2M Mounted Picker Wheel Skirts

[redneckchevy9]

Some of you have seen these pictures I posted on a couple Facebook groups a few days, but for those who haven't, here they are.

I was delivering to a farm and I noticed by all their shop decor and the 1568 sitting in the corner, that they were big  IH guys.  Naturally conversation was struck up about red stuff and he tells me he wants to show me something down in the old hog shed.  Says he has never seen or heard what exactly these "fenders" are.  He tells me he traded them for labor several years back.  The guy he got them from thought they were off a 234 picker.

I knew just the guy to get a hold of and in 5min. they were identified.  By most accounts, pretty hard to find and rarely seen in person.

[redneckchevy9]

So I guess I'm wondering how many of you guys have a pair, seen them, or are like me and never knew they existed?

[Randy Sohn]

2 hours ago, redneckchevy9 said:

234 picker.

Try'na recall here something?  IIRC, we had a 2M picker on our M.  Seems to me that we once had a single row picker on our F-20 before that, galvanized finish instead of paint?

best, randy

[iowaboy1965]

Never seen that style have a 2mh in shed with fenders but they are a bit different.

[redneckchevy9]

51 minutes ago, iowaboy1965 said:

Never seen that style have a 2mh in shed with fenders but they are a bit different.

Do you know if they were truly experimental or just an option for farmers to purchase with the picker?

[iowaboy1965]

The ones i have are an option a i believe. You could also bolt a wooden deflector on sides(looks like a long curved broom handle only much thicker iirc) instead of fenders. Have one or 2 of those i picked up at an auction also.

[iowaboy1965]

Went to take a picture of them but picker and parts is surrounded by other stuff.

[Dan Robinson]

They were a factory option seldom seen. 

1st pic. 1952 2M & 2ME parts book 

2nd pic. 1947 2M owners manual.

3rd pic. 1939 2M owners manual.

[Dan Robinson]

10 hours ago, Randy Sohn said:

Try'na recall here something?  IIRC, we had a 2M picker on our M.  Seems to me that we once had a single row picker on our F-20 before that, galvanized finish instead of paint?

best, randy

IH pickers were galvanized up until. 1939. After that they were painted red. 1M and 2M pickers were galvanized 48 and 39 only. Hard to find those now.

[Randy Sohn]

44 minutes ago, Dan Robinson said:

H pickers were galvanized up until. 1939. After that they were painted red. 1M and 2M pickers were galvanized 48 and 39 only. Hard to find those now.

Ah-so, copy-copy and thanks, sure can remember it that way.  IIRC, sure was a l-o-n-g process to mount the picker(s)!

best, randy

[DR.EVIL]

11 hours ago, Randy Sohn said:

  IIRC, sure was a l-o-n-g process to mount the picker(s)!

best, randy

Most DEFINITELY!  Especially when your picker tractor was your loader tractor the other 9-10 months of the year.  And no such thing as a quick-tach loader until the 1960's.

Dad kept the 2M-E on a big wooden sled,  could push/pull it into and out of it's stall of the machine shed and park it right next to the shop where all the tools were to replace things like husking rolls, snapping rolls, or gathering chains. Once all the repairs & maintenance was done,  drop the Casswell loader and then later the Stan-Hoist off, service the M, and hang the picker on it. About 1967 a dedicated '48 M was put under the picker and stayed on till I took it off fall of '72. No fast 4th, no power steering, no big sleeves and pistons, and with our big new 200 bushel Oliver/Electric Wheel wagon some of our steeper hills were a challenge to get up.

I never got to run the mounted picker.  Would like to run one a half a day, maybe all day.  The easy hook-up to a pull type picker, hitch pin, PTO, and one or two hyd hoses would have been my preference,  picking end rows and setting out lands would have been harder, but not impossible.  Back then we had livestock to turn into the picked fields to clean up any dropped ears and excess shelled corn from the snapping rolls.

I watch all the Half Century videos,  but they aren't as much fun as I thought my jobs were when picking corn.

[Randy Sohn]

37 minutes ago, DOCTOR EVIL said:

Most DEFINITELY!

