THE MODEL R JOHN DEERE- AWESOME

The first time I climbed up to the seat of the R, I was struck  by the view over the hood. The hood was long and wide compared to the other tractors on the farm. It reminded me of the time I was with my Uncle Gordon and we stopped at the Allis Chalmers dealer in Cinncinnatus, NY where Gordon lived.  That would have been in the early 1960’s I believe. They were also a hardware store, I think, but they had a brand new D21 in the lot. The D21 was the largest tractor in the Allis Chalmers line at the time, with over 100hp. I climbed up in the seat and was amazed by the length and breadth of the hood! I thought it must be like a locomotive engine would look (although it was to be many years before I ever got to touch one of those!). The R hood had the same effect, and I was going to get to drive it!!!

            My first John Deere experience had been in 1966 when my cousins, the Taber’s of Mecklinberg, NY bought their 2510 diesel new. I have bled green ever since, and by the time they came across the R, I had been interested in antique tractor collecting for some time and had a couple of JD’s of my own. So I knew that the R had been JD’s first production diesel tractor, and had been in development for about 10 years before it hit the market, and that when it did, it became an instant hit (well as instant as tractor models get).  They were known to be workhorses that were hard to stall and could do more than their hp rating would lead you to believe it could. About the only failing they had ( if it could be called a failing) was that their pto system could be a little trouble prone. It had a starting engine (or “pony motor”) like Caterpillar diesel tractors did at the time , and I remember being shown where the gas tank for the pony motor was hidden under the hood like an oil bath air cleaner bowl , which was about the size of it. Then I was shown how to start both engines, and I remember thinking that the diesel sounded like somebody beating on an empty 55 gallon drum when it idled. Whatever I did with it that first day caused me to fall in love with it (which isn’t too hard for a tractor to do, really), and I would choose it whenever I could.

            On one occasion, I took it, with a load of  manure in a large spreader we usually pulled with the 2840 (an 85 hp tractor), up to the field on the top of the hill, which has about 18 inches to 2 feet of soil above a layer of shale. It had been a wet year, and I was told not to stop or I would be stuck. I was told to use (I believe) 3^rd gear and keep it wide open, which I did. We were chugging along making a nice cloud of black smoke when I happened to notice out of the corner of my eye, that mud was flowing into the tire tracks behind the rear tractor wheels. I looked more closely, and was startled to see that we were rolling along on the surface of the shale, and that was about 18-20 inches deep at that point. WOW!! I knew that if we did come to a stop. I would have a heck of a time getting to the edge of the field from where we were without losing  a shoe or 2 in the mud! But , much to my amazement and relief, we kept chugging along until the load was gone.

            What an illustration of what torque does for a tractor- it’s far more important than just hp. (I wish the engineers at Kioti would learn that lesson- the engine in my CK25 could use some stroke, and therefore some torque!). John Deere has always had torquey engines, much to my delight.

            The man the Tabers bought the tractor from had told them they would never be able to stall the R, so of course we had to try to! Another job we did with the R when the 2840 wasn’t available was running the feed grinder.  It was that job we used to try our best to stall it. At the time, we still picked corn on the cob and stored it in cribs, where it would be shoveled out when it was needed.  While attempting to stall the R, we shoveled corn until the pop-off door on the top of the grinder came loose. No luck- The R didn’t appear to notice at all. So on the next load, the biggest one of us, namely me,  was sent to the top of the grinder to add my bulk to the spring pressure that held the door down. Then Carl and Paul shoveled- and shoveled-and shoveled some more. Finally, the black smoke signals slowed down until the last beat finally happened,  but it had taken all the shoveling the two of them could do! One more shovelful  and the tractor would have won!  Then we had the job of unloading the grinder without breaking it, too.

            The guys called Jake, the former owner to tell him they’d stalled the R, and he couldn’t believe it until they explained how we’d done it, and he said “but it da—ed near killed you to do it!

            So there you have it, the time we stalled the R. But we didn’t break the pto, either!