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Comment by adamcharnock | Hacker News Reader

Up until a year ago I was regularly using a Massy Fergusson 135 [0] (Perkins Diesel version), made sometime in the 1970s. It was wonderful! So amazing to drive and use. Clunky and heavy, but you really really felt like you were using a machine. In low gears, if you put you foot down on the accelerator the engine would roar, and your speed would barely change!

And there was no fancy technology in it at all. If I was in the forest and had forgotten the key, I'd just reach behind the dashboard and hot-wire it. The air filter was basically a shisha-pipe that bubbled the incoming air through wire wool and engine oil.

Its fuel gauge didn't work either. You just had to take a look in the tank, or quickly react as soon as the revs started dropping. I ran it dry a few times and had to sit there with a spanner in one hand and YouTube into the other, while trying to bleed all the fuel lines. But they were all on the outside of the vehicle, which made it comparatively easy I imagine.

I've never actually driven a modern tractor, so don't know how it compares. I imagine the clutch is easier on the knees these days!

Anyway, this just felt like the place to share this.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massey_Ferguson_135

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> Up until a year ago I was regularly using a Massy Fergusson 135

There is a tradition in several European countries named Affouage: If you live in a rural area, you can get very cheap (or even free) wood at the condition that you go to cut it yourself in the close-by forest.

Many many people who are doing this practice are still using today Massy Fergusson 135, Renault R98/461, Ford 3000-4000 series, SOMECA or similar low tech tractors.

The reason are simple: They are cheap to operate, cheap to repair (damages happen easily forest environment) and their small size is perfect for the task.

The demand for these things will never die. Rugged environment requires cheap and robust hardware.

If this startup can capitalize on that, they do have a market.

>"f this startup can capitalize on that, they do have a market."

$100K-$200 is very expensive for many. better find used old one

> 100K-$200 is very expensive for many. better find used old one

It is true. But the stock of old repairable tractor will soon or later run dry.

The price of some of these are currently increasing on the secondary market.

If you told me 20y ago, that the old rusty tractor in the neighbour Grand'Pa's storage would be an appreciating asset, I would have laugh.

>"But the stock of old repairable tractor will soon or later run dry."

Then some other country will come up with the alternative. It is insane that piece of very old and simple tech has such a price tag. There are whole bunch of countries that have cheap enough metal to come up with the alternative

I would like this in a new car company. Low tech, simple to operate, repair, etc. the tech is what goes out of style and I don’t know how (or don’t care) to use half of tech cars have to offer aside from the automatic safety stuff.

Sounds like the Slate truck.

Nice that looks pretty cool! Maybe once they become a real product I’ll look into it haha.

People put whatever engines they can find on old truck chassis. It’s up to you to do the swap. Most people do want to DIY anything on a car. Enthusiast based models usually don’t sell in high volume.

The hard part is convincing enough capitalists to invest into a high volume low margin product/company that doesn't have a real chance of being a jackpot win down the road. Investors don't want stocks that at its best gain a percentage or two above the overall market, there are plenty of other options with similar returns that have better worst-case results if there is a market crash. A co-op business could theoretically do it and would be happy with such margins, except it is unlikely a co-op is going to have enough capital to start with enough scale to actually push into the automotive market.

The problem with making a low-tech car is that a lot of high tech stuff is mandatory for the car to be road legal.

In most US states, if you're willing to build it yourself, you have a lot more leeway. It was part of the formula that allowed Local Motors to exist (sadly they aren't around now).

YMMV of course, but worth checking into if you have the mechanical and welding skills.

Sir Edmund Hillary and his team drove early Massey-Fergussons to the South Pole in 1958 (much to the annoyance of Sir Vivian Fuchs who Hillary beat to the pole even though Hillary was supposed to be a support player only :). The tractors weren't really suited to the job but they were tough enough to make it anyway.

> Rugged environment requires cheap and robust hardware.

I read this and immediately thought "lunar colony". And especially if that colony wants to make more of their equipment themselves.

The first motorized thing I've ever driven was a Massey Ferguson 37 I think. I still hope to have my own some day !

At the moment my little brother and my father, who are living in a rural area, have started a collection of vintage tractors by buying everything they can and fixing it up, help that my dad's a mechanic. I'm frankly jealous.

I learnt to drive on one of those. I'm a city kid but my grandfather was a wool farmer. Every school holiday we'd visit and I's spend my days literally puttering around the farm, which was pretty huge (~2000ha).

When I started out, 13ish or so, I had to stand on the clutch to get it down.

If you gave it enough beans and dropped the clutch it'll pop a wheelie! (Don't tell my grandpa)

Honestly, I still had to practically stand on the clutch with mine!

I'd teach someone to drive it and say, "now push down on the clutch". They they would heave and struggle, then eventually succeed and look victorious. I'd say, "well done, it is now half way down! But that's all you need for now!"

EDIT: To fully explain: It has a two-stage clutch. You half-press it and it disconnects the wheels from the engine. If you fully depress it all the way to the floor, it additionally disconnects the power-take-off shaft (PTO) from the engine. The PTO shaft is a spindle on the back of the tractor which drives things like your flail mower, wood chipper, etc.

