West of Mpls MN about 50 miles on Hwy 12 | Same bug.
The black and white photo was taken with their bolt on narrow front end and their reconfigured one row horse cultivator installed for doing row crop work. With the almost one to one ratio of the model A steering box that almost took two men to turn the steering wheel with the narrow front installed, and no individual rear brakes, their bolt on narrow front option was seldom installed. The wide front is a model A front axle tipped upside down to gain ground clearance. Being upside-down throws the geometry of the spindles off so the operator has to be careful backing up too fast or the front wheels instantly go full lock one way possibly breaking the operator's fingers. No operator to date has dared find out what top speed of the Bug is. With the two mechanical two speed rear end I'm sure the Bug will do 40 MPH at least
The Bug was used primarily as a hay making tractor pulling a dump and side delivery rake, pulling the hay sling rope, and hauling loads of hay and grain. They also mowed a lot of hay with the bug pulling a converted horse mower until they bought a drawbar mounted pto powered mower for the H.
The model A motor has quite a bit more HP than a Farmall H but the bug didn't weigh much and with only bald truck tires for rear tires lacked traction for doing much heavy tillage work...even with tire chains.
and "the rock" (that also served as a buddy seat for my dad as a kid) set on the home sawed 2x4 operator's platform. They did flip the Bug over backwards once when one of my great uncles muddy shoes slipped off of the clutch peddle while pulling their stuck H out of a mud hole. It didn't help matters much that they had the chain hooked to the dump rake drawbar which was mounted high on the operator's platform for more traction.
To lower the cost of manufacturing and maintenance our Bug has never had an engine air cleaner installed. ;-) The current engine is pretty fresh and doesn't have very many hours on it but he tractor itself does has a lot of hours on it. The model A engine is a flex fuel engine and runs best on E-85 with a slight adjustment of the spark lever and turn of the carburetor needle knob. We have always said we wish the Bug could talk.
Back to horses. My maternal great grandpa and great uncle were just the opposite of my paternal grandpa and great uncles, they loved horses. They kept a team of horses around just to pull their grain drill and 2 row planter because they felt their F-20 and M were too heavy to plant with. They finally got rid of the horses when they went to a 4 row planter.
Edited by CMN 10/10/2023 17:04
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I Drove The Last Team Of Horses