Chuckle, IIRC those bigger bore sleeves and pistons were M&H Co.?  And dunno 'bout no fast 4th, all we had were 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5th (road gear).  Sure were buried in the middle of those  mounted pickers, been hard to get out'a there if a husk fire oe something!  BUT IT SURE BEAT PICKING CORN BY HAND (can still recall the "bang-bang-bang" as the picked/shucked ears hit the bangboard.  Big deal back then was to be all done picking the crop by noon Thanksgiving Day.

best, randy

[DR.EVIL]

The '51 M I have in the shop here was original picker & loader tractor. About 1968 or '69 It got the Tractor Supply Fast 4th kit, included faster 2nd & 3rd,  same speeds as a Super M.  The '48 M under the picker had the stock speeds. '51 M has M&W Add P'wer sleeves and pistons. Sleeves were some special type of centrifugal cast iron,  probably made over in Cambridge, Wisconsin. And the wrist pin holes are off center in the pistons, gives them a straighter push on the crankshaft at the start of the power stroke when cylinder pressure is greatest.

Dad did catch the '51 M on fire one fall. Was about 50-60 rows west of the deep drilled well in the very center of the farm, big poured in place concrete water tank,  held around 1000 gallon of water when full, and of course only had a couple inches of water in it when the tractor was on fire, and no buckets or the like to bail water out of the tank. Some husks and leaves hung up on the battery box under the gas tank. The M&W Super Snoot was on, and side shields,  something must have got too close to the exh manifold and started the trash around the battery on fire. Good thing Dad had the steel sediment bowl on, the glass ones broke in a fire and the tractor, picker, maybe the wagon and most of the field would be lost. Dad kept picking to the end of the field and the burning trash started falling off the clutch housing on the way to the water tank. As the years progressed, everything under the gas tank was removed, belt pulley and gearbox, battery box, only the starter and the M&W live hyd. 2-way valve clear up by the bell housing left under the gas tank. The battery box seat base like a Super M would have was excess and obsolete inventory that Farmall couldn't sell to IH Broadview Parts depot so a local excess and obsolete company bought a bunch of them, and I bought 2 in 1981,one for my SH and Dad put the other on the M.

Dad picked corn by hand some before he went into the Army. Think he probably picked some by hand for his brother when he got home too. The 2M-E was brand new fall of '52. Other than a few ears for the hogs I never picked corn by hand. I have shelled corn by hand enough I had blisters on all 10 fingers and thumbs.

[234-IA]

first picker I ran was a 2-MH on an M, on a very nice day in early November 1980.  I was a scrawny 13 year old who could hardly see over the side elevators working in the big creek bottom with the longest rows and by the end of the day I was filthy and itchy.    By the fall of '81 Dad had upgraded to a NI 305 mounted on a 706 and for the next few years the picker went back and forth from the M to the 706 depending on how much corn Dad intended to shell.  The years the picker was on the M Dad usually had a neighbor come over and combine.  Even though the M had M&W pistons Dad just didn't think it was enough tractor to be running the sheller

In those days we didn't have a drying bin, only cribs, and while I ran the picker/sheller Dad would pull loads into the co-op behind the '74 Chevy K20 4x4 to sell and/or grain bank  for feed.   1982 was a terrible year, wet and late start like this one , cold all the way through and the corn was sopping wet in the fall.   We kept going til it snowed, and then some,  all I remember was being cold out there in the  damp dark after school.  Finally we had to quit, and finish up in the spring which went a lot better.   The spring-picked corn might have been the only corn dad made any money on that year.    Sometime in the late 80s I began to realize not only was a mounted picker something that made you dirty and itchy,  it was *loud* and I started wearing hearing protectors.   Never got into a dust mask, even though after a good run through a lot of dry corn you'd hack up black  goo for quite a while

in 1989 I started working back and forth with a neighbor who had a IH 234 he was running on an 806 LP with a straight pipe.   To this day that is the loudest tractor I have ever been around (the neighbor's Oliver with a Detroit doesn't count).  Neighbors have said they could hear it from miles away.   That tractor ran hot and on the warmer days we'd have to give it some down time  to cool off- the heat came at you in waves and now  part of me wonders why the darn thing didn't explode.  But the strange fact is over all those years we never had a fire on any of the various picker setups.   We did have the fire extinguishers fall off and go off now and again Mom remembers taking them in to be recharged, and having to disappoint the fire department because she had no dramatic story of saving the picker

