Reflections

An article by David M. Woods in the Ford and Fordson tractor Club magazine set me thinking about the past fifty years and the demise of the British tractor industry. Whilst most Ford and Fordson enthusiasts are looking forward to June and the Blue Force event on the Newark Show Ground to celebrate 50 years of the Basildon factory and Ford Series tractors, I am mourning an old friend,

The Fordson.

Yes it is fifty years since the last Fordson tractors were built, they shaped my life, from the early days when, as a pre-school child I spent time with young Dick Bowers, riding on a Model “N” as he ploughed his father’s farm, where my father worked, right through to the present day as we plan another trip to Australia in September/October to visit Dawn and Barry and the large group of friends we have amassed over there and throughout the world via Fordson Tractor Pages.

Our village and my early friends mirrored the great British tractor industry, on the one side there were the Fordson farmers and on the other the supporters of the British Motor Corporation, Nuffield farmers. We did not have a Ferguson in the village although one of the very large farms with land on the outskirts farmed with Caterpillar D2’s and the Grey Menace. A few International B250’s found their way onto one farm but as far as we youngsters were concerned, they were the “also rans”, Fordson and Nuffield ruled our small world.

It seemed strange to me now that both BMC and Fordson made the same mistake which, in one case was the root cause of its demise and in the other the cause of a deliberating loss of market share which was never fully recovered. They moved factories when at the top of their markets.

I know people will say that they were forced to do this by their success and in the case of BMC by government intervention but Ford did not seem to learn by what happened, as it watched the problems suffered by BMC struggling to maintain build quality after the move to Bathgate, Scotland. The Nuffield tractor was a great British tractor earning much needed capital from its very healthy export market as well as being a strong contender in the home market place. In those years in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s Britain was producing more tractors that the rest of the world added together and the leading companies were Fordson and BMC.

Once production of Nuffields moved to Scotland and a new factory, warranty claims went through the roof, delivery of new machines slowed to a trickle, quality dropped, and customers looked elsewhere when it came to replacing a tractor. With dropping sales and a company that wanted to get out of tractors and into more car production the writing was on the wall and money was moved from the profitable tractor business into car and lorry production budgets, starving the company of development funds. The writing was on the wall and after many owners, colour changes, name changes and factory moves tractor production ended in the 1980’s.

All this is mirrored a few years later by Ford and Fordson. In the middle 1960’s Ford in the US took complete control of Fordson, until then English Ford or EnFo had been under British management but Ford US wanted to bring everything in the organisation under one company controlled from head office in the US. This could have been a huge success but Ford never wanted to build tractors in the first place, their market strength was in cars and tractors were an inconvenience. Or so it seemed.

From a dealer point of view Ford repeated all the mistakes that BMC had made. Quality dropped and no more were we to see the tractors being freely available as the previous models had been. As the largest dealer in England at the time it still took nearly three months before we received our first of the new “X” series, a 5000. I still remember it coming into the yard on our Thames Trader, it would not even run properly, running on three cylinders when it came into the workshop for PDI. This seemed to be the norm for all the early tractors we received, tractors that would not run properly, front axles that had to be stripped and rebuilt as thrust bearings were installed upside down, engine timing to be correctly adjusted and many other silly little things that should never have left the factory.

When we got the tractors onto the farms the problems really started. The first to manifest itself was a terrific shriek from the 5000 engine as the crankshaft balancer gears disintegrated. This meant removing the engine and doing a complete strip down to replace the crankshaft as the balancer drive was machined as part of the crank. Not good news for a farmer who had been waiting up to six months for his new tractor, only to lose it with a major failure within a few weeks. This was not a “one off” failure and before long nearly every 5000 we sold had been fitted with a new crankshaft and set of balancer gears.

