Colt Case Ingersoll Garden Tractors

DavidBarkey wrote: ↑Wed May 07, 2025 6:32 am A working man who's life has been spent doing not sitting is allowed to Vent his frustration about limitation from injury . With what has happened to me in the last few years and the fact that a large number of the kids I went to school with did not make it this far in life . I remind myself that a dead man does not complain .

David I can relate to your comments. I have older siblings and when we get together they are always mentioning about people I know and what has happened to them. Many times the people are much younger than us. Life is a conundrum. Harry

Well gentlemen the hunt for rusty gold continues.
I’ve been on the lookout for a usable hey rake since the old high wheel IH gave up on me.

Enter this beauty! This is a New Holland model 256. I know it looks ugly but I couldn’t pass up the deal. If it’s as good as I think it is, it will be quite an upgrade. This model is still sought after around here so I happy to find one at what I felt was a good price.

I’m excited to go over it and see what I actually bought but, we have storms and rain moving in for the next few days so it will have to wait. To be continued

So that's ground driven I guess? I always kinda wonder about ground drive implements that have what seems like very smooth tires. My brain always argues that they would slip too much if you get in to a damp area, or a heavy load.

And then the two cranks are height/leveling?

My rake experience is really limited. We had a side delivery rake on steel wheels that I ran once when I was a kid. I'm sure it wasn't ideal, but it worked, and beat the heck out of the dump rake we also used now and again... The side delivery went down the road at the auction a couple years ago, and the dump rake is just yard art now...

Toolslinger wrote: ↑Wed Jun 04, 2025 5:13 am So that's ground driven I guess? I always kinda wonder about ground drive implements that have what seems like very smooth tires. My brain always argues that they would slip too much if you get in to a damp area, or a heavy load.

And then the two cranks are height/leveling?

My rake experience is really limited. We had a side delivery rake on steel wheels that I ran once when I was a kid. I'm sure it wasn't ideal, but it worked, and beat the heck out of the dump rake we also used now and again... The side delivery went down the road at the auction a couple years ago, and the dump rake is just yard art now...

Yes it’s ground driven. The tires really shouldn’t be smooth, but it’s not uncommon to see old rakes with worn out tires! Or steel wheels with the lugs removed.

You really wouldn’t be raking in wet conditions but to your point once the hay is down it can be kinda slick. If you look at the older International rake I was using you can see it’s pretty much a left over from the horse drawn equipment days. IH just removed the seat and replaced the drawbar for a team of horses with a hitch for a tractor. It’s much more like pulling a wagon. The rear wheels are casters. Actually I never experienced much slipping with it.
The problems I found were, you had to watch it on hillsides. It would want to slide and walk away from the windrow. Every once in awhile it would give I little slip on flat ground but I attribute that more to being severely worn with terrible tires, (which are no longer available) hence the tire chains to give it traction. Also because it was originally a horse drawn design it trailed quite a bit behind the tractor and as a result doesn’t follow uneven ground very well.

Having said all that, for something made in the 1930’s-1940’s and completely worn out it made a surprisingly good windrow.

Now look at the New Holland I just picked up.
It’s design is about 30 years newer than that old IH. The tires are worn for sure but you can see the weight of the rake is centered over them to help give traction. This style also tucks up much closer to the tractor, so it follows the ground much better. Yes the two crank are for leveling or setting a pitch on the rake depending on how you want it to be. The other thing I think I’ll like about this one is I can disengage the gearbox from the drivers seat, not an option on the older one. This may be helpful to let the rake free wheel when turning at the end of the row.

Almost all the old equipment was ground driven for decades, and some new stuff is still made that way. I wouldn’t hesitate using one.

Well sorry fellas, it seems I’ve found myself rambling once again! I suppose that will end tonight’s old junk rake talk!

Well what do you know, it’s raining again. Good day to bring the rake into the shop and go over it. The 648 is the tow motor for today. Right off the bat I see the drive shaft is disconnected and we have two flat tires. The 648 shoved in the shop no problem.

It’s got one new tire and one that looks original. I’ll have to keep an eye out for a replacement.
Might as well start at the gear box. The control cable that disconnects the drive gear is broken as well. Let’s see what’s inside. Luckily no surprises in here. The gears all look good but no oil left at all.
There is a small company here in Missouri the reproduces manuals for old equipment. It was only a couple of dollars so I got one for this rake. The book says the gear box should have 2 pounds of general purpose grease. I’ll have to pick up a couple of tubes for that. I went ahead and greased all the points. The bearings all look surprisingly good. Next I started making adjustments to get the basket in position for when I’m ready to give it a try.
The 648 made that easy. I dug through my junk and came up with a cable to replace the broken one that is used to engage the gear box. The should let me engage and disengage the drive from the tractor seat. So all in all it’s about what I expected. It could use some new u-joints in the drive line and some new tines on the bars but overall I’d say it in pretty good shape.

