In an unrelated topic, my Farmall 300 is a 1955 or 56 model, those are the only 2 years they made the 300. I wanted a Ford 8N, made in the early 50's they are about 25 HP and had a live power take off, the 1st live power take off that Ford made. They were $2000 to $2500 back 20 years ago. I looked and looked for one but didn't find one that I like for a price that I also liked. A friend had this Farmall 300 utility [ The Utility means that it has a wide front end ] My property is very steep in the back and I needed the wide front end. The property next to mine is a farm that was owned by a fellow that farmed it all of his life. He was on the same steep hill as I am on. He was bringing in a baler with a load of hay behind it, like he had done many times with his narrow front end Farmall. The grass was wet and he started to slide and the tractor turned over and killed him. I am very afraid of my hill . The 300 utility was in good shape, not too many hours on it and it had a front end loader for $2700. The 300 is about 39 or 40 hp so it is much stronger than the ford 8N and it has a live power take off. There was a 2 bottom plow and a set of spring tooth Harrows that came with it. I told my friend that I didn't want the plow or the harrows and he said, you don't understand, they came with it when I bought it, they go with it when I sell it. So I had to take them. They made very nice lawn orniments up in my field for many years. I gave the harrows to my neighbor and traded a pair of metal wheels to another friend for the plow. The 300 had a 6 volt positive ground electrical system with a gravity flow gas system that you have to shut off when the tractor is not in use or the gas drains out a drop at a time. I had cracked the main arm of the loader trying to push out some trees, it is a manure bucket and not realy made for digging, Oh Well. I also broke off a weld on a hydralic line, turns out I am Hell on equipment. So it sat in the garage for several years. It got to the place where it would not turn over and I thought the main switch was bad. I have a good friend in the electric car club named Rubin , he is a Black man, and he offered to help me get it started. It turns out that Rubin knew how to hot wire a veh, I guess in the neighborhood where he grew up one learned such things. He and I worked on it one afternoon and got it started, and he didn't have to hot wire it. I had asked a very good welder to fix the main arm on the bucket for me and he came out and looked at it. No problem he said, I can fix that like new but I can't come until next week. I stopped back 2 weeks later, he said no problem I will be out next week. This went on for about a year. I found a guy about a mile away that said he could weld it for me if I could drive it to his shop. There was only a very small strip of metal holding the arm on I used large wood clamps to clamp a 4 X 4 to the arm and drove it down the road to his garage, He did a great job fixing the arm and the hydrolic line. But the generator was now bad. I checked the price of getting it repaired and felt now might be a good time to convert the tractor to 12 volt. It turns over sooooooooooooooooo much better now and starts right up. I am very pleased with the way it worked out. I do not have power stearing and when I get into tight spots with it on my steep hill in the back I use the bucket to lift up the front wheels, turn them the way I want to go and pull out. It works Great. The hydrolic fast hitch that Farmall designed to meet Fords 3 point hitch turned out to be not so good. There really isn't a float position on the hitch, so where ever you put your impliment, there it stays. I do what most farmers did in the 50's I use the draw bar instead. The claim to fame of the hydrolic fast hitch was that you could lift a 55 gal barrel with it. Everyone I know that ever owned one of these tractors said that, and I don't know of one who ever lifted a barrel with it. All in all it is a wonderful tractor, but like I said, that operator aint worth a shit.
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