It was now autumn 1965 and tractors were starting to be used on ploughs. The first complaints started to come in that the new tractor would not perform as well as the Super Major had on a Ransomes TS 82 two furrow reversible plough. The 5000 had less torque than the Super Major although it was (supposedly) more powerful and what power it had could not be used as it suffered from excessive wheel spin. Here in England we use fully mounted equipment and, to get wheel grip, we use the hydraulic system of the tractor. Basically the problem was that the TS82 plough was too light and did not allow sufficient weight to be transferred to the tractor. The answer was a bigger plough but how do you explain to a farmer that a tractor that cannot pull two furrows will actually pull three with reduced wheel spin and, instead of putting weights on the rear wheel, you had to hang it out front! The sales staff managed to sell a couple of Ransomes TS84 three furrow reversible ploughs to a couple of 5000 owners complete with a Wrights designed weight box for the front which was filled to the brim with all the old scrap iron they could find and the problem was partially solved. Only partially solved though because now the rear wheels could not spin because the weight and hydraulic transfer was working as it should, the poor power and torque were highlighted.

Not all the new range had power problems; the little 4000 was a real humdinger of a tractor. Matched to the TS82 and a weight box of old iron on the front it would outperform the 5000 easily. It was an embarrassing situation when, if the two tractors were working in the same field, at the end of the day, the 55 HP 4000 with two furrows would have carried out more work than the 65 HP 5000 pulling three. On public demonstrations we had to slightly “derate” the 4000 so as not to show up the 5000.

The only problem I can remember that affected the 4000 was a misfire at high revs, it became known as Irregular Exhaust Beat and happened at around 2000 rpm. Timing changes had no effect but the answer soon appeared in the form of “Anti Flutter Valves” in the injector lines. We did go through a period of oil leakage from the interconnecting pipe between the hydraulic pump and the flow control but square section “O” rings cured this.

The 2 and 3000 tractors had an on-going hydraulic pump problem which never seemed to be really cured. The engine mounted piston pump would lose prime and the hydraulics would not work or jerked. One answer was to put a gallon of kerosene in the rear axle oil and the problem went away. Fords did supply a special blending fluid to add to the oil but kerosene was cheaper and most farmers used this.

Once the 5000 was working with the three furrow plough other problems reared their head. The plough would drop from fully raised to the ground with a sudden mighty crash! Removal of the lift showed the connecting rod between the ram cylinder piston and the cross shaft, a large solid item, had dropped out of its socket and the rocker, with the full weight of the plough had smashed it straight through the rear axle case. The problem was the failure of the retaining pin holding the connecting rod into the rocker. The pin was shearing and allowing the rocker to drop out yet there was no visible reason for this to happen. The pin was a loose fit in both the rocker and the connecting rod and under no strain or pressure at all yet it was still shearing off. After this had occurred a number of times and we had replaced the rear axle centre housings on brand new tractors the word came from Fords Service Department to replace the faulty retaining pins and coat them with a thick coating of Molybdenum Grease. The problem seemed to be due to the loose fit of the pin it vibrated and either the split pin holding it in place failed allowing the pin to drop out or the pin wore through moving in the holes in the rocker assembly. The grease seemed to sort the problem and we moved on to the next ones.

Starter motor failure. I get quite annoyed with our US friends who malign Lucas products. The early ‘000nd range came with 4.5” AC-Delco starter motors, a top US company and product. Then the problems started, (pun intended), tractors which had only been home a few days no longer started due to starter failure. Removing the starter took a little while until we sorted out how to get to the third retaining bolt hidden right at the back of the motor hard against the engine block. We soon developed the ideal mechanics tool, (12” long asbestos fingers).When the starter was removed It would be found that the back of it had broken off and dropped into the clutch housing. This meant that what was initially a short job to replace the starter now became a much larger one involving splitting the tractor to remove the broken parts. We got quite good at splitting all the range what with the starter problems and later clutch problems. Some mechanics did not always remove the broken parts however. I once went to replace the clutch on a Ford 3000 and, on splitting, found six starter rear ends in the clutch housing. The starter problems were eventually cured by replacing all the AC-Delco units with a good old Lucas one.