EDIT 2: Edit 1 was for the general audience, not the parent commenter ;-)

> The PTO shaft is a spindle on the back of the tractor which drives things like your flail mower, wood chipper, etc.

... and kills/maims anyone with lose clothing trying to step over it!

Oh, god yes.

I mowed using a Farmall H on a family farm when I was about 12 y/o. I don't remember ever having deadly serious conversations with family members up to that point in my life. All four grandparents, aunts and uncles-- it seemed like everybody-- sat me down, looked me dead in the eye, and told me sternly and bluntly "you turn off the PTO and see the shaft isn't turning before you get off the tractor. Every. Time."

All of them knew somebody who lost an arm or leg or got killed when they got pulled into a PTO.

That was probably the first time I'd ever been given the opportunity to operate a machine that would fucking kill me if I shirked on respecting it. I will never forget the tone of that communication.

Without going too far into the weeds here, IMO this experience is representative of gun rights, zoning, and all sorts of other differences between urban and rural.

Rural kids are put into situations where they are expected to rely fully on themselves, with life-or-death consequences, from a young age. When your pre-teen is driving a machine on their own that could easily kill them or those around them, giving them a .22 rifle is just... normal. It's not at all the same situation as a kid the same age who lives in an apartment and who may have never been in a place where no one would be close enough to hear them if they screamed for help.

I can't wrap my head around the idea that a large number of people who live in cities seem to want to extend childhood through age 25. My daughters are 12 and 17, and between them have over fifty animals directly depending on them for survival. It's just... foreign.

I don't "want" to extend childhood; but where I live makes it a little difficult to let my kids roam the way I did. Go too far one way and you're heading into busy highway traffic hell, go too far the other way and you're heading into hobo territory.

Wish I could move; I could sell this overpriced place and almost retire.... not under my control

> not under my control

Why, if I may ask?

Wife or custody orders, usually

Family, yes. Nothing bad or negative, I like where I live a lot. It's just busy, and not super safe for wandering children, at least until they're a bit older.

>Rural kids are put into situations where they are expected to rely fully on themselves, with life-or-death consequences, from a young age.

come to the city, farm boy, and we'll give you a corner you can sling the brown from and we see how you do. we find something fo yo daughters to do too*

*i have absolutely no street smarts, country or city, but I do watch Law & Order and know how to pound a nail and know what to grease the maitre d' to get into the hottest restaurants in town. and beyond that i got friends, some of these guys know people who know people, just sayin

Ah yes, encouraging people into shitty situations, the hallmarks of city life.

His tone I did not like either, but his point was that city life is not without mortal dangers either, which I think is fair.

Perhaps one difference is that it seems to be considered good/normal parenting to expose your farm kids to mortal dangers, but it's definitely not considered good parenting to expose your city kids to mortal dangers (despite the city having no lack of mortal dangers).

I believe in the country, one chooses the dangers and has some control. In the city, the danger is mostly out of control.

Rural dangers are (usually) environmental/natural.

Urban dangers are other person.

A kid gets hurt hiking, "They were unlucky."

A kid on a scooter gets hit by a car, "Why weren't the parents watching?"

Rural values independence, Urban collectivism.

In the Urban situation you can emphasize with both kid and driver.

Poe's Law whoosh

DeMyer's Law, superwoosh

People can have different lived experiences and it's OK; they are differently valuable and beneficial. I'm a certified unc, easily double the age of your oldest, and I have 0 animals depending on me for survival. It means, among other things, that I can simply decide to leave town for a week and don't need to arrange for replacement humans to take care of other living beings -- and this is a valuable freedom to have.

I think you're generalizing too much. Rural communities take gun safety seriously. Farming communities take farming equipment seriously. Kids grow up internalizing the seriousness of these things, which is communicated expressly and tacitly their whole lives by countless people around them, including their friends. Plus they encounter walking examples of what can go wrong, like a missing finger, burn scars (not careful around bonfires or burn pits), or bullet holes (I knew at least 2 or 3 kids growing up with scars from shot). But put those same kids or adults who are careful with those machines in a similarly dangerous but novel situation, and they'll do dumb shit like anyone else. I'm tempted to argue they're more likely to do something dumb because they have a false confidence from their experience with other dangerous situations, whereas suburban and city kids may be more likely to be too scared to play around with any dangerous machine or situation.

I lived on a farm for a year as a young kid (farmer rented a couple of trailers on his land). I remember one day I was hanging around the hog pen watching the giant hogs mill about, probably contemplating trying to pet one. Mr Austin came by and sternly told me to not to reach through the fencing, then knelt down and showed me his ear, which was missing a big chunk.

On the flip side, plenty of Rural and Suburban people are terrified by the city, which kids growing up in the city shrug off.

Rural folks might learn to respect a PTO or the varmint rifle by age 10, but city kids learn how to navigate the bus routes and subway. They learn how to walk on crowded streets, how to live among a lot of different people, including dangerous people(and how to avoid the conflict).

