Farm all Tractor implements
 

I have my dad's old farmall Cub tractor and all the implements that he had for it. We kinda figured out how to hook up the moldboard plow and DH was tilling the earth like farmer bob. Now we need to cut up the furros from the plow. We have a set of disks that dh hooked up to the 4wheeler (left the plow on the tractor incase he get a wild hair to plow some more), but they did not cut up the rows, just kinda bounced on top. We went back to the barn and sprayed the dickins out of it to free up what we thing are moving parts...or what should be moving. We replaced some pins/bolts etc. We still can't get this thing to dig and cut up the plow rows. Can any one help? We then moved on the this thing that looks like leaf springs in a hook shape. Dh put this on the 4 wheeler and went to the garden area and pulled the lever to set the hooks to 'dig'. Well this really worked great but the lever would pop back and lower the springy things ever so many turns. I think it is missing some parts. I have most of the books of all these parts but they are not very descript and assume that you are an old farmer and these contraptions are just second nature on how to hook them up and use them!

Anyone have any advice for us using this old thing??? There are other implements that I have no idea what they are or what they would be used for. I think I have 7 implements in total.

Reply
 

If a 4-wheeler will pull your disks there isn't likely to be enough weight on it to do anything useful on plowed ground. The disks will do the best job, if you can get some extra weight on top and pull them with the tractor. Not really sure what you were oiling or replacing bolts with. The disks and axles they're on should turn freely. Is this on a 3pth or trailed?

The "old thing" is a spring toothed harrow. It is more for breaking up a crust and killing some small weeds than working down plowed ground. Yes, it sounds like a part is missing or it has a broken spring which holds the pawl into the notch of the depth setting. One can sometimes lay a bolt in the notch and let the spring action hold the lever against it to maintain depth. Surprisingly they don't seem to fall out.

I agree with DaleK that the disk is probably too lightweight so you will need to add several hundred pounds to it.

Often plowing is done in the fall of the year so that freezing and thawing can mellow the ground. Too late for that this year eh?

If you have a spiked tooth harrow that might help if it is weighted. Maybe after getting it broken down somewhat then the disk will work better.

Will the disk OFFSET. Big disk, if you look, are pulled with the blades in sort of a V shape or angles.
Small disks usually spread or are hinged on one end so they make and angle.
And I agree with the others. You need more weight. there may be square things on top which let you set cement block in or some other weight.

The thing with leaf springs is a cultivator and I'd be pulling that after discing down the plowed furrows. Thing is good plowing makes for easy cultivation and its kind of a fussy thing to get perfect. When down right you can easily run across the field the sod turned into a nice stack of layers. We're doing some spring plowing I should make a thread out of that! You need to get the furrows knocked down so add some weight to the discs. I've even seen cast concrete weights added. If the "V" is angled alot it will be more aggresive less angle being better for a finishing pass. Knock the furrows down with the discs so it's as smooth as you can get then use the cultivators. Speed helps make a disc work too. Within reason its not a race! :) I will often cut across the furrows to break up the sod even more with the cultivators (back to that good plowing so its not so rough) . Fall plowing is best of course but you do what you gotta do. Pictures would help ID the rest.

Sounds to me like you are saying the disk harrow bearings are froze or locked up. Will the disk harrow axle turn? Eddie

There are several issues here. Lack of experience, land that probably not been plowed in recent times, possibly some trash growth on the land and "I have my dad's old farmall Cub tractor". This is at best a garden tractor to be used on land that is in constant use, land that has little chance to develop deep root top cover. Get a local farmer with a sizable tractor to first prepare the area then start with dad's old farmall Cub. The Cub will do a good job in a garden where it was designed to function.

First off, Those Cub tractors were made for farms up to 35 Acres. Now, there are several wrong ways to hook up the plow to the tractor. Are the furrows turned properly? There should be no sod showing in the plowed area...only dirt from the bottom of the furrow. If you have sod showing sort of like the sod is standing straight up, then you have a problem to fix it. As was already said, if a 4 wheeler can pull a disk, it isn't disking. Check the angle on the disk. The axles should be as far from straight as possible. Also, each gang of disks are bolted tight and the individual disk blades should not turn independantly. Probably 2 bearings per gang...grease way too much. They are total loss bearings, or this is a new one and has sealed bearings w/out a grease fitting. Load as much weight as you can on the disks and pull them at an angle to the plowing. This will cut down the field much faster. Mike

The Farmall Cubs were advertised for up to 40 acre farms. With a weight of 1300 lbs. and a drawbar rating of 8.5 HP and a 12 inch single bottom plow the Marketing Department was even optimistic in 1947. Saying it again they are best used for a large vegetable garden. I have one of the latest produced International Cubs and truthfully I would not want to drive it to the backside of a 40 acre farm just for a joy ride must less attempting to pull the small plow. Mine has a belly mower and again it was an optimistic engineer that thought it was suitable to power the 48 inch belly mower. The best place that I have seen for the little tractor is cultivating the garden and riding in parades. It is what it is, a small underpowered machine that is best used in a limited capacity.

