234-IA

I tend to agree with wild one above- previous owner put a Grammer air seat in our 5088 and in all honesty I'm glad I'm not the one who spent the money on it. It probably rides somewhat better but I've always felt there is something kind of awkward about it. For what air seats cost the original seat would have suited me just fine, even if I had to put money into it.

I believe those are for when you really want to load up the front end with a set of the smaller auxiliary weights

every square baler has its own "personality"- the knotter stack on our NH 273 isn't set up right at all, according to the book, but it ties pretty consistently for what little I do with it any more I think a lot of the time the knotter is getting blamed for inconsistent windrow or feeding the baler too hard or just having the tension one or two turns too tight- and twine isn't quite what it used to be either

I have an 826 and it's a sweet running tractor. I wouldn't be afraid to buy another one but I'd spend a lot of time talking to the previous owner/seller first- try to get a sense of how they maintain things, where they buy their diesel, do they have fuel problems in general. You never know- anything that old is a large repair bill waiting to happen- but in my neighborhood I can think of several other Germans that were used fairly hard over the years and never gave any pump trouble, probably because these guys were good at maintenance and bought premium diesel fuel

whenever I see a combine with a German diesel listed for sale I think about buying it just for the pump/engine. I try to use good fuel and keep the filters fresh but anything can happen and It's more likely I'd someday need the pump than most of the other stuff I have ratpacked away "just in case".

the new data center has some neat features- I like the idea you can enter in the current hours and thereby keep a relatively accurate running total- that's a drawback of reman, you start over. I've looked at a few "low hour" 86 tractors over the years, and the nice thing about the newer yellow number tachs is you know for sure the hours aren't "correct". A guy would definitely have to go get the OEM decal though, that one is kinda ugly

There's a lot of history in those shortline manufacturers. At one time, not that many years ago, darn near every cow in the neighborhood ate forage that had run through Gehl equipment

to think Mr Sheeder only has a 1420. Imagine what he'd have to say about a 1460😮

If the 234 had a shelling unit the photo could be captioned "Axial-Flow prototype with two production machines"

curiosity gets the better of me after a year

Bankruptcy would have been a nightmare to carry out- didn't the company have their debt spread out over a couple of hundred banks? Enough work to deal with one banker in decent times, let alone the early 1980s

Even the Hereford is interested in a 1456. This one seems pretty stripped down in general, what with single hydraulics and no tilt wheel or hyd seat. I suppose going with an aftermarket cab from the jump meant a considerable price savings too.

I'd leave the intercooler- it's one of those touches that honors the history of the tractor.

it would take a doorstop of a book to cover the entirety of IH. Authors tend to bite it off in manageable chunks. There might be a list already in this thread, but here's a few I can recommend "International Harvester: A Product History" by Baumheckel and Borghoff- one was a retired IH engineer, the other the son of an IH engineer Lee Klancher's Red Tractors books have a fair amount of IH history in them, as do Ken Updike's and Guy Fay's (whatever became of Guy, anyway?). Probably the Red Combines book does too, I haven't yet put up the $$ for that one

thanks. That's a photo which should have been in the book Lee Klancher put together

Danny- is your first picture of an actual IH prototype 5488/Magnum? I hadn't seen that one before

it came down to bad management and greed- not just the unions but the stockholders. I was just looking through the Lee Klancher "Red Tractors" book the other day and what precipitated Archie McCardell's firing was not being able to write the dividend check. I suspect a *lot* of the extended McCormick and maybe Deering families lived quite well off a company to which they contributed nothing. At least the union workers were *supposed* to be building things. Deere made one relatively easy choice- to concentrate on farm equipment- and the hard choices to cut back on the dividend, put the money into R and D and facilities, *and* deal with labor in a responsible yet fair fashion. Harvester didn't

660: you're probably thinking of brooks mc cormick. he graduated from yale with a degree in english, of all things. and though the history says he worked his way up through the company, i think the only reason he was there at all is because it was the family business. but for what it's worth, there isn't anything wrong with art institutes - just means brooks probably should have quit harvester much sooner than he did and spent his time looking at paintings and riding horses

as someone said upthread, Harvester had too many irons in the fire to keep 'em all hot. This wasn't helped by management's practice of being a soft touch not only for the unions, but the stockholders as well. As I understand it, Harvester management always believed in paying a big dividend, especially compared to Deere. So there wasn't as much money available for R & D as there should have been. For instance, it took Harvester 15 years in the 60s and 70s to get the Axial Flow combines right. During those same years, they kept warming over the 06 tractors, and getting by with them. Stands to reason the two things are related. I have the feeling it was also a company where the management was told (or only heard) what it wanted to hear, and not what was really happening.

R190: our old IH dealer said that they held their own against Deere until the Sound-gard cab came along. After that, it was more obviously Deere's game.