It's all quite interesting. Different kinds of toughness, different kinds of mental fortitude.

I think that there's a major difference in the resulting mindsets that the two types of experiences form, though.

The first learn that nature is always present and doing its best to kill you / wreck your harvest, and that it is only through man's intelligence and social bonds that we thrive. I would argue a corollary of this is that one cannot tolerate malicious or grossly neglectful people around.

The second group learns that other people are a liability and that bad actors are just a fact of life to be tolerated and worked around.

Both approaches are clearly optimal for their respective environment. The former seems like a stronger foundation for building a civilization on, though.

This is becoming such a weird romanticisation of rural Americana!

Your civilisation is being destroyed because a largely rural constituency is able to clean a rifle in 60s but appears to have no critical thinking skills when it comes to a certain New Yorker.

Yes it’s good to learn how to be resilient in nature, but it’s also important to learn how to get along with and manage relationships with larger groups who are not always to be trusted.

The point missing from this discussion is that because of hysteria over stranger danger (not supported out by any real evaluation of or changes in risk) and because we allow cars to dominate our urban spaces, city kids are being denied opportunities for independence they previously had. That’s the real change that’s happened … and we’re replacing real urban experience with corporate attention economies.

City kids can get on the bus or urban rail in actual big cities. Even in places like urban philippines or mexico where there is [often] no public transport, collectivos take up this niche. Kids abound in these places even in places like Manila where traffic is way worse and way more homicidal, and they take the jeepnee to go to the next barangay.

It's really mainly in the suburbs where neighborhoods are choked off by bike unfriendly freeways and no for-hire transit.

> The first learn that nature is always present and doing its best to kill you

> The second group learns that other people are a liability

Sounds like nature is simply survival + entropy and sometimes that leads to mixed incentives. Rural folks also understand people are dangerous. Per capita violent crime and murder is higher in Rural areas.

That's why I find it interesting, they're different expressions of common survival needs.

The phrasing of "gun rights" in the context that's really about gun responsibilities is a big part of the problem. And I say this from an unusual position; I'm a Brit who was taught to shoot at school (cadets). The urban gun control question is not so much about responsibility as about malice. There's not a huge number of people with murderous intent, but there are enough. And the resistance of rural America to the questions of either "do you actually need a gun?", "are you a responsible person?", and "no, you can't bring that into the city" result in thousands of deaths every year in the city. If they were willing to allow separate rules for different areas, this wouldn't be nearly as heated.

> a large number of people who live in cities seem to want to extend childhood through age 25

This is not great, and a more complicated problem of percieved danger.

Maybe 'city' folk should offer something in exchange then. I would trade megamillion 'city' sovereignty on 'gun control' in exchange for stopping application of the NFA and GCA in the 'country'.

Right now all 'city' offers is a shittier deal and pray they do not alter it worse. Obviously that's not politically viable way to get agreement and part of the reason why gun control advocates think "nothing changes."

Cant you all just pass some laws that apply to your place only? Why does it have to be a trade.

That's not what was done. The GCA and NFA was imposed on the entire country and none of the gun control advocates are offering to give that up in exchange for more local control. That was the "compromise." (oh yes, we did get an act allowing exemption from prosecution for merely travelling though a restrictive jurisdiction with an illegal weapon, but surprise surprise, places like New York just ignore that anyway and jail you until you can appeal it to federal court) It was always more and more regulation on people in the 'country' with nothing in exchange to offer them for having to give something up. And then, on top of that, the 'cities' added more on top of that (but refer to next paragraph for more).

When the 'country' finally got sick of it then you wound up with state pre-emption against local control being passed in most states because it turned out that bargain was a fraud.

So what I would propose, is if 'city' really wants to loosen up the gridlock, they should bring something serious to the negotiating table. Like ending the GCA and NFA in 'country' and in exchange state pre-emption gets nixed so 'city' can pass tighter laws there.

So to answer your question:

> Cant you all just pass some laws that apply to your place only? Why does it have to be a trade.

Here is where we are at. State pre-emption stops 'city' from passing stronger local control. And federal law stops 'country' from passing weaker local control. To break that gridlock 'city' and 'country' have to have something on the offering table for each other. That is why it has to be a trade.

But then, "country" feels slighted when "city" eventually grows to encompass some of them.

Ive never heard a rural person talk about wanting to bring guns into cities, they generally avoid cities in general. I do hear lots of talk about urban focused gun regulations wanting to be passed nation wide without any exemptions for rural folks or even the slightest nuance or knowledge about guns and existing gun laws.

America's biggest obstacle to meaningful gun control is the groups and people pushing gun control the hardest have no idea what they are legislating. That's how we got nonsense bans on stuff like slings and bayonets, or trying to specifically ban AR-15s while functionally identical guns would remain legal.

And the second obstacle, which isn't far behind, is nobody trusts the US government enough to want to disarm themselves. We already got a police state and the largest military in the world and absolutely zero reasons in living memory to trust the government to look after its people instead of abusing them.

