BILL, TOM, DAN G. - Granted I'm BIASED, but I never could understand the allegence to the old poppin' johnny's. Dad had a FARMALL '39 H that became my first tractor I mowed & raked hay with, went to town for hog feed with, did chores with, hauled in corn, oats, hay, etc. Dad even used it to plant corn a couple years, but it was kinda small for pulling his 4-row planter so normally used his '51 M. The '39 H was loaded, lights, elec. starter, radio, hyd. Pretty competent light chore tractor even in early 1960 standards. The '40 B he bought had no lights, armstrong starter, therefore no possible way to run a radio, no hyd lift of any kind, only had 4 spds forward, three slow speeds and a 5 MPG high gear. Those features were later added as options in the early 1940's when they upgraded to a 6-spd trans. The '39 H being on rubber tires had a 16 MPH 5th. as standard equipment.
The old 2-cyl tractors had PTO, transmission driven, not live, similar to the Farmall's, but even for light loads like running our bale elevator they didn't run smooth enough to run even light loads smoothly, where as a FARMALL H or M would idle smoothly at 500-600 RPM to run them fine. The B had REVERSE as it's fastest gear, ran almost 6 MPH in reverse. Made backing carts & wagons a clutch slipping affair. Looking over one shoulder, reaching for the clutch lever. The later 6-spd tractors fixed that mistake. The FARMALL's had both brake pedals next to each other on the right front side of the platform, the green tractors had them off each side of the platform, you used your left foot for left brake, right foot for right brake. So to run them you had your arms & legs flailing around all over the tractor. With a FARMALL all the controls except the PTO were right in front of you, and the PTO was always down on the left rear edge of the platform behind the seat. Many companies made PTO shifter kits to move the lever to a better place, but just a longer rod extending up higher put the PTO lever right by the back side of the seat on your left. Engaging the PTO was just like reaching for your wallet on a FARMALL!
The later 2-cyl. tractors had a gated shift pattern, something they used for ever it seems. In the old 2-cyl tractors it was the most unwieldy thing ever combined with the hand clutch. You could not shift on the fly while moving. I can still run the SH or M up thru all five forward gears shifting on the fly and not even click a tooth on any of the gear changes. I guess the other company just thought you were supposed to slip the daylights out of the clutch to get heavy rolling loads moving. Guess that's why they used those multi-plate dry clutches in them that always dragged and they had to put a brake on them which everybody abused by using it to stop the tractor because they couldn't find the brake pedals.
Seems to me the later 2-cyl's you had to have the PTO running for the hyd's to work, which some times when pulling PTO driven trailing attachments you would want to raise them without running them. You could do that with any IH, but not a 2-cyl.
The green co. claimed their 2-cyl tractors made better low RPM torque than their competition, but from around 1952 to 1955 the Nebraska tractor test facility measured torque and the 2-cyl's all made less torque than the 4-cyl FARMALL's for their respective HP sizes. For instance, the 60, same size class as the M/SM, made about the same torque as a Super H, the next size smaller FARMALL. The Super M made more torque than the 2-cyl 70. And the IH's had their torque peak at a lower RPM in comparison to their full load RPM than the 2-cylinders. That's a great feature called "Torque Rise", as the engine pulls down under a hard load the engine pulls harder. The 2-cyl's. would have to pull WAY down in RPM and start bucking before their torque peak hit. That was hard on implements, and not good for the tractor either.
Of the three green tractors Dad had, the '49 R diesel, '40 B, & '63 4010, I never remember using the two 2-cyl's on ANY PTO work. We tried grinding cattle feed once with the 4010, but it filled the driveway of the corn crid with diesel exhaust and gassed both Dad & I out. We put the M or Super H on the grinder after that. The PTO on the 4010 was shiftable from 540 to 1000 RPM by switching the stub shaft which was bolted on with four short hardened bolts. BAD idea, bad design, when turning while running the PTO the bolts would loosen, and if not kept tight the stub shaft would wobble which caused the change gears at the front of the transmission to try to change speeds under load, with catastrophic results which required the tractor to be split to repair. We ran the pull-type combine with the 4010, but Dad checked those four bolts every load. IH's of that time period used a two shaft PTO since the ASAE spec's were different dimensionally between the 540 & 1000 RPM PTO. IH's met those spec's, JD's didn't.
I truely believe if that other company in Waterloo had not come out with the 3010/4010 in the fall of 1960, had waited until 1964, the year AFTER IH released the 706/806, kept building those old antiquated 2-cyl's for four more years, IH would still be building 125 tractors a day in Rock Island and JD would be a division of General Electric.
ANYHOW, Back to CC's. NORM - I always clip a small pair of VICE GRIPS to the loop on the end of the spring and pull it over whatever it hooks to, or feed the end of the spring wire into whatever hole it threads into. Prying around on a loose spring is DANGEROUS. When it slips it could fly around. "You're gonna put your EYE out!"
