap
spending the $ repairing it to get it running, basically, was a farm expense, and here in NZ tax was able to be claimed on it, all we did after the rebuild was put a alternator and power steer pump on it, orginally the MP pump, clutch and engine was rebuilt..........
i am a fan of old tractors done right on farms because of this machine, we did all the small square bale hay work, mowing, spreading, windrowing, baling (well actually a MF135 petrol sometimes helped windrowing)........it was too small for the round baler (not enuf hp when in hurry)................but great for small square work (its a 'big' contractors special baler we use)..........each year, the tractor paid for itself in revenue gathered, with no fuss, and low fuel consumption, it also had a good road speed for road work
i guess that was just a pitch for the old MF 165 huh, my father and grandfather also have a 135 diesel....NOT for farm duties, and a 188 (cosmetically restored.....dead duck underneith, but it has a loader)......and a MF285.........which was the farms main back up, but is owned by grandfather (and he don't like it covered in cow crap).........
steel fatigues, reliable machines adventually become unreliable, you got to wiegh up the value of the down time, and has workshop labour gets more expensive, you have to look at that also, my father has access to a cheap mechanic, and all MF parts are aftermarket, that is why he does what he does. .......he doesn't depend on the second tractor, but for some reason its always there ..........lol............i really want him to hunt round for a fiat 100-90 DT with loader or something, giving him a true 4wd animal which will do as a back up to the main tractor when that goes down, something with wieght, traction, and hyd flow to handle the feed wagon on the hills..........not a new tractor........depending on how you look at em, could be a old tractor
lol........i guess this post applies to the other thread too!
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OLD Tractors