And frankly, I think any gun control measure in America is completely worthless and will only do more harm than good if the majority of gun owners don't trust the government enough to protect them all the time and aren't willingly turning in their guns. US citizens have enough guns to arm the entirety of themselves 100x times over so even if you could seize 95% of guns with magic, that's still enough blackmarket guns for 100+ years of insurgency with zero additional production. Personally I think we would do better to focus more on improving the lives of average citizens so they don't want to blast people randomly.

I grew up in a city, my wife on a ranch that was several sections large. We have lived in large dense cities and we currently live on a "smaller" ranch. I have taken densely packed subways to work on one hand and walked home on my own property more than a mile after running out of gas. Here is my observation. Neither camp typically has a clue about why the other might be motivated by a different opinion.

Take your .22 rifle. Many truly rural families would feel that this tool was essential. Same for having knife on you. We have lived where there are rattlesnake and coyotes as an almost every day thing. Not so much rattlesnakes but certainly coyotes. In fact bear and cougar were not out of the question. The idea that I would allow my kids to wander on the property without a .22 in their 4 wheeler seemed risky. They were expected to know how to shoot just as they were expected to know how to ride a horse, and drive a tractor unsupervised. We taught them to be safe and could not have run our ranch without our girls taking on some big dangerous responsibilities.

We have also lived in big cities where the idea that many of the liberties we enjoyed in the country were insane in the city. The idea that any random teen should be allowed to drive a 80hp tractor around or carry a gun or a fixed blade knife was insanity. Just as allowing my kids to run down the sidewalk or play unsupervised in the park after dark was insanity. On our fist day after moving my eldest daughter ran down the sidewalk and was hit (but not injured) by a car coming out of a driveway.

She just had no clue about how cars in a dense city moved. There just are different life rules that apply in different situations. Guns can be critically important in one environment and absolutely insane in a second. Same goes for driving a tractor that could kill you or a family member or going to a park after dark.

Unless people understand that a different environment might require a different set of norms or even laws we can't have a productive urban/rural conversation. Of course I can drive my ATV along your fence line. You probably can't even see it from your home or hear it. Though you can bet my dad asked your dad for permission 40 years ago. Try running your unregistered, unlicensed ATV through your suburban neighbor's yard and you will find out why there are important laws preventing you from doing what was perfectly fine in the back country.

I have never driven a tractor, but clearly remember our headmaster giving us this exact lecture when I was about 8. This in a town of 20,000 people where I expect not even 2% of the kids would even visit a farm outside of an organised trip, but clearly an important enough message to be worth broadcasting.

First farm death I ever knew of was related to me by a friend who used to live on the farm next to the dead person. He had PTO engaged but engine running while he was fixing a (I think) thresher. Clutch must have engaged and his dead, flailing remains were found by his wife when she came to call him in for dinner.

Deceptively dangerous!

An exposed, spinning shaft seems benign but once it wraps you or your clothing around the shaft it pulls you in and destroys you in a flash.

Why was the clutch so heavy? Did it serve some purpose or was it just due to the limitations of the technology at the time?

I have certainly driven cars with lighter and heavier clutches (I live in EU, automatics weren't popular until recently and are still far from ubiquitous) but I couldn't tell you why every model just doesn't get a light clutch for comfort. A diesel Subaru I drove had a particularly heavy clutch as I recall, so at stop lights I would pop into neutral instead of holding the clutch down for an extended period.

To deliver very high torque, the clutch plates needs to be pressed very hard together to generate enough friction. This also means that it take a lot of force to pull them apart, if you use a simple lever, as older machines do.

Modern machines may use complex mechanical linkages to make the clutch easy to pull apart but still maintain a firm contact, but that also means higher cost and fragility. Or they use pneumatics or hydraulics to assist, sorta like power steering.

That, and design tolerances. A fancy clutch can be light and strong (think ferarri) but farm machines need to work in the dirt/rust and so need larger tolerances. So heavier springs and bigger .... Bigger everything. A slipping clutch in a Ferrari is annoying. A slipping clutch on a tractor means a missed harvest.

Plus mechanical release mechanisms of heavier machinery were often designed in a way that the clutch snaps at a certain point (also in order to reduce wear in the clutch).

Also because farm machines usually need max torque fast to break loose from static friction. You want a clutch to bite hard when pulling things through mud.

I once changed a broken release bearing of a truck. It was a relatively simple repair but the very heavy gearbox has to be taken out to do this - which is problematic especially if done on a yard without proper equipment.

Since then I always pop into neutral when standing at a traffic light. It is interesting how many people in manual driving cultures think there would be no wear and tear if they press the pedal down completely.

Of course there is, as there has to be a force translating connection between rotating parts and parts of the release mechanism which cannot rotate. Only when the pedal is left alone, the release bearing disconnects from the rotating clutch.

As a motorcyclist stopped at the traffic light I always keep the gear on and clutch pulled in. Why? Because I have to be ready to take off when the moron driver on the phone behind me fails to stop.

Fair

I don't ride anymore, but I always did the same at least until a few cars were at a dead stop behind me.

I do the same thing, and I rationalize it with the fact that the clutch in my motorcycle is is constantly bathed in oil so it can take the "abuse."

