By Jerri L. Cook – What can a military engineer from the mid-20th century teach us about buying older farm equipment? Quite a bit, actually.
During World War II, the Air Force was working on a sensitive project to determine just how much deceleration force the human body can withstand. In short, just how hard can you hit the ground and survive? The project ultimately proved successful because of one engineer’s reflection on a universal truth and the efforts by his team to keep that observation at the experiment’s forefront.
Captain Murphy’s observation was simple: Anything that can go wrong will. Keeping this in mind, the team was able to measure the deceleration force on impact of an Air Force doctor who volunteered to ride a sled into a wall. He survived at 40 g. Today, it is widely held that most people can survive an impact of 50 g, or 50 times the Earth’s gravitational pull.
Colonel John P. Strapp, the doctor who survived the experiment, said the reason he volunteered was because of Capt. Edward Murphy’s insistence that they check everything that could possibly go wrong, and check it often. Captain Murphy knew the best way to avoid disaster was to circumvent it, and because of that diligence, Colonel Strapp trusted that he would be safe.
Eventually, the observation came to be known as Murphy’s Law. If you’re a homesteader who owns used, older farm equipment, or if you’re thinking about becoming a homesteader who owns used farm equipment, then Murphy’s Law and its corollary apply to you: Anything that can go wrong will, and at the worst possible moment.
It was a wet spring in these parts. It rained so often that getting the hay cut, raked, and baled was almost impossible. There just wasn’t enough time between showers for the hay to dry. By early July, we had all but given up being able to bale our first crop, and went to Plan B—chopping it and blowing it into the silo.
Wayne fired up the Allis Chalmers 6080 and hooked up the Fox 2100 chopper and the chopper box. The first two rounds went well enough, given how damp the ground was. But on the third pass around the back hayfield, things got complicated.
As he made the turn on the back field, Wayne heard a grinding, crunching noise. When he looked over his shoulder, he knew something had gone wrong. The chopper wasn’t chopping. He headed back to the shed to have a look.
The news wasn’t good. The sprocket for the pick-up reel on the hay head had shattered, and there was no way to repair it. After looking online for a used one with no success, we bought a new sprocket with a weld-on hub from a local farm supply store. Wayne had it fixed in a few hours and was back out chopping hay the next day.
He wasn’t in the best mood. The constant line of storms had kept us from getting the hay off the field, and now the breakdown had cost us another day. Even so, Wayne was determined to get the hay off the ground before the next bout of showers. But we all know the law—anything that can go wrong will and at the worst possible moment. That day, with another round of storms less than 24 hours away, the bearing on the pick-up reel on the same side as the repaired sprocket seized. This time, the damage to the hay head was beyond repair.
We spent most of the day on July 3 calling tractor salvage yards and searching online for a replacement hay head. Finally, late that afternoon, we found one. A neighbor knew of a farmer who had a couple of Fox choppers. We couldn’t make contact with him until later that evening, but when we did, he told Wayne there was a Fox 2100 chopper in working condition he’d part with for $500. We went and picked it up early the next morning.
The $500 hay head ran for one day. Then, the U-joint that runs the infeed roller failed, and we were unable to source one anywhere. The gentleman who had sold us the hay head had another one, but he wouldn’t sell just the part we needed. We had to buy the whole thing. Not wanting to spend another $500 for a hay head that may or may not be suitable for parts, we decided we would have to come up with Plan C.
Plan C involved a magnet and a stick. Using an old automotive magnet and a walking stick, we walked through the field searching for the broken U-joint. After two days of searching, we found it and Wayne welded it back on.
By this time, it had rained buckets. The hay that was down was ruined, and the hay that was still standing was losing feed value by the day. Even with the hay head repaired, there was no way to get 50 acres of standing hay down and stay ahead of the constant showers. So we went to Plan D. We called a neighbor and traded a portion of the hay for his labor. He cut and baled all 50 acres in only a few days, and none of the hay he cut got rained on.
We were relieved that we had solved our immediate problem, but in the days that followed, it became clear that we were going to have to have the talk—the used machinery talk. Is it really cost-efficient to buy older farm equipment, and how old is too old?
The first thing to consider when buying older farm equipment is the availability of replacement parts. The company that built the Fox chopper went out of business in the mid-80s. Finding new parts is impossible, and finding used parts isn’t easy either. While word-of-mouth helped find the replacement hay head, we spent a considerable amount of time on the phone and online looking for parts. When you’re counting on the income produced from 50 acres of hay, time really is money. Before you buy equipment manufactured by companies that no longer exist, consider what the consequences would be if it breaks down at a critical moment. When all was said and done, our used Fox chopper cost us somewhere around $5,000. Not a good deal by any measure.
Another problem with buying tractors and machinery manufactured in another century arises when that machinery becomes sought after by antique collectors. If you buy a tractor or piece of machinery that has value on the collector or restoration market, not only can parts be difficult to find, they can be expensive. Fixing up an antique tractor or piece of equipment and then subjecting it to the rigors of field work is likely not a good idea. Sure, it did the job in its day, but its day is long gone.
If you’re a small-scale farmer or homesteader, don’t rule out buying new equipment. The newer, compact farm equipment is affordable, and service and replacement parts are readily available. The drawback for many is that the newer compact tractors and equipment are so small that working on them yourself requires tools designed specifically for close spaces, which most farmers don’t have on hand.
If you do buy older farm equipment, make sure you have a source for parts before you purchase. Don’t rely solely on internet searches. If there is a farm salvage near you, visit them and ask what parts are readily available. If we would have done that one simple thing, we would have known before we purchased the Fox chopper that parts for it are hard to find, and the sprocket assembly on the 2100 routinely fails.
After talking with a small-scale producer who traded in his big tractor and haying equipment for newer, smaller machinery, we decided to do the same. We just can’t afford any more setbacks because of unreliable, older farm equipment. If you depend on your machinery to produce the income that sustains you, going cheap isn’t the answer. You don’t have to be a scientist to know that sudden stops can have severe financial consequences. When buying common farm equipment, take the advice offered Captain Murphy. Check and re-check everything that could go wrong, and then guard against it.
Do you regularly operate older farm equipment? What advice do you have? Let us know in the comments.
Originally published in Countryside July/August 2016 and regularly vetted for accuracy.
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