Thanks all. The disks do not have grease fittings. We have been spraying the parts that are bolted or pinned to get them to free up and move. (these parts have been sitting in the weather unused for at least 30 years.) Dad had teh books for most every thing that the tractor had, but again these were written for someone who is 'familiar' with these types of tractors and their implements.

We have 6 acres and we are only plowing up a 'very large' home garden area. I am not looking to farm the whole lot. I agree that the disks need weight. Someone DH was talking too said to move some adjustment (at the toung) to make them more aggressive and pile on the weight. We have the toung adjutment thing working a little bit, still spraying it to free up the rust. We have some whopper rocks that we will pile on to weight it down and adjust the v's to be more aggressive. DH went out and moldboard plowed the area again after it rained to see if it would do better. We have one corner of the 'garden' that is jsut impossilbe all shale, so we will not plant anything there. The rest of the plot looks pretty good. This land used to be an old farm that was sold off and then the clay was mined off of it. it was backfilled with the all the good farm topsoil being about 9' down and filled in with shale and dirt. So we have some serious rock picking and ground fortifying to do before we get a bumper crop garden but we are working on it...gotta start somewhere. Figuring out all these tractor parts is this year! :)

The cultivators seemed to work well when we could keep them in the locked and loaded position. Dh needs to look at it to see if he can rig them back to working.

This poor tractor has seem better days to say the least. We have had $2500 worth of work done on it last year. Just to the tractor alone. Now we are trying to figure out what all the attachments are and what is supposed to move and what needs replacing and what is broken. I remember walking behind dad plowing the garden picking rocks when I was a kid and that was one of the only times these attachements have been used (besides the belly mower). I will have to take pics of what all we have. There are 2 things that I have no idea what they are or what they are used for....can't even begin to describe them. We know the front blade push plow, belly mower, pull cart, sicle bar, moldboar plow, cultivators, and these mystery things. Hopefully this old tractor still has some life in it and serve as our home tractor for many more years. (It will take us that long to figure out all these parts and loosen up the rust!!)

Anxious to see photos of your mystery implements.

I took pics but my son had to take the thumb drive to school...so I will post them tomorrow. The more I poked around the myster implement, the more I they are some other sort of cultavators. There are 2 identical parts, that have the leaf spring type teeth that the 'bed' cultivator has. I don't know...I will post them tomorrow. The pics are not that great, the grass is growup around the parts and they are too heavy for me to move. I need to get them up in pallets and out of the grass.

What pattern was used for the ploughing? Did you go around and around throwing the furrow out towards the fence and leaving a depression in the middle? Did you drive up and down with narrow headlands you ploughed last? Are the places in the field where furrows were turned away from each other leaving a trench or maybe turned inwards to leave a mound? Whatever you did you will want subsequent cultivation to even this out as much as possible.

The spring tine cultivator will break up the clods better if it is used across the furrows, going along the furrows it may tend to pick up the furrow and roll it into big lumps but cross cultivation is a hard bashing process on a big tractor and I imagine not something this little tractor should be subjected to, especially if the ploughing has been a little, ahem, less than perfect.

Discs on the other hand will work fine pulled along the furrows and I would hesitate to add weight without having given it a good try at various angles of attack. On some designs you release the catch on the tongue and back up to cause the discs to 'set' and when they reach the angle you need set the catch again.

I am suprised the discs from the 1950's do not have grease fittings.

BTW, if your want to get artistic you can do your cultivation in a diagonal pattern, assuming you have a rectangular field first drive from one corner to the diagonal opposit then turn about and return right beside the row, repeat this and eventually you will finish by driving between the other two corners having covered the field twice!

Just my humble opinion of course.

As always good to see you posting John Hill.

Windy in Kansas (greenbeanman).

Hi Windy!