The release bearing might not be

This is how I was taught by my insurance-recognized course and for the same reason you provided.

I believe wet clutches are semi-designed with this use-case in mind

He knew :)

That seems to be common, the communist-era tractor I was riding was pretty much "stand with full weight and still have to brace by the steering wheel to push it"

Good that at least there wasn't much gear changing, pick one for task and just use it

My grandfather had one of these, though gas powered. It may have been the Ford model, cannot remember, though his was built I believe in the late 40s / early 50s. One story that still makes me laugh, he couldn't start it one day, and asked my grandmother to give him a pulling start w/ their ford diesel pickup. One look and my about 12 year old self just knew she wanted to be anywhere else but there (some foreshadowing, she had a reputation for a lead foot). Grandpa had already tied a rope from the tractor to the truck, and I believe he was in maybe one of the lower gears ready to pop the clutch after he got up to speed. Grandma tore (yes, tore) out of the yard shifting gears, and she was accelerating down their long driveway headed for the main road as Grandpa started frantically waving his hat trying to get her to stop. I'm pretty sure he never asked her again to help start the tractor. And yeah, the tractor was started, probably in the first 50 feet of that episode.

Never do a job well if you never want to do it again.

My dad had one of these, to support his farming hobby. (He used to joke that we ate fifty dollar cucumbers, and a hundred-dollar ear of corn.)

It came in handy living in the country, when occasionally someone would get bogged down on a dirt road, and this thing would come to the rescue.

My grandpa was a high school principal to support his love of farming, not because he wasn't dedicated, but because they wanted to survive

Did your dad grow up with subsistence farmers? I also encountered plenty of hobby farmers who joke about the cost of their hobby which used to get me confused a bit since it was very much a food on the table thing for my grandparents and at least a small financial bonus to me.

Then again I don't buy much new other than seed. Everything feels like a ripoff nowadays.

Hey, we have the exact same model and it's still in use. Those things were built like tanks.

We have an even older one from the 1940s that also still fires up and works just fine.

The main thing the modern tractor buys at this point is simply a cabin with AC (which, TBH, is a VERY nice feature). Otherwise there's not much reason not to use the older farm equipment even today.

We'll still use the old massy for tilling and seeding.

I grew up on a farm in Germany. Our "little" tractor was the MF135 (3 cylinder engine!). I started driving it for real work at 12 for the simple reason that my grandpa, who was the third driver when the hay was being brought in, had passed away, and someone had to do it.

My dad and a cousin drove the big tractors. Can't remember whether MF55 or MF65, possibly one of each. Thundering monsters being driven flat out, double-clutched gear changes and all. The reason for all the rush is that the weather isn't that reliable in south Germany, and when they hay is dry and ready, it's all hands on deck.

Anyway... years later I visited the old homestead and there they still were, those big... umm. On Youtube you can probably still find a video of one being turned into a riding lawnmower, underslung mowing deck and all. Those tractors belong in the "Old MacDonald had a farm" era. The modern world is different with the base model of those tractors in the article having three times the power of those old ones, and it goes up from there.

Would fitting the old tractor with one of those external AC units that run off 12V work?

The old tractors are missing cabs, they are open to the air.

Some of them have a removable roof but that's about it.

> Those things were built like tanks

In the late 40s, a lot of them were built from tanks !

We used to have a really old Massey Ferguson, I think TE-20, at the family (moonshine) farm. It was finally retired around 15 years ago and replaced with a MF 165. I hear you about the clutch--sometimes I feel I can't even push it down far enough.

I also love driving it, apart from the fact the hydraulics are somewhat off, so the front/rear lift won't ever stay in position.

The smaller tractors now mostly use a hydrostatic transmission instead of a clutch[]. You just move a plate that changes the mechanical advantage of the engine powered hydraulic drive. It's basically another set of hydraulics but for driving the tractor.

[] https://youtu.be/TunlPGZ3UOg?t=69

Still rocking one over here. The thing had not been maintained for 20 years while still being used, ran several times with almost no oil in the engine, drank gasoil full of water.

And it still works.

Things were made different back then.

I looked up the manual, you got everything you need to repair it. Maintenance is extremely easy. Even have electric schema.

Now my BMW, I looked into the manual how to change a light. It said to go to the dealer lol.

Fuck the modern car / tractor / tools. I blame the people for that, we went from customer that demanded to be able to repair their stuff to people who are now mechanically illiterate. I'm not sure they would even know how to replace a tire on their Tesla :)

That's why manufacturer have all the latitude to do what they do. And that's why it didn't go very far with farmers.

> It said to go to the dealer lol.

It's amazing we let it slip this far. Even cars from a decade or so ago feel much more repairable. I bought an EV and I haven't even seen the motor yet, because I'm going to have to dismantle a bunch of plastic-clipped stuff to remove the frunk, and I've broken enough brittle tabs for one lifetime. God forbid they'd just use actual metal fasteners for this stuff.

Yeah that also.

It's even worst tho, one day I layed a little bit against the front of the car and it made a reverse bump in the bodywork right on my ass.