the 234 did a *beautiful* job of picking  corn-  the ears went into the wagon perfect, not half-shelled at the butt.  It was so sweet to mount compared to the New Idea that when the guy who owned it sold out we bought it and for the next 15 or so years ran it on our 706. I still think of that set up as my first Axial-Flow.   One year a sinkhole opened up  under the picker right as Dad went over it. There was only six inches or so of dirt holding up the plants.  Luckily it wasn't a big one- the subframe caught the weight and we were able to pull it out without damage.   Another fall, one damp morning when the stalks were wrapping on the snapping rolls just a bit, for some reason (he had quite a respect for machinery usually)  Dad reached in too far and lost a couple of fingers.   All he said on the way into town and the ER was,  "it happened so fast".   He found it embarrassing, and when I look at photos of him from later year he often hides that hand.  The D282 could handle 170 bu loads of shelled corn but the 250s were a bit much in our rolling ground. After we bought the G combine  the 234 just did ear corn, which really helped extend the life of the 706's head gaskets

 

2008 was the last year we ran a mounted picker.  By this time my dad had died, I'd bought a 1440 combine, and started working back and forth with a different neighbor.   He ran the picker a couple of days and I kind of felt sorry for him out in all that dust and crud.   He isn't any kind of complainer and just said it gave him an appreciation of what it was like for his dad, who had done a lot of picking in *his* day.   For various reasons, among them being the fact the 706 was basically shot,  I went out and bought a NI pull picker.    Maybe the 1440 just got me too used to being in a decent cab

[Randy Sohn]

7 hours ago, DOCTOR EVIL said:

'51 M has M&W Add P'wer sleeves

Yup, gotta correct what I'd said about a M&H kit, you're correct, now that I look at it, they were M&Ws.  

Ours was a 51 M, stock except we did have a "wide-front end" for it, not on it all the time, only as needed.

best, randy

[redneckchevy9]

I would think that mud would get packed inside those shields 

[iowaboy1965]

I suppose it could. But if its that muddy it probably will get packed between wheel and picker regaurdless. The ones on 2mh hang on 2 pegs. Lift straight up and off. 

Dad talked about getting 4020 and mounted new idea picker stuck on bottom ground one wet year. Had to have a guy we knew come with cables and string them to a tractor on dry ground and tie them thru wheels on picker tractor and put it in gear and let it crawl out wraping the cable around the axle.

[oldscoutdiesel]

 We ran a 2ME and a 2MH  over the years. Used an M, 400 on the 2ME and 560 on the 2MH.  Traded labor and shared machinery with Dad's cousin one year and put the picker on his 560D.  The tractor had a valve stuck in the hydraulic system somewhere in the pump area and the platform got hot enough to scorch the paint on it.  It would generate so much heat that you couldn't stand very long on the platform while picking but what you would sit down and put your feet up on the seat support just to cool the shoes a little.  Even when the cold snowy days came the platform was still too warm to stand on on it very long.  And yes, Dad did have a set of those fenders that got hung on both pickers.  It almost seemed that his last picker was a 2MHD but I may be mistaken.  Someone else here would know better if that was a correct model. 

[DR.EVIL]

I forget what year it was, early 1960's neighbor set his Heat- Houser, Weather-Brake, whatever you want to call it on the picker tractor to keep warm.  

We had 80 to 100 acres the pick at home,  there were a couple years Dad and the neighbor farmed another 160 together, then the one 80 got sold off and we farmed the 80 together.  That 80 had a small crib and the driveway to the barn was cribbed up to hold 10,000 bushel of ear corn. Dad and neighbor plumbed their picker tractors to raise the wagons and unload without unlocking,  actually saved them time. Typically picked 80 acres in two days with 2 pickers.  And then until 1963 Dad had to pick Grampa's corn in return for the help,  about another 80 to 100 acres but small round corn cribs,  had to move the elevator and drive-over Stan-Hoist wagon hoist every day. Most years we got done picking just in time to take the picker off on my Christmas vacation and get the loader back on the M to clear snow from the yard.