View From The Porch: Flash Gordon, your tractor is ready...

Saturday, August 03, 2013

Flash Gordon, your tractor is ready...

1948 Silver King

I'd never seen one of these before. It looks ideal for maintaining the row crops on the plantations of Ming the Merciless.

18 comments:

Paul said...: Lot of tractors in the 30's and 40's had a certain art deco look to them with extra tin to make the effects.; 12:33 PM, August 03, 2013
billf said...: The feature that amazes me aboout that tractor is the single front wheel.Must be a massive kingpin to withstand the steering force from a single wheel.
Any of you farmers or engineers ever see that setup before?; 1:06 PM, August 03, 2013
Will said...: Single front wheel setups were normal, but not common. Stability was a problem on hilly ground, depending on equipment being used. Planting row spacing was a factor in their use.

Frank James would probably be more knowledgeable on the subject.; 2:51 PM, August 03, 2013
Joe in PNG said...: I drove an ancent Farmall with the 'single' wheel for a good while. Lots of fun, but liked a push start on frosty mornings, and the brakes had gone out around the Nixion admin, so down hill was FUN!; 5:11 PM, August 03, 2013
Jeffro said...: What Will said. A lot of the old "trike" style tractors had two front wheels instead of just one, but a very, very short axle. Some tractors could be ordered as a trike or with more "normal" spacing.

It was pretty easy to upset a trike, so they soon passed on. The more conventional style was better for working row crops, too.

My Dad had an old JD 720 on propane, and the starter switch was foot powered and located on the flywheel.; 6:59 PM, August 03, 2013
Michael Hallum said...: Silver Kings were also the fastest tractors around then; maybe even now. They had a "road gear" that let them do upwards of 50mph.; 9:51 PM, August 03, 2013
Roberta X said...: Okay *now* I'm scared. 50 mph on that? Oh, heck no!; 9:53 PM, August 03, 2013
Robert said...: Flash! Ah AHH!; 12:13 AM, August 04, 2013
mustanger said...: Massey Ferguson 135... IIRC, the road gear will do 35mph or so. Get on a rough road at higher speed though and a tractor'll buck.; 12:15 AM, August 04, 2013
Jeffro said...: And here I thought the Gleaner L series combines running 30mph were fast! They'd buck too, with a row head on - they'd want to lift the rear wheels.; 12:58 AM, August 04, 2013
Anonymous said...: But does it come with a tractor beam?; 1:33 AM, August 04, 2013
Well Seasoned Fool said...: That is a newer Silver King. The older ones had the front wheel further out and had chain steering.

Single wheel is handier when putting up hay as they will turn shorter and faster when mowing and raking.

We had different front ends depending on the need. On a Deere, the change took less than an hour.; 2:48 PM, August 04, 2013
Tam said...: "That is a newer Silver King."

According to the sign on the side, it's a 1948. :); 2:57 PM, August 04, 2013
Joel said...: Flash Gordon wouldn't have feared driving the Silver King at 50 mph, no matter how few front wheels it had. But the sparks flying from the rear would have bankrupted him in lawsuits from all the grass fires.; 4:57 PM, August 04, 2013
Opinionated Grump (Rich in NC) said...: weren't they a little more hands on about things like grass fires back in '48? They put rock salt in them there shot guns back then, didn't they?; 8:21 PM, August 04, 2013
Well Seasoned Fool said...: http://www.silverkingtractors.com/Articles/History1.htm; 9:46 AM, August 05, 2013
Carl H said...: We lived on a hillside farm in the Ozarks - our cows all had 2 legs longer than the other so they could graze on the hillsides. (A great plan going out, but they suffered coming home.)
Single wheel tractors are a 'death wish' on a hillside farm, ours all had 2 front wheels set as far apart as we could get 'em. I mowed county road right of ways in college, same rule applied. Down in the road-ditch you wanted stability, not hairpin turning ability. I never had to abandon ship from steep grade mowing, but a few co-workers did. And were mocked by all and sundry.; 11:46 AM, August 05, 2013
markm said...: Carl: I thought the hillside cows would just keep going until they circled the mountain to come home. But you had to decide whether to keep a clockwise herd or a counterclockwise herd.

Dad grew cherries on a hilly farm in Michigan. The old Ford tractor had front wheels set to the same width as the rear wheels, and you still had to be careful when driving along a hillside. Don't let the wrong side drop into a hole... Sometimes straight up the hills wasn't so easy either. These hills were big sand piles/dunes left behind by the glaciers, stabilized by a thin layer of grass roots. When the 300-gallon sprayer trailer was full, a driving wheels could quite easily eject a big clump of sod, and then just spin in the sand until you reversed to the bottom of the hill and picked a somewhat different track to go back up. Assuming you could back up and keep the sprayer from fetching up against a tree...; 8:23 AM, August 09, 2013