Got a 2000 Suzuki that is full metal.

I think the trend of plastic went around 2000 to 2010 because of regulation on crash, plastic absorbs better the kinetic energy so we don't get our head smashed.

But yeah, no excuse to not make it easy to dismantle. It's the equivalent of Volkswagen using all kind of different screws to hold the plastic protection under the car, so that the average Joe who has standards screw drivers can't bleed his oil himself or change the gasoline filter.

This is maddening but you don't know it when you buy the car. It's only later.

And example, in the US, is how much the population makeup has changed over time:

https://dailyyonder.com/census-report-unusually-informative-...

Go back to 1910, and more than 50% of the population lived in rural areas. And rural doesn't mean "suburbs". As this trend continues further back in time, I'd expect that people in their 30s may be living in cities in 1910, but we often not born there. They migrated from rural areas to the city.

Which means that city people even into the 50s had a very, very rural background.

So people who grew up on farms miles from any town or neighbours or stores, who had to rely upon themselves entirely, were the ones buying machines. But if you look at today, many people are apartment dwellers, or live in townhomes. They don't even have a place to fix something, let alone the tools or background.

I could fix any small engine before I was 10, work on cars before I could drive, and it's because you just picked up this stuff in a rural area. I guess my point is, if you don't know how to fix anything, and no one around you does except for specialists?

Then you probably won't care about owner repairability as much.

Sad, but probably a likely reason why we're where we are.

> Sad, but probably a likely reason why we're where we are.

Yeah, that's kind of sad.

I bet that one day kid won't even know what a petrol engine car is, won't know how to drive and will basically just use self driving taxi.

Hopefully I'd be dead before that lol.

Fortunately there's less mechanical stuff to break or go bad on EVs.

Did yours have a foot feed for the accelerator? I've never seen one without a hand feed for the rpm's on the steering column.

The fancy ones had an accelerator pedal, but most just had the lever on the steering column.

Wild. We ran a 175 and 1100 for our daily tractors before Grandpa died and I quit farming (big ass John Deere machines for the real work at planting and harvest though).

They're phenomenal little machines that can do 99% of what you need. It blows my mind that for years, Grandpa farmed with a little Ford smaller than the 175. I can't imagine planting with that thing. The ww2 generation really were tough as nails.

The one I drove (and a much older MF as well) had both. A lever on the steering column, as well as a foot pedal. I've never seen anyone without one elsewhere either, maybe they were only sold that way in my country.

Mine and a pedal and steering column lever, so I guess I got one of the fancy ones!

So our main small tractors were a 175 and an 1100. The 1100 had a bucket but I would've killed for a bucket on that little 175. Man that thing was handy. You could drive it through the yard without leaving tire tracks.

"Mash the foot feed" is a phrase you'll hear mostly in the southern US, and rarely elsewhere, including HN.

I shamefully have some Facebook Marketplace notifications for some Massy tractors. I'd love one. I don't even have land to use them, I just think they are neat.

I wonder if it's legal to just park your tractor in a regular parking spot across your apartment. I'm European so we have small parking spots. But would a small tractor fit in the parking spot of the biggest Ford truck?

Definitely

Tractors are tall but generally not that much wider or longer than a car. Small ones, especially, are pretty manageable.

You'll likely appreciate this then: https://farmboymusic.bandcamp.com/track/we-couldnt-start-the...

My father drove one of those in his childhood. Now retired, he has bought a used one and uses it to maintain about an acre of land (and his grandkids love helping him).

Once, it broke down, and I was astonished to see that there are forums dedicated to this tractor. If I remember correctly, it was a problem with the fuel line that is rather common, and we managed to fix it thanks to these communities.

As I was researching it, I read stories of MF135s found abandoned in a ditch and starting immediately again. A robustness that makes this and other models popular in Africa...

> The air filter was basically a shisha-pipe that bubbled the incoming air through wire wool and engine oil.

What is a shisha-pipe?

Basically a fancy bong.

Also known as hookah or just waterpipe.

Class of Middle Eastern tabletop usually-tobacco smoking devices with water based filtering

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookah

The other name for these filters are "oil bath filters" basically it snorkles the intake air through oil and that sticks to any dust and dirt.

with a spanner in one hand and YouTube into the other

There are so many useful videos on this stuff, but unfortunately the majority of the population still seems reluctant to learn.

I think this kind of thing is much more commonplace than you think.

Never underestimate a young person and their phone. They not only use youtube or chatgpt to solve daily problems, but date, pay bills, and communicate with their friends using mostly videos/photos/emojis (and occasionally english).

I'm not sure the majority of the population will ever need, or even want, to learn to bleed fuel lines, so I wouldn't consider it reluctance. And I would wager that the majority of the (internet) population does engage in learning activities on the regular.

Tangential, but made me think of this YouTube channel I like.

I have no plans to own a tractor but for some reason many others and I enjoy videos like this one:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pQO-pVxvKvA

New Zealand tree farmer Marty T has been posting detailed "back from the dead" tractor / bulldozer / grader / etc. restoration project videos for some time.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVvO1tKKjRQ

* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrCvcRxFfyzt3vJmctRaN...

etc. Also hydropower from old washing machine parts and other associated stuff you do on the land videos.

