Ford of Britain

Ford Tractors: Holiday for Bill 1951 Ford Tractor Divison, Ford Motor Co.

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• published: 12 Feb 2015
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more at http://quickfound.net/links/agriculture_news_and_links.html 'Rural/urban improbable romance concocted to promote Ford tractors... ' Public domain film from the Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_N-Series_tractor The Ford N-Series tractors were a series of farm tractors produced by Ford Motor Company between 1939 and 1952, spanning the 9N, 2N, and 8N models. The 9N was the first American-made production-model tractor to incorporate Harry Ferguson's three-point hitch system, a design still used on most modern tractors today. It was released in October 1939. The 2N, introduced in 1942, was the 9N with some improved details. The 8N, which debuted in July 1947, was a largely new machine featuring more power and an improved transmission. It proved to be the most popular farm tractor of all time in North America... The first genuine Ford tractor, called the Fordson tractor (because a misleading Ford brand not related to Henry Ford was squatting on the Ford name at the time), was a tremendous success in North America and Europe from 1917 to 1928. Ford of the U.S. left the tractor business in 1928. Ford Ltd of Britain continued thrive with the Fordson from 1928 onward. Some British Fordsons were imported to the U.S. during the following decade. Henry Ford continued tractor R&D; in the U.S. after 1928. During the 1930s, experiments were made at Ford's Dearborn, Michigan and Richmond Plantation, Georgia facilities, creating prototypes of row-crop tricycle Fordsons, V8-powered tractors, one-wheel-drive tractors, and other ideas. But Henry Ford waited to reenter the market, planning to have the right new tractor at the right time to achieve a market-changing success. In Ireland, businessman Harry Ferguson had been developing and selling various improved hitches, implements, and tractors since the 1910s. His first tractors were adapted from Model T cars. In 1920 and 1921 he gave demonstrations at Cork and Dearborn of his hitches and implements as aftermarket attachments to Fordson tractors. The hitches were mechanical at the time. By 1926, he and a team of longtime colleagues (including Willie Sands and Archie Greer) had developed a good hydraulic three-point hitch. Ferguson put such hitches on Fordsons throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. In the mid-1930s, he had David Brown Ltd build Ferguson-brand tractors with his hitches and implements. In 1938, Eber Sherman, importer of Fordsons from England to the US and a friend of both Ford and Ferguson, arranged to have Ferguson demonstrate his tractor for Henry Ford. In October 1938 the Ferguson tractor was put through a demonstration before Ford and his engineers. It was light in weight relative to its power, which impressed Ford. Ferguson's successful tractor demonstration led to a handshake agreement with Ford in 1938, whereby Ford would manufacture tractors using the Ferguson three-point hitch system. Ford Motor Company invested $12 million in tooling to finance Ferguson's new distribution company. The investment resulted in the production of the 9N tractor which was introduced on June 29, 1939. It was officially called a "Ford tractor with the Ferguson system", although the name Ford-Ferguson was widely used. It sold for $585 including rubber tires, power take-off, Ferguson hydraulics, an electric starter, generator, and battery; lights were optional... The 9N weighed 2340 pounds and had 13 drawbar horsepower, which could pull a two-bottom plow. It was designed to be safe, quiet and easy to operate... Approximately 750,000 9Ns were built, and it was estimated in 2001 that nearly half of these were still in regular use... Official production of the 8N tractor began in July 1947. Equipped with a 4-speed transmission, this model was destined to become the top-selling individual tractor of all time in North America. The most noticeable differences between the 8N and its predecessors was the inclusion of a 4-speed transmission instead of a 3-speed in the 9N and 2N, and an increase in both PTO and drawbar horsepower. The other big change on the 8N was the addition of a 'Position-control' setting for the hydraulics... The 8N was equipped with running boards and was painted lighter gray on the sheetmetal and red on the body. It was the first Ford tractor to feature a clutch on the left side and independent brakes on the right. The wide-spaced front wheel design of the 9N and 2N was retained. In 1950 the 8N design changed to feature a side-mounted distributor, as well a Proofmeter (combined speedometer, tachometer, hour meter) located on the lower right portion of the dash...