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Plans right now are to leave it as original as possible. This one is a 1972, we also have a one owner all original 1970 as well. It's no where near as nice as this one is though.

Then I had to give it a bath.

According to C. H. Wendel’s IH book, Anson, your dad’s tractors should be 1924 and should be serial nos. 700 or below. In Gary’s photo of the first Farmall, assuming they are talking production tractors, that’s the one that went to Taft, TX and should have an air stack with the flannel intake. Unless their meaning it to be a representative tractor. Wendel says they built 205 in 1924 by hand and the 1925 models should have the vortex. Doesn’t say anything about the exhaust stack? In the serial number list in the back of Wendel’s book, it says QC501-700 equals 1924, 701-1538 equals 1925. Anyway, you can see there are discrepencies in the numbers so who knows what happened. I also want to state I am just saying what is stated in C. H. Wendel’s IH book. I think you’ve got quite a prize in that photo of your dad and uncle in the IH brochure. A couple of years ago the Robstown John Deere dealer was in the neighbors field making a video brochure of a new Bush Hog 20' flail shredder when he saw our picker working next field and he thought he wanted a JD picker in the background; so he stopped in our field where my son and I were picking. We have a John Deere 6 row picker. So anyway, my picker and parts of my farmstead are on You Tube in the background in that video. They did a poor job shredding. We had to go over it again. I think they went too fast and didn’t cut low enough. Anyway, the Bush Hog is painted red. I don’t know if that counts or not. Anyway, type in Bush Hog BRC125 2 flail mower. You don’t have to sit through the whole video, just move your mouse down about ¾ of the way and the shredder will overtake my son driving the picker. Gary, I don't know about the steering. I've never seen that before either. But that lower bolster part looks like the lower part of what everyone calls the duckbill steering, which is pre-wormdrive steering. Both the F20 and F30 had that duckbill type first. I'm thinking the F30 power unit is taller than an F20 so that's the way they got it up a little higher. Notice the clutch pedal, rear wheel center - lug pattern and exhaust system, maybe other, is different than a production F30.

I was a mechanic at two IH dealerships in the mid-70's. I was involved in replacing differentials in the recall of the 66 series. We had to replace the differentials in the tractors sold from December thru February and that was 22 units. It was a small but busy dealership at that time. We never found a bad differential in all 22 changes. I got "A Corporate Tragedy" by inter-library loan and just finished it last night. Knowing the outcome helped when reading the book. A few things really stuck out. 1) Refrigeration was a great money maker for awhile. Once all the farm wives had an IH refrigerator and freezer, they no longer had a decent sales plan. How many refrigerators/freezers were sold to the farmer, who stopped for parts, and he took one home to the wife. Probably most. The book stated they would not die. Why replace something that works? IH had no marketing plan to sell to anyone other than farmers. When it no longer was profitable, they needed to get out of the business or come up with a sales plan to get into urban America's homes. I still have an IH refrigerator that works great. It won't die! 2) Labor abused IH. They used strikes and held IH hostage many times until they got what they wanted. JD and Cat had less labor costs. IH done a survey every other year and they were paying $300 million too much in labor. They never done anything about it other than do another study 2 years later. The big strike was a killer to IH and was part of the cause of their demise. But corporate allowed it to go on unsettle for to long. It was not the main cause but a part of IH's demise. 3) IH lagged behind in technology. The 1939 Farmall M was basically the transmission/differential for everything up thru the 1963 560. Then the differential issues the 560's had proved they had exceeded the amount of power the rear end could hold. They should have been planning a new tractor every 10 years at least. Times were changing fast and IH just changed everything above the cast iron. IH needed an alternative better than the Power Shift. The farmer wanted better and JD offered it. 4) The economy going in the tank did not help the company. Interest rates were off the scale and no one was buying anything unless they had cash and most wanted to hold onto that until the economy came around. Archie and corporate failed to take that into account. 5) Corporate never listened to their dealers during the down turn. Dealers knew what was happening, why it was happening and could tell corporate their wants and needs. But Archie never listed. He was told many times and believed that production would save the company. By the time he realized this, it was to late. 6) Construction should have been sold off years earlier. It was a cash cow that ate buckets of money and never really brought in a decent profit. They wanted to outdo Cat and that was hard to do. No one in corporate could see this. This was a bad business choice that went on for years. 7) Corporate was to old school. They rode on their status of being #1 in AG. When they were knocked down to #2, they needed to research why and figure out what the farmer wanted and needed to get that customer back. They just went, "Oh Well" and was satisfied with #2. The company lacked firm direction for years. After the strike, it was Archie jumping back and forth. Good people quit due to indecision. Some also needed to go. The Good of IH. 1) They had the best engine in the DT466 family. There was talk of selling the engine to outside companies but never did. It would have made them money. The 6.9 contact with Ford was a great money maker and brought IH's name up a lot as the diesel that powered Ford trucks. 2) The hydrostat was a great tractor for users of a lot of PTO. It had it's purpose and place and was a great asset to IH. 3) The TA was a great advantage to IH. It was the first shift on the go and under load transmission of it's time. It should have been replaced with something better by year 10. That new tractor would have then went head to head with the JD 4010. 3) Trucks were the money maker as they were assembled mostly of other suppliers parts. That is why Navistar is still considered IH and was not sold to Tenneco. 4) The dealer and parts network was great. JD never had the ability to furnish what was needed by the farmer, so fast. 5) IH had great people that cared. Even corporate cared, all the way to the top. But good business decisions are also crucial, along with caring, to keep a company afloat. 6) Someone at the end of the book said that IH would be studied for years by Harvard and the other big business schools. Hopefully IH's demise will help other companies avoid the issues IH had. The demise of IH ultimately falls on corporate. They OK'd who was in charge and what was done within the company. Everyone under corporate needed approval to change things. So if changes were made, or were not, corporate controlled it. "The Buck Stopped at the Top". There were labor and economic conditions that effected IH. Most of these issues were not addressed, or in the wrong way, and had life long negative impacts on many peoples lives. I am not knocking anyone or anything. These are just my observations about the information found in the book. I certainly wish that corporate would have pulled off the recovery. Then IH would still be a US company and probably still out of Chicago. A part of our country died with IH and I wish it had not. May this corporate tragedy never happen again.