Possibly a result of a high Systemising Quotient (SQ)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathising%E2%80%93systemisin...

My son recently broke the string on the light cord in the bathroom. I opened it up in perhaps the naive expectation that someone would have designed that in such a way that the string can be reattached. Sadly it wasn't.

In fact when you open the interior plastic piece the whole thing springs apart and everything from the clicking mechanism to the electrical terminals explode in different directions.

Thankfully, someone had uploaded a video of a very similar switch and, after a few cross words (man I hate assembling mechanisms with springs), I had a new overhand knot in the string and all of the contacts, springs and terminals back in place.

I would, without doubt, drive down to a shop and buy a new one next time...

The ones here in the UK have these little plastic connectors on the string. The switch itself has a very short string coming out of it(<10cm), the plastic connector and then the main pull cord. These connectors are simple tubes with an opening that hold and hide the knots. Makes changing the pull cord quite easy, you just feed it through the hole in the connector, tie a simple knot at the end and pull it back into the connector body.

I actually had one of these connectors break on a bathroom light and just 3D printed a new one. But it should be fairly trivial to add one of these to any light pull you already have.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5140505 (not my design)

Yeah, for some reason the knot broke on the inside rather than at that connector.

The name of the brand is "Massey Ferguson" not "Massy Fergusson".

The reason I know that is not that I'm a farmer. It's that 20 years ago a bunch of friends and I wrote and performed a parody song of Gainsbourg/Bardot song "Harley Davidson" where the motorbike brand was replaced with the tractor one.

"Je n'ai besoin de personne en Harley Davidson"

became

"Je n'ai besoin de personne en Massey Ferguson".

I'm now imagining J'taime with tractors and Brigitte Bardot with an ear of corn in her mouth.

> I imagine the clutch is easier on the knees these days! Modern tractors don't really have a clutch. I mean they sorta do, but it's electronic. Even on sizable consumer positioned tractors(I have a JD 5055, but it applies to almost all the JD models), there's just a lever for forward, N, and reverse. Gear shifters work MUCH MUCH better now.

When I was younger I absolutely HATED changing gear on the tractor - it was a matter of dropping the revs which caused a dive, then a clunk finding the gear, then a jolt as the gear took hold and the revs came back up

I never felt in control of that old beast

Ha ha, that's such a wonderful description, that's exactly how it feels!

Changing gears while driving? Are you sure you where supposed to? Many old tractors are without synced drives, so you are supposed to select gear before you start driving. Of course you can change when driving, but then you have to match revs to not get the drop betwen

You have to match revs anyway. Without Synchromesh the trick is to double declutch.

I have the original 1940's Minneapolis Moline R and my wife has the original Farmall H and we both currently live in the city (but grew up farming or close to it) so we're not city kids, but somewhere stuck in between. I deeply get the feeling of using a non-tech machine, and how simple it is but intuitive to use. We used a pain mixing stick to check the gas level in our tractors on the farm, I don't think the gas gauges ever worked. You'd have to whack the starter with a wrench since they didn't ever work half the time. They worked over 60 years before they got their first oil change (my grandpa didn't believe in changing them - but my dad and I think it's just because you'll never get the canister filter to seal ever again if you did change it)

Great memories.

My Ford 2N has exactly two gauges: oil pressure, and ammeter. And the ammeter doesn't work.

But the tractor does.

Those are so cool. First motorized thing I ever drove was some 1950s Ford tractor, as a little kid. My uncle showed me how to use it. I almost had to stand with both feet on the clutch and pull myself up to release it, while my brother manned the wheel and throttle separately.

I wasn't driving too much, but grew up with my uncle and grandfather using Ursus C-335, which is probably from the 70s. They said they traded an ox for it 40-50 years ago, still in use almost daily. Effectively zero electronics.

I went through my teenager years driving one of those MF 135 machines. A very versatile tractor. I enjoyed driving tractors (including a much older MF), when I eventually got my car's driver license some years later I found that driving cars weren't really that interesting.

During certain kinds of driving gear shifts became.. tricky. That's when I learned how to double-clutch, something I kept doing on cars as well, for many years after (think going steep uphill on snow and then having to shift into first gear without stopping)

My father still has one of these in orange and white. I remember when I was a little child and he would start it up, I could feel the concussion of the exhaust in my chest.

An awesome memory. Lovely things, these.

One of my early memories was driving a tractor like this hauling potato harvest with my late grandfather when his "big" tractor wouldn't start. Feels like a 1000 years ago...

I remember when I was young seeing a combine that had a radio and television in the cab. wow!

Now things have wrapped back around, and nobody would want that, they want less tech and to use their phone, lol.

Thanks for sharing all those experiences and tech explanations in how tractor clutches work everyone. Great thread to read. I'm kinda surprised the OP made the HN tops but DIY anything seems to be experiencing a Renaissance. (Not too big a surprise in HN I suppose)

You say “up until a year ago”, what ended up replacing it?