Clutches were another major problem, they stuck on all models, making it impossible to get the tractor in gear or, in some cases, not allowing the tractor to stop when the clutch was pushed down. We got very fast at fitting clutches! I fitted three in one 3000 tractor in an afternoon! Each clutch unit had to be set up as it was installed to obtain the correct clearance but, after a few minutes, the disc would stick to the flywheel and the tractor again would be impossible to get into gear. Ford’s answer was to wait for the count of five before attempting to select the gear but this did not work. Then came the story that it was because the gearbox was spinning to easily and the slightest clutch drag was causing it to keep turning. A pre-loaded bearing was installed to put a load on the gearbox input shaft and although this helped in some cases, it was not the answer. Ford sent us a wide variety of clutch plates to try in the tractors but none were the answer. Things got so bad on one occasion that a driver of a 5000, when ploughing in a field overlooking a huge drop from a cliff into the sea on the North Norfolk coast, reversing on the headland, actually got the rear two furrows of a TS84, through the barbed wire fence and over the cliff before he managed to get the tractor to stop by pulling the stop control. With his feet pushing like mad on clutch and brakes she had still kept going until the engine stopped. He would not get back into the tractor and drive it so it had to be pulled away from the edge with another tractor. He was still shaking when I got there later in the day to put in another “trial” clutch.

The clutch problems were not solved until the introduction of a far more robust VeeLoc clutch disc with a segmented lining but even then Ford did not leave the matter alone. The new clutch, although trouble free, was more costly and had a heavy action. Before long, another type of clutch made its appearance, the Dana with its four pads of sintered bronze for the 5000 and three pads in a triangular shape for the three cylinder range. It was certainly a light operation! We had been used to sintered bronze clutches in County and Roadless tractors so though little of this change until one of the first 4000 tractors fitted with this clutch was delivered home. It returned on the same lorry a short while later. The clutch had failed as it left the lorry and a brand new tractor had to be winched back onto the lorry because the clutch slipped so much. On splitting the tractor it was found that the pressure plate and flywheel were so badly worn that new ones had to be fitted. This was on a tractor that had not even got its tyres dirty! Soon more of these tractor fitted with this clutch were in the field and, once again, a splitting trolley became a permanent attachment to our service vans. We were getting good at this now and could fit a clutch in all the models in a little over an hour but now we were finding that we were replacing flywheels as well as all the clutch parts because the new disc was slipping so much it was heating the surface and causing cracking.

About this time I went to Boreham House for an update on the tractors as part of my Master Service Technician qualifications. The instructor was in raptures about the new clutches that were being fitted and how they were going to improve service life and prevent operators from developing a larger left leg than a right one, I burst out laughing and he rounded on me quite sharply. It was then I told him that we were replacing clutches at between 10 and 50 hours and all the other components as well. He was aghast and found it hard to believe but within a month Dana clutches were no longer supplied and we went back to the earlier disc which had cured the earlier problems. The quest for a lighter action clutch had seen a reduction of the clamping forces within the pressure plate which allowed the disc to slip. Strangely the County and Roadless fitted with a similar clutch had no problems but both these tractors used a Borg and Beck pressure plate not the Dana one.

Front wheel bearings were another item that failed on the new tractors but this was due to conditions here in Norfolk and also the fact that Ford removed the front hub grease nipples. The soil here is abrasive and, over the years, fitters and operators have worked out that seals in front wheel bearings have to be disregarded and grease must be used to flush out the front hubs daily. Fords came up with the idea that the front wheel hubs only needed service by filling them with grease once a month. No need for grease nipples. We were replacing front wheel bearings and sometime the wheel hubs within 50 hours work and sometimes twice before the first service. A grease nipple was eventually fitted to the bearing cap and the problems went away.

The one area that gave few problems on the new tractors were the gear boxes and final drives. Apart, that is from the complaint that the customer had bought an eight geared tractor and, in reality, he only had seven ranges. Someone had come up with the idea that you should have a high gear in the low range and a low gear in the high range. At least that was the story we were given. It was not until many years later that Ford admitted to us that they had made a design error.

