Here is the link to a Ford 8N Tractor site I found and bookmarked. http://home.att.net/~jmsmith45/index.html This site gets into the history of Ford Tractors and other interesting stuff. It seems that in the late 40s and early 50's the farmers wanted enough power to pull a 3-bottom plow instead of the standard Ford 2-bottom so they started to install inline, flathead Ford 6's. A company started to make adapters and then started to make adapters for the flathead V8. Farmers are like hot rodders in many ways. They are willing to make modifications to their equipment to "improve" them. Besides more power means less time in the field cause you can plow faster, or disc or cultivate or any of the other things you do with a tractor. Restoring tractors is a big item with old farmers in rural America. Some of the tractor shows are getting pretty big and include some of the old stationary, single cylinder diesel and gas engines that were used to do all sorts of stuff like run a belt-drive threshers. I've seen, pictures from the 20's and 30's of Model T's that were stripped down and used in fields as home-made tractors. Farmers, working at home, helped start the powered, farm implement industry. It's also why Henry Ford started building tractors.
anyone interested in antique tractors there's a show called "My Cl***ic Tractor "on RFD.TV in my area thats 9409 on satelite system.Nothing like seeing an old retired farm boy slide open a barn door and seeing 300 restored tractors!!If you want to see some horsepower at work attend any large tractor pull like those sponsored by the National Tractor Pullers ***ociation or NTPA.I had the privledge of meeting and working with Art Arfons at A NTPA pull here at Thompson Speedway you aint heard horse power till you hear 8 454 corvet mills screaming down the track under load that machime belonged to the Hileman brother pulling team.seems that ****shut 40 rearends were the way to go back then any of you old plowboys got a pic of a ****shut 40 tractor
that's a good looking farmall grandpa put a 283 in an f20 back in the day.....there's a local fella that still has it sitting behind his barn....
...here's nother 8N with a flathead V8, big and littles, etc. The owner says it will drive on water, but not very fast. Had a cement mixer on the 3-point hitch.
Nahh.. You're thinking demo derby. Tractor pulling is actually pretty cool. Watching a bunch of hillbillys back into each other for fun, that's a stupid waste of sheetmetal. I hate to think of how many beautiful 60's cars were destroyed for the sake of some gap-toothed rednecks idea of fun. Shawn
I guess you won't believe that there is a guy that lives 20 miles from me who has a 760 Farmall high crop with a Olds motor in it. He is a machinist by trade and built it himself. He rebuilt the frontend and put power steering on it. Every year he drives it 15 miles to the local antique engine show. I have seen him go down US 20 (a four lane) and keep up with traffic (speed limit is 65 mph).
those are GREAT! i use to have some pics of a some realy cool hopped up Flathead powered 8 and 9-N Fords. i love those things. cool lookin little tractors. i'd own one if i had the money and/or time to build it. aluminum headed flatty with dual carbs and lakes style headers and a plow so i could clear the damn snow out of my driveway. i should see how much my neighbor wants for his stock 8-N. he has'nt used it in at least 3 years. some sort of ignition problem that he has'nt bothered to figure out and fix after all this time. i used to use it all the time to drag stuff around and move dirt. the hydraulics did'nt have the balls to lift a motor with the front bucket though. i'd have to fix that problem.
I don't remember but the Ford 8n's came with the optional V-8 flathead or there was a conversion. I really think it was a conversion. It was kinda common.
Funk conversions on the Ford N series. More popular was the 6 than the 8. Raised the hood like the one on the first page. They still make them. Our first project was an 8N for Courtland. He got it for his 10th birthday. He'll be 14 next Monday and we're working on his 54 Chevy truck now. He wants to pull a trailer with his tractor on it when we're done!
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