I’m in the market for a tractor in roughly that size, and am very tempted to just find an old machine in decent shape. I’d be very curious about the decision/experience if you did upgrade to something more modern?

The old machines are rock solid. They really just keep going and going.

Really the only reason we got a new tractor was for the cabin with AC. That does make it a lot easier to spend an entire day working field. Otherwise you have to deal with whatever weather it is outdoors which can be unpleasant if it's very cold or very hot.

You also get a radio to listen to, which is nice.

I loved the MF 135 my neighbour had. It was great. The injector pump had failed and we'd swapped it with one off a marine version of the Perkins AD3, which had a reasonably "opened up" governor on it. Flat it out could do a whopping 20mph!

Basic models still sell like hot cakes in India. I see them all the time.

https://masseyfergusonindia.com/massey-ferguson/

Must be used all around the world. My parents had one on our farm in the 70s. Maybe it is still there- as a "back up" tractor. I remember it well.

I spent the night on Flatéy, a 2km long Icelandic island, in 2024, and there were around a half dozen Massey Fergusons strewn about.

The old church had a mural of Icelandic Jesus wearing a fisherman’s sweater.

While I love wrenching on cars, I imagine a tractor like this would scratch a different itch—something more latent, leftover from childhood.

Do you still have the Massy?

I do, but a friend is taking care of the farm now. I moved back to the big city lights (Munich, as fate would have it).

> no fancy technology in it at all

It's amazing we can use huge machinery with internal combustion engines and declare it "no fancy technology"

Any sufficiently mundane technology is indistinguishable from... furniture?

Nice one. Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

An internal combustion engine may be complex, but it's not fancy. I can see and touch and understand every part of it. I can maintain and modify and repair it. This is not true for fancy electronics and certainly not locked-down proprietary firmware.

The magic of an engine is less in how it operates, and more in how it was built. At least around the time they started showing up, manufacturing lots of precision metal parts was not trivial.

Although modern electronics take this further, with both operation and construction being utterly complex.

One of my vehicles is a 2009 Civic. It continues to amaze me that with minimal maintenance, that 17-year-old vehicle will fire right up with the turn of a key, with hundreds (thousands?) of parts moving in a specific way, many of them with tolerances in tiny fractions of an inch.

2010 MB C300 I bought in 2013 from a dealer after the lease expired, parked outside without a garage or cover since then (Virginia).

About 3 years ago a large branch (about 8" diameter) from an old overhanging tree fell right on the transparent sunroof cover and shattered it into a million pieces. After picking them out of the sunroof mechanism (which no longer worked after the impact) and the inside of the car, I covered the opening with several sheets of magnetized vinyl. Works great, never a drop of water inside since then and it's stayed in place without any attention. Temperature control inside the car at rest or while driving at highway speed is like it was before the damage.

Being old now I never go anywhere since I can get stuff delivered. About every 3 weeks I go out and the car starts right up, I drive a 5-mile loop to circulate the oil and then park it for another 3 weeks. Been doing this for years. I do get an oil change annually.

For every modern car I had or used in the last 20 years, the engine itself never was a problem, other than the regular maint, oil, filters, belts, plugs, cables...

Now, electronics problems, albeit relativelly rare, were far more common and fucking expensive.

And then, but this more due to the state of modern roads and streets than the car themselves, suspension issues.

Any technology from before the time of your grandparents, and often parents, is usually perceived to be "not fancy". Because then those elders can't tell you in your childhood what life was like before that technology. So in your lived experience that technology was always there. Reading history later on, doesn't change your emotional experiences.

Freeze LLM progress right here and the future is still totally inconcievable. Humans who have only ever known being able to talk to machines...

It's already inconceivable since today's teenagers have never not had an iPad.

Unless their parents didn't give them one? Ours only had Nooks that only lasted a few years..

Disagree. There's lots of products and goods that have become less fancy as a result of changes in labor/material cost as industrialization ran its course and the old way is considered the fancy way.

Wood furniture joined with glue and pegs rather than inserts and screws. Solid wood furniture at all. Leather and natural fibers gave way to plastics. Ornate castings gave way to simple stampings and simply castings (where things are still cast).

Maybe it is fancy to you now, but with a few primitive hand tools and no docs at all, a HS graduate can take it apart and figure out how it works.

Try doing the same on the ECU in your car. I'll wait.

I learned how engines worked by taking apart, cleaning and reassembling an ancient lawnmower engine so I could use it on my go-kart. I then learned how cars worked by taking one apart and putting it back together again.

Neither of those machines had a transistor in them. It was all basic electricity.

> HS graduate can take it apart and figure out how it works.

Sure you wouldn't like a qualifier on that? I've definitely met some HS graduates that would not be able to do this.

Wait a few years and no HD will be able to do something similar.

See other story on front page right now: educational scores are trending down and that trend is only going to accelerate now that every student is using LLMs.

Yeah, I was introspecting as I wrote that!

We also don't call a hoe fancy technology, but it is.

I don't know about you, but my mother is definitely not technology

The hoe wasn't fancy, but the plow was (at the time).

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