Comment by adamcharnock
3 hours ago
Up until a year ago I was regularly using a Massy Fergusson 135 [0] (Perkins Diesel version), made sometime in the 1970s. It was wonderful! So amazing to drive and use. Clunky and heavy, but you really really felt like you were using a machine. In low gears, if you put you foot down on the accelerator the engine would roar, and your speed would barely change!
And there was no fancy technology in it at all. If I was in the forest and had forgotten the key, I'd just reach behind the dashboard and hot-wire it. The air filter was basically a shisha-pipe that bubbled the incoming air through wire wool and engine oil.
Its fuel gauge didn't work either. You just had to take a look in the tank, or quickly react as soon as the revs started dropping. I ran it dry a few times and had to sit there with a spanner in one hand and YouTube into the other, while trying to bleed all the fuel lines. But they were all on the outside of the vehicle, which made it comparatively easy I imagine.
I've never actually driven a modern tractor, so don't know how it compares. I imagine the clutch is easier on the knees these days!
Anyway, this just felt like the place to share this.
My grandfather had one of these, though gas powered. It may have been the Ford model, cannot remember, though his was built I believe in the late 40s / early 50s. One story that still makes me laugh, he couldn't start it one day, and asked my grandmother to give him a pulling start w/ their ford diesel pickup. One look and my about 12 year old self just knew she wanted to be anywhere else but there (some foreshadowing, she had a reputation for a lead foot). Grandpa had already tied a rope from the tractor to the truck, and I believe he was in maybe one of the lower gears ready to pop the clutch after he got up to speed. Grandma tore (yes, tore) out of the yard shifting gears, and she was accelerating down their long driveway headed for the main road as Grandpa started frantically waving his hat trying to get her to stop. I'm pretty sure he never asked her again to help start the tractor. And yeah, the tractor was started, probably in the first 50 feet of that episode.
I learnt to drive on one of those. I'm a city kid but my grandfather was a wool farmer. Every school holiday we'd visit and I's spend my days literally puttering around the farm, which was pretty huge (~2000ha).
When I started out, 13ish or so, I had to stand on the clutch to get it down.
If you gave it enough beans and dropped the clutch it'll pop a wheelie! (Don't tell my grandpa)
Honestly, I still had to practically stand on the clutch with mine!
I'd teach someone to drive it and say, "now push down on the clutch". They they would heave and struggle, then eventually succeed and look victorious. I'd say, "well done, it is now half way down! But that's all you need for now!"
EDIT: To fully explain: It has a two-stage clutch. You half-press it and it disconnects the wheels from the engine. If you fully depress it all the way to the floor, it additionally disconnects the power-take-off shaft (PTO) from the engine. The PTO shaft is a spindle on the back of the tractor which drives things like your flail mower, wood chipper, etc.
EDIT 2: Edit 1 was for the general audience, not the parent commenter ;-)
> The PTO shaft is a spindle on the back of the tractor which drives things like your flail mower, wood chipper, etc.
... and kills/maims anyone with lose clothing trying to step over it!
He knew :)
My dad had one of these, to support his farming hobby. (He used to joke that we ate fifty dollar cucumbers, and a hundred-dollar ear of corn.)
It came in handy living in the country, when occasionally someone would get bogged down on a dirt road, and this thing would come to the rescue.
My grandpa was a high school principal to support his love of farming, not because he wasn't dedicated, but because they wanted to survive
I remember when I was young seeing a combine that had a radio and television in the cab. wow!
Now things have wrapped back around, and nobody would want that, they want less tech and to use their phone, lol.
Did yours have a foot feed for the accelerator? I've never seen one without a hand feed for the rpm's on the steering column.
The fancy ones had an accelerator pedal, but most just had the lever on the steering column.
Mine and a pedal and steering column lever, so I guess I got one of the fancy ones!
You'll likely appreciate this then: https://farmboymusic.bandcamp.com/track/we-couldnt-start-the...