Give this site a try, somewhere there is a link to pictures of all the implements attached and all manuals are available online. Glad to see that you are trying to use the Cub, I have one and just love it. Just remember what it is and adjust what you expect accordingly. Mine pulls the 12 plow just fine unless I come across a root. When this happens I just hop off and cut the offending root and move on. Sure I would like a 35 HP FWD tractor with a loader and backhoe and all the other attachments available under the sun, but this Cub is what I can afford and have used it to skid logs, pull stumps with machanical advantages added.

http://www.farmallcub.com

The farmall cub is a great little tractor and are a power house for there size. It is simular to my Massey Harris pony.

http://usera.imagecave.com/alleyyoop...Pacer-copy.jpg

A new 1949 Massey Pony was the first rubber tire tractor my dad owned. He farmed a large 5 acre garden with it plus made extra money plowing and working up all the gardens in the village 6 miles away.
He had a trailer he would load all the tillage tools in for the trip to the village.

First he would plow the area intended for the garden.
First time he plowed an area he turned the dirt to the out side, which left a dead farrow in the center. where he started the next year.
Once done with that he took a spring tooth drag (harrow) and went over the area going up and down the (sort of) rows once. Then he went corner ways for example corner to corner south east to north west. Once finished doing that he went the oppsite north west to south east. That normaly got the area worked up really nice but if it was still heavy cloded he would go cross ways.

A spring tooth harrow,
http://www.flexharrow.com/HDD2.jpg

This is a 3 point disk harrow. Notice the angle. It is perment on 3 point ones. With the pull type you aqdjust them with one of several different types of devices at the draw bar. One was as simple as backing up with the disk hooked to a tractor and pulling up on a levered dog then moving the tractor foward to the disired angle.

http://www.northerntool.com/images/p...2501827_lg.gif

The other spring tooth stuff are mounted cultvators.
They mount on the tractor so you can culivate between the row crops.
On our pony they are for single row use but on the 44 we can cultvate 2 rows at once with the proper planting space. On the Ford 5000 we can culivate 8 rows at once.

Al

There are many a hunter who use their 4x4 ATV's to make food plots with old antique pull type farm equipment.
I have made a wheeled arangement for a old small garden tractor 10" plow that does a beautiful job turning farrows behind my 400cc Polaris 4x4.
Of course I have to hange a 65 pound suitcase weight on the plow to keep it down when breaking new ground in heavy clay.

:D Al

Here is a picture of a tractor with mounted culivaters.
It is a 1949 Oliver 66 posted by a member of
http://www.mytractorforum.com/ Where many of us old tractor owner/nuts hang out.
Many of them are still farmers and many more like me are retired from farming but still have a collection of old tractors.
http://www.mytractorforum.com/attach...1&d=1177091931

I chose to collect Massey Harris since those were the first tractors dad had for our farm till the dealer went out of bussness. We then used Allis Chambers till the mid 60's when we started buying Fords.

:D Al

Kept thinking about the spring tooth harrow not staying set.
I went out and took some pictures. Here is an old set of 2 section ones, brand unknowen.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/100_0621.jpg

You squeeze the short lever at the top of the bar wich pulls up on the small rod attached to the pawl.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/100_0622.jpg

It has a spring that pushes the pawl and holds it into the notches where you want it.

This is a old set of John Deer ones. Same set up for the most part. Just has the pawl mounted different and uses a cheaper to MFG. pawl.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/100_0623.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/100_0624.jpg

:D Al

Here is a old set of Dearborn #2 pull type disk I was given.

It doesn't has an angle adjuster at this time and I havn't researched them as I am not ready to start restoreing them yet.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/100_0625.jpg

Couple of things though I wanted to point out. It has greese zerks on the boxens on the bottom so you need to look close. Boxens don't have bearings, many like this dearborn have oak bushings. One old cockshutts set I have has soft medal bushings that are almost impossiable to buy today.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...greasezerk.jpg

It also has mud scrapers. You have to keep them adjusted or they are a problem .
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/100_0629.jpg

Adjusted correctly.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/100_0627.jpg

A problem, and hasn't been adjust correctly for some time it appears. Any nick in the blade and the scrapers hangs up and can stop the blades from turning. Another thig is the blade can keep turning and cut a groove in the scraper.

Hope this helps.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/100_0628.jpg

The pony pulls these disk wide open sunk up to the blades axels with out much trouble. I have a couple of suitcase weights (65 pounds each) hung on the back sections as there is a part missing that holds the rear gangs properly and allows the out side to raise off the ground.

:D Al