766 Man

God bless the cats we have outdoors. I can leave spilled grain on the ground for months without a rodent touching it. Don't even see skunks or snakes around anymore looking for mice.

I'd check the paddles for wear. They may not be true from side to side anymore. Gap needs to be that a dime passes but a nickel will catch.

The IH dealer in Geneva, NY had a 766 with FH that he had for his farm. It sold at a consignment sale several years back for 6,000 dollars. I wish that I had the money to have bought it as it was well cared for.

This brings me to a question I have had for a while now. On the 1970's TV series Black Sheep Squadron they showed the mechanics handling drums of 80 weight oil. Did the Corsairs use 80 weight oil or was that something that was just marked on the drum at random?

The mechanics told us that the bearing tolerances in the newer vehicles are too tight for 15W40 so we use 0W20 or 5W20 depending on the vehicle in question.

I do the same thing including the X500 garden tractor. Been doing it for quite a long time now starting with the original 50 plus oil over 30 years ago. Nothing has blown up or flown apart because of it.

A Super MTA went for 5250 dollars yesterday at auction. It had the rollers placed on the wheels to smooth out pastures and hay fields. Those rollers used to be fairly common but I can't help but think some of the 5250 dollars was for the rollers in the eyes of the bidders.

Ironically, the area economy peaked during the 1970's. Then like somebody clicked on a switch a series of events happened that drastically cut the number of jobs. People were always leaving but for high quality jobs but by the 1980's people were leaving to simply find 40 hours of work per week. Any work. Any job. Mom would get on me about having something while in between semesters but the answer from prospective employers was always no and a number of times was told I did not need a given job as someone who was heading a family complete with kids needed it worse. My biggest problem was that I lacked connections that others had to get in. Things at that point were not so bad in Rochester, NY but having no connections meant no job. Even my mother-in-law conceded that years after the fact. Crime was not so bad but I think most people thought we had very little worth stealing. I should not fret so much about the 1980's but it always had the feel of a lost decade. One that I could have ill afforded to lose.

JD 20 series Synchro Range outsold Power Shift 2 : 1 around here. A lot of guys were not willing to spend the extra several hundred dollars to have PS. 30-40 series JD Quad Range was heavily preferred. Very few TA delete IH tractors around. Regardless of the brand nearly everybody wanted a ready shift to go through a tough spot in a field. And every brand had devotees who could break an anvil with a rubber mallet. So all the shops were busy fixing TA's, Hi-Lo's, over-under's, Power Directors, Dual Powers, and down the line. The simple logic is if you shift it there will be wear even if the wear is miniscule per shift. Find one gear that works within reason for a job and a field and stay there other than the tough spots. Change gears ten times in a 2,000 ft round that wear adds up.

Demoralizing. Heartbreaking. Nightmarish.

Strange as when I called about a PTO shaft a couple of months ago they said no shipping and did not expect to go back. They did not have the shaft so I did not have to worry about it then. Maybe business had fallen off due to no shipping?

It was worse in some respects around here as we lost quite a number of non-farm employers. At one plant the company broke the union by 1985 so the jobs that remained were on pay scales less than half of original. By 1985 I was wondering if taking ag economics in college was a wise choice. Mom and dad a few times pondered out loud as to whether they wanted to keep going with the farm. As I said before their were some that were not affected by grain and milk prices but they had their own worries.

IH's poor financial condition following the 1979 strike greatly limited the money it had to offer financing. JD was selling far more tractors during the first half of the 1980's than IH but the numbers were far below those of the late 1970's. There were a number of 50 series JD's that got sold around here but certainly not on the par of the 40 series. This area in pockets had vegetable growers, orchards, and vineyards that were not bothered by the grain embargo or the government cutting subsidies on milk production. Out of the groups just mentioned some did also raise grain or milk cows but were more of a sideline than a main source of income. So they were not bothered as bad as a straight up grain or dairy farm. But the farm crisis did not resolve itself in short order. Everybody in agribusiness kept saying it would get better until late 1983. Then came closures of agribusinesses in mass. Farm Credit decided that they were not extending any more lifelines and cozy'd up to the lawyers and auctioneers. By 1985 corn was as low as 1.55 dollars per bushel on the CBOT so I don't know who was making gobs of cash. For most farmers it was all about survival. Yes, if you were at a point in your business cycle where you got your mortgage paid off by 1980 you could handle the down turn better. Even then some of those guys resorted to government programs designed to idle acreage for a few years to pay the taxes and buy for the household. Around here it took until the year 2000 for those dark clouds to fully lift. By the way look at serial number assignments for the JD 4240 versus the JD 4050 to get an idea as to how far tractors sales had fallen during the 1980's.

Lets see what happens with Powerball tonight. I would not mind having one but it sure is not in the budget at the moment.

Yes, but a lot more scarce here in NY than IN, IL, IA, and the rest of the Midwest. The only two I remember new were at F & W Equipment in Geneva, NY and that was only because F & W was on the route to and from SUNY Alfred for me. Other kids were riding with me including hot girls who had no interest in farm tractors. At the time doom was not readily in the air for IH at least from where I sat. Plenty of doom and gloom at home without going to look for it. Had I known IH was ready to be broken apart maybe I would have looked at a few other dealerships to create a memory. KG Richmond in Dansville, NY was not far away from school but then I would have had to make the time. Back to 5X88 tractors I did get around the state at least from Auburn to Buffalo over the past 40 years and simply did not see but a few of them whether they were sold new here or brought in from the MIdwest. I would guess that Batavia Farm Equipment sold a few being in big farm and vegetable country but then somebody deep in the Southern Tier in hill farm country probably never stocked or sold a single 5X88 tractor.