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J

jboelens

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John Boelens
After getting approval from the Big Dog, here's a really poor sales pitch.

My Case IH dealership (Birkey's Farm Store) is celebrating their 60th year in business this year. They have had Parkland college go through a Super MTA and then professionally painted. They will be GIVING away this tractor to one lucky person! What they are doing is this: all proceeds go to local food banks. So as you make a donation to a local food bank (they have lists on the website) you would get tickets per how much you donate. The donations go as follows:

$10 donation gets you 1 ticket.
$30 donation gets you 4 tickets.
$50 donation gets you 8 tickets.
and $100 donation gets you 20 tickets!

Birkey's goal is to raise $100,000 in donations to food pantry's amongst all of our store locations (14 stores). I think we can do it.
The Hunger drive last from February 3rd to April 4th. Tractor winner will be drawn on April 7th. also, on the website they are having a PB&J hunger drive for the kids - they can win some toy tractors at each of our locations.

Here's some website info:
www.birkeys.com/hunger
283305.jpg
 
JOHN - That's ONE SHARP SM-TA. And the raffle is for a good cause!

Was 51 years ago this spring I drove Dad's SM-TA home from the paint shop. Full time mechanic at the local repair shop down in Osco, IL repainted tractors nights & weekends. Dad had the grill of the SM-TA painted white kinda like a 450, cost an extra $10, so $60 total, OEM paint, OEM decals, clean-up, & labor. Guy did a great job too. I remember the paint burning off the muffler on the 5 mile trip home. Dad had him paint up the '39 H the same way too a few months later.
 
John,
Not that it really matters (to most anyhow), but do you know what year that SMTA is?
 
Tom, Dennis is correct. to celebrate the 60th year, they restored a 54 Super MTA which turns 60 years old this year!
 
Dennis,
My books say it was made from '52-'54, but that was grouped with SM,SMD and SMTA.?.
 
TOM - I looked at several of my books. The TractorData website doesn't even list the Super M-TA. I guess the fact that IH kinda snuck the SM-TA under the Nebraska Test lab's radar because it was a drive-train change, not an engine change makes it hard to understand for some authors. None of the SM-TA series was ever tested.

But Guy Fay's IH Tractor Data Book has pretty good info. He doesn't list the serial numbers by month, and doesn't state the month/date production started but does say SM-TA production ceased 10-15-1954, SMD-TA ceased 11-1-1954; SMV-TA ceased 12-2-1954; & SMDV-TA ceased 1-25-1955.

Super M production ceased 2-1-1954, Not sure what he means by "Modified Super M", but production ceased 3-25-1954; SMD ceased 2-1-54, Super MDCH (not sure what the CH designates) ceased 6-8-54; SMV ceased 3-1-54; & SMDV ceased 3-24-54.

SO.. All Super M-TA production except for a scant few (maybe ONE) Super M-TA diesel Hi-Clear was in 1954. Most were built from Febuary till Nov/Dec. then the 300/400 series started up. 26,924 SM-TA'S, 2705 SMD-TA'S; 64 SMV-TA'S, & no number of SMDV-TA's shown.

There's always been confusion about IF a Super M-TA without LPTO & TA was a Super M. They were both "Options", and in fact a Super M-TA was it's own model without those two features. The tractors less T/A did not get the model decal with the "wing" that said "with Torque Amplifier", just the round decal similar to the Super M but said "Super M-TA".

Dad bought his SM-TA spring of 1960 at Westbay Equipment in Galesburg, IL. He traded it for the 450 spring of '65, also at Westbay Equipment... I THINK, but about 65-75% sure. The 450 had the optional Fast-Hitch and Dad also got the matching 4F-43 fully mounted 4-14" F/H plow, a 5 ft IH F/H fully mounted stalk shredder, and a spare pair of F/H points with the tractor. Evidently Westbay wanted to clear out ALL their F/H equipment spring of '65.

I always kinda had it in my mind, that if I could find that old SM-TA I'd buy it and it would make a nice pair of "1954 Book Ends" with my '54 Stg II Super H. But I have NO idea what the serial number was/is. And I'm sure after 49 yrs after leaving our farm it looks nothing like what it did that day I ran it home from getting repainted. Maybe some day I'll find a faded red SM-TA with a white painted grill like a 450 that hopefully isn't beat up too bad.
 
John, which location is close to you? I see I have pick a location when I donate. I've been to a couple of Birkey's locations (Urbana and Mattoon) when they were selling Turf Equipment to the golf Industry.

I think a Super MTA would look good in my shed!
 
KRAIG - That's interesting reading, all that info you posted on the T/A & SM-TA tractors, even the other tractors, like the Hydra-Power Drive for the 200's.

There was another very large ag equipment co. that advertised AGAINST the T/A back in 1954, said their 2-cyl tractor engines didn't need a mechanical advantage to pull harder in difficult conditions. They obviously never had a Super M-TA in a field side-by-side with one of their similarly sized tractors to see what a difference a T/A made in the amount of work done in a day. Took them another TEN years, and hiring an out-of-work former FORD engineer who designed Ford's Selecto-Shift full power shift trans. who's Marketing dept. rushed into production in 1958 before it was ready, so Ford fired the design engineer, not the Marketing MOPE's, until they had something comparible. Too bad the Power Shift reduced the pulling power of the tractor so much compared to their gear driven counter-parts they still continued to build.

The T/A was a great feature, guess that's why IH kept them in production for 26 yrs with very few changes, the 686 T/A still used Super M-TA parts when it went out of production in 1980. The larger tractor's T/A's were similar in operation but a LOT different. The 3088, 3288, 3688, & 6X88's used an electrically operated T/A of the larger tractor's design until 1985. Many people not familiar with IH's T/A rant about how troublesome it was, but if used per the operator's manual unstructions, and kept properly adjusted, they lived a long and happy life. Dad had two T/A equipped tractors, the SM-TA & 450. The T/A went out the second year he had the SM-TA, yes, the repair bill was high, lost 2-3 days of good plowing weather, but the lecture Dad got from the service tech about the importance of proper adjustment of the T/A was PRICELESS.

Some day I hope to build a T/A for a GD CC. I got that idea at PD #1, end of the first round of plowing, reached up for the T/A to pull it back and slow down and it "wasn't there!" on my #72!
 
Vincent - Any Birkey's store will gladly accept your donation towards the food pantry. Of course each store has a "goal" we would like to reach but ultimately the 100k goal is the Big guy. They list all Birkey's location in the website www.birkeys.com

Thank you.
 
Vincent, John works at the Polo, Ill location. I believe,,
 
Thanks Jeff - I misread what Vincent typed lol.

Yes, I work at the Polo, IL Birkey's.
 

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