JSinMO wrote: ↑Sat Jun 14, 2025 7:10 pm Well what do you know, it’s raining again. Good day to bring the rake into the shop and go over it. The 648 is the tow motor for today.
IMG_5909.jpeg

Right off the bat I see the drive shaft is disconnected and we have two flat tires. The 648 shoved in the shop no problem.

It’s got one new tire and one that looks original. I’ll have to keep an eye out for a replacement.

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IMG_5911.jpeg

Might as well start at the gear box. The control cable that disconnects the drive gear is broken as well. Let’s see what’s inside.
IMG_5912.jpeg

Luckily no surprises in here. The gears all look good but no oil left at all.
There is a small company here in Missouri the reproduces manuals for old equipment. It was only a couple of dollars so I got one for this rake. The book says the gear box should have 2 pounds of general purpose grease. I’ll have to pick up a couple of tubes for that.
IMG_5913.jpeg

I went ahead and greased all the points. The bearings all look surprisingly good. Next I started making adjustments to get the basket in position for when I’m ready to give it a try.
The 648 made that easy.
IMG_5914.jpeg

I dug through my junk and came up with a cable to replace the broken one that is used to engage the gear box. The should let me engage and disengage the drive from the tractor seat.
IMG_5915.jpeg

So all in all it’s about what I expected. It could use some new u-joints in the drive line and some new tines on the bars but overall I’d say it in pretty good shape.

Amazing that your weather is so different as we are not that far north of you. We have had 2" now since May 1st, crops are struggling and the grass has gone dormant.

Bob

@myerslawnandgarden That is kind of amazing, I think we’re only a couple hundred miles apart. Hard to believe you guys haven’t seen any of this moisture. I’ve been doing everything between showers! As you can imagine things are growing and lush around here. I just saw the long range forecast. Look like we have 2 more days of rain then the pattern changes and we’re dry and in the 90s

High 80's coming here too as is to be expected at this time of the year, maybe some moisture on Wednesday.

Driest Spring that I can remember.

Bob

Well trying to get a few things done and it would appear the electrical gremlins have decided to grace me with a visit.

I wanted to clip the weeds off in the back field and I see the M is not charging. The hood has to come off to get to the generator but luckily it still runs on a mag so it’s just a matter of getting it started. Probably a bad connection or that 6 volt battery had finally had it.

I moved on to the 648 and it had no power at the switch at all. Then I remembered the switch is going bad. Fooled around with that and got power but nothing to the fuel pump or ignition. Well that’s new. I do have a rats nest of wires. Seems to me when I first got this tractor running I did “fix” the wiring but I didn’t rewire it. I just cut out the worst of it and spliced new in. With some more fiddling around I got it working. So now off to what I was going to do in the first place. I turned my little compost pile over. I want to make this a lot bigger so I started clearing a bigger spot. It runs pretty good when you have power going to the fuel pump and the coil!

I think these will be put on the list for winter projects.

Been awhile since we went up to the shop, let’s go get something accomplished.

You might remember I have two John Deere sickle mowers I fixed up and use. This is the lift link and adjuster used to lift the bar when you raise the mower. I only have one link so I decided to make another one.

I found this old bar, it’s a slightly bigger diameter but should work fine. A friend of mine suggested I make a jig to bend the bar into shape, but looking around the shop I found a set up that’s just right! The back of my blade has a pin that’s the perfect size. I used the torch to heat the rod up and did a lot of beating and bending And eventually ended up with a link. It is rather crude, but, when you look at the original part John Deere did a fairly rough job too! I put it in place so now all that left is to do some adjustments and see if it holds. And a new addition also showed up yesterday! I didn’t get a picture but I used the 648 to unload it. It was about all the loader could handle but it did the job!

It started life as a 14foot field cultivator but it’s been modified and appears to have been sitting in a fence row for a long time. There are enough sweeps left to make a 5 or 6 foot cultivator. The plan is to cut the tool bar in half and make one that will fit either the 2N Ford or the Farmall M with one half and save the other half to build some other implement later.
But that will have to wait for another day!