I shamefully have some Facebook Marketplace notifications for some Massy tractors. I'd love one. I don't even have land to use them, I just think they are neat.
> The air filter was basically a shisha-pipe that bubbled the incoming air through wire wool and engine oil.
What is a shisha-pipe?
Basically a fancy bong.
Also known as hookah or just waterpipe.
> I imagine the clutch is easier on the knees these days! Modern tractors don't really have a clutch. I mean they sorta do, but it's electronic. Even on sizable consumer positioned tractors(I have a JD 5055, but it applies to almost all the JD models), there's just a lever for forward, N, and reverse. Gear shifters work MUCH MUCH better now.
When I was younger I absolutely HATED changing gear on the tractor - it was a matter of dropping the revs which caused a dive, then a clunk finding the gear, then a jolt as the gear took hold and the revs came back up
I never felt in control of that old beast
with a spanner in one hand and YouTube into the other
There are so many useful videos on this stuff, but unfortunately the majority of the population still seems reluctant to learn.
I'm not sure the majority of the population will ever need, or even want, to learn to bleed fuel lines, so I wouldn't consider it reluctance. And I would wager that the majority of the (internet) population does engage in learning activities on the regular.
I think this kind of thing is much more commonplace than you think.
Never underestimate a young person and their phone. They not only use youtube or chatgpt to solve daily problems, but date, pay bills, and communicate with their friends using mostly videos/photos/emojis (and occasionally english).
While I love wrenching on cars, I imagine a tractor like this would scratch a different itch—something more latent, leftover from childhood.
Do you still have the Massy?
I do, but a friend is taking care of the farm now. I moved back to the big city lights (Munich, as fate would have it).
I loved the MF 135 my neighbour had. It was great. The injector pump had failed and we'd swapped it with one off a marine version of the Perkins AD3, which had a reasonably "opened up" governor on it. Flat it out could do a whopping 20mph!
The smaller tractors now mostly use a hydrostatic transmission instead of a clutch[]. You just move a plate that changes the mechanical advantage of the engine powered hydraulic drive. It's basically another set of hydraulics but for driving the tractor.
[] https://youtu.be/TunlPGZ3UOg?t=69
> no fancy technology in it at all
It's amazing we can use huge machinery with internal combustion engines and declare it "no fancy technology"
Any technology from before the time of your grandparents, and often parents, is usually perceived to be "not fancy". Because then those elders can't tell you in your childhood what life was like before that technology. So in your lived experience that technology was always there. Reading history later on, doesn't change your emotional experiences.
Freeze LLM progress right here and the future is still totally inconcievable. Humans who have only ever known being able to talk to machines...
Any sufficiently mundane technology is indistinguishable from... furniture?
Nice one. Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
An internal combustion engine may be complex, but it's not fancy. I can see and touch and understand every part of it. I can maintain and modify and repair it. This is not true for fancy electronics and certainly not locked-down proprietary firmware.
The magic of an engine is less in how it operates, and more in how it was built. At least around the time they started showing up, manufacturing lots of precision metal parts was not trivial.
Although modern electronics take this further, with both operation and construction being utterly complex.
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We also don't call a hoe fancy technology, but it is.
I don't know about you, but my mother is definitely not technology
Yeah, I was introspecting as I wrote that!
Maybe it is fancy to you now, but with a few primitive hand tools and no docs at all, a HS graduate can take it apart and figure out how it works.
Try doing the same on the ECU in your car. I'll wait.
> HS graduate can take it apart and figure out how it works.
Sure you wouldn't like a qualifier on that? I've definitely met some HS graduates that would not be able to do this.
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I learned how engines worked by taking apart, cleaning and reassembling an ancient lawnmower engine so I could use it on my go-kart. I then learned how cars worked by taking one apart and putting it back together again.
Neither of those machines had a transistor in them. It was all basic electricity.