Select-O-Speed was a new style of gearbox, Ford were the first tractor manufacturer in the world to supply a tractor with a fully power shift gearbox. The advertising and technical data shouted about the years testing in the US and the fact that it had been in use on farms over there for a number of years. At Wrights we were slightly sceptical as we had seen US tested products over here before and they had little success. We were still suffering from the latest one, a sweep arm feeder fitted to the New Holland 268 baler. The old 68 and 78 ballers had a chain and tine feeder which worked perfectly but the new ballers were soon causing problems with bent bales. The bales were coming out of the bale chamber and, as they dropped to the ground or into the sledge, the left hand string would pop off because the bale was “C” shaped. Eventually the problem was located back to the sweep arm feeder which could not move the heavier crops over to the left hand side of the chamber so producing a bent bale.

The Select-O-Speed was not perfect for all the supposed testing but Fords had themselves to blame for some of the problems. At Boreham, to both service staff and customers, to demonstrate its strength a tractor was driven across the yard at high speed in 10th gear and then the lever was thrown into reverse. The tractor continued forwards with smoke coming from the madly spinning rear tyres. Great spectacle but when operators tried the same thing or used the gearbox to brake heavily loaded trailers problems with the overload clutch and Clutch 1 started to show up. Also primary shaft failures occurred. Clutch 1 also failed due to excessive use of the inching pedal. The inching pedal dumped the oil from this clutch allowing it to run dry and caused warping of the plates as it heated up.

Most of these problems were quickly cured and the gearbox from then on was trouble free but the die had been cast. Most operators were afraid of a gearbox where you could not stand on the clutch to help stop but some really liked it. One local farming company had 27 tractors at a time from us, all Select-O-Speed and their drivers were experts at driving and handling them. I spent time with one operator using his 5000 on a Cameron-Gardner loader to load sugar beet. The tractor was running at around 1700 rpm and shifting backwards and forwards with little to show whenever he changed direction, no jerk, no bang, just an effortless change. How much better a demonstration like this would have been at the introduction of the gearbox rather than the noise and smoke of the Ford one.

One other small problem with Select-O-Speed was that when using the inching pedal in reverse to hitch up to an implement, as soon as you put the pedal down to slow down as you approached the attachment points, the tractor would change direction and you would find yourself traveling forwards which was very frustrating if you were about to fit the linkage arms. No-one told us to drive like an automatic car, on the brake pedals, once this had been learned there were no more problems. Select-O-Speed was a much maligned gearbox that needed a slight tweak to make it a world beater but the Ford management lost confidence in it and it disappeared from the scene in 1969.

I was called to a S-O-S gearbox problem in 1968 that shows what was expected of the gearbox by some customers. The tractor was fairly new and operated by an owner driver, usually the best combination as they took more care of oil changes than some operators. The problem reported was jerky shifting between gears. When I got to the farm there was no-one around so I warmed the tractor, checked all the clutch pressures and adjusted the brake bands. By this time the owner had arrived and I asked him to try the tractor to see if the problem had been cured, the answer was a definite “No”. I explained that it was common for there to be a jerk between gears 4 and 5 and between 8 and 9 as this was where the range changed but he was insistent that there were jerks between all the gears when, in fact, there was nothing abnormal. In the end I asked him what he was using as a comparison and he replied “The gear changes on my new Rover Automatic”.

The new hydraulically operated PTO clutches on 4 and 5000 tractors gave stopping problems. Many modifications to brake shoes and clutch plates were tried on the early tractors but to no avail until the introduction of the band brake in the 1970’s. Even then, the 4000, with its PTO clutch mounted in the bottom of the gearbox still had drag problems and the Select-O-Speed version was never cured.

There were many more minor problems that took time and effort on behalf of the dealer field service staff and Fords own people but slowly things got sorted. When the Ford Force tractors were introduced in July 1968 we entered a new era of the Ford story, we had a range of tractors that we were proud of and which were trouble free. Ford acknowledged the help Dealer staff had given and we all received a letter thanking us for our help and a tie which I still wear on occasions even though it is many, many years out of fashion.

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