#159: Ford 8N how to start and operate. Basic tutorial.

[Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] [Music] hi chad here with purple car life you can see i'm here with the ford 8n today in the previous video last week about the four day den plumbing snow we had a lot of comments uh these are a great tractor and they do have a lot of interest so i wanted to talk a little bit more about this some people asked if we could go over the controls how to start this machine and how to operate it so i'd love to do that today if you're new to the channel i've got several videos about this 8n we put the stabilizer bracket on it we did some brush hogging with this i'll put links to those videos up above but you can also look through our channel search for ford 8n purple color life and you'll see videos about this tractor now as i've said in previous videos this tractor has been in the family for multiple generations it's been right here on the family homestead its entire life so it's awesome that this tractor is here today and it would be used by us i've also mentioned in a previous video that i had my own ford 9n slash 2n we called it a 9n but if you look back at the serial numbers it was actually classified a 2n and there are some differences between the 9n the 2n and the 8n in order of build the nine ends came first then the two ends and there were a lot of two ends they often get miscalled a 9n but the 9n and the 2n are so similar that it really doesn't matter and then there was the eight end and there were there were several variations of the eight end this particular variation was one of the early eight ends it has a front mount distributor rather than a side mount distributor and that's one of the ways you know the difference between the early eight ends and the later eight ends so let's go through the process of starting this particular 8n up and i'll tell you that every ford tractor that i've known and even the cockshut that we used to have had its own personality and you learn the best way to start it you know everyone's not exactly the same when it comes to starting a tractor and i'll show you the process for this particular 8n that seems to work best and then i'll talk you through what worked best on the cockshut 540 and what worked best on my ford 9n most of these older tractors do have a fuel shut off this ford is no different and the the best method for this ford tractor and was also the same for my 2n 9n is two turns open so i spin it twice so that opens on the top after going around two times on many of these older tractors the power takeoff runs whenever the clutch is out and that's true of this 8n it was true of my 9n slash 2n so you always want to when you're starting it up turn that power takeoff off on this tractor that's that lever right there pulled forward in my experience this particular 8n starts best at just under half throttle so you can see here's the throttle [Music] that is low throttle that's high throttle so i like to be right about there to start up the machine this is your choke on this particular aiden i find that it starts best with the choke all the way out and i start i pull the choke out before i start turning over on my old two end the system was a little different i found with that particular tractor i'd want to start the starter and then pull out the choke so like i say you know every tractor's got its own little personality a little bit different and you kind of learn with each tractor what works best to make a start in this tractor pull the choke up before we hit the start button now on these eight end tractors these pedals on the right hand side are your brakes so the outside right hand pedal is your right brake the inside right hand pedal is your left brake that's different than on the two end slash nine end on the old nine end or two end tractors there's two pedals on this side the outside one is the brake the inside one is the clutch so it will vary depending on what model tractor you're on but again this eight end tractor right brake left brake so that means that on this eight end tractor the only pedal on the left hand side is the clutch plus pressing it down engages the clutch now as you can see by the alternator here this 8m tractor has been converted to 12 volt which makes it start much faster before it was 12 volt when it was the original six volt and my old ford 2n slash 9n tractor was a 6 volt they'd have to turn over a long time especially in the cold or if they were cold to start up this tractor with the 12 volt conversion starts very quickly for safety reasons it's always best to start a tractor while you're on it so to start the tractor i'm going to go ahead and engage the brakes push the clutch down and put my transmission in neutral now if you're not familiar with the transmission on a tractor each of them have a little bit of a different shifting pattern the eight ends different than the nine end but if you pull it out of a gear towards center which could be either pushing up or pulling down you'll be able to slide the shifter side to side and know that it's not in gear on the 8n and the 2n series this button is the starter and this is your key so turning the key simply turns the tractor to an on position where it's ready to start and run and pushing the starter is what engages that starter to start the tractor so again we've got the choke all the way out on this tractor we'll just push this down until it starts up then release that button and it'll be running there we go start it right up once it's running you want to push that choke all the way in you don't ever want to run it with the coat somewhat out i'm going to have it adjusted so that when you have it all the way in is when it runs normally for operation now you can see moving the throttle up will raise the engine speed i mentioned before that this little lever is what engages the power takeoff or the pto and on the 8n and the 2n series the pto is also what engages the three-point hitch raise and lower so in order to raise your three-point hitch you have to have the pto engaged and i'll show you how that works now this particular handle is your draft control which means how low the three-point hitch is raised or lowered you see if i push it down the three-point hitch actually drops a little bit when i pull this up if the tractor were running and the power takeoff were running that would raise the lift arms so i'll go ahead and demonstrate that now but remember you have to have the tractor running pushing on the clutch to engage that power takeoff lever down here on my left hand side and then raise and lower this and i'll put the camera back behind so you'll see that that whole time the power takeoff is running that's always a safety concern you want to make sure that nothing is backed by that power take off because if it grabbed a piece of your clothing or hair or string or chain it would twist around there and that could be seriously uh injury hazard uh potential so you always want to be mindful that when that power takeoff is running that will be spinning and you want to stay clear of that so push the clutch down see the power takeoff is spinning when i pull up on this lever it raises the arms and i push down it lowers the arms as soon as i would disengage that power takeoff control it would stop lifting it would still lower but it wouldn't allow you to lift those arms anymore so usually when you're running like doing something like back dragging or moving snow or even brush hogging that's going to be on all the time because for brush hogging you need the power to take off spinning and for constantly raising and lowering the arms for something like snow plowing or back dragging you need to raise and lower that as necessary now i don't know if you'll notice or not but when i started that that time since it's already warmed up it did not need the choke so i didn't pull the choke out at all i just turned the key hit the button made sure my foot was on the brakes in the clutch and it started right up the 48 end tractor you can get on either side my john deere tractor because it's got the joystick here you can get on this side but it's always easiest to get on from the left the ford tractor you get on either side the ford tractors do have somewhat of a parking brake but it's not a great system whenever you push the brake down you see it pushes this entire lever and back here there is a little swivel piece so when you push it down if you lock that in place that's somewhat of a parking brake but i would not rely on it it works okay but not great obviously the better your brakes are the better the parking brake works and you can do the same thing on this side there's another piece over here that when you push this down you can lock that brake in place but again it doesn't work great and it's not an ideal system now these four tractors do have a manual transmission the 8n is a 4 speed with reverse so first second third fourth and reverses all the way over and to the right so you have to push down the clutch and then choose a position here's if i were in first second third fourth and all the way over and up is reverse now unlike a car you cannot shift on the fly you cannot be moving at speed and shift from first to second to third that's not how you work the transmission of a tractor for a tractor you simply select the gear you want to be in your final gear and then let the clutch out and you're in that gear you don't shift up through the gears so let's go ahead and start the tractor up and we'll show you how engaging the transmission works now let's say i wanted to go in reverse i just put the gear shifter over and up in reverse while i'm holding the clutch down you can see my foots on the clutch over here and as soon as i let out the clutch you'll see the ground will start moving because we'll be moving backwards now to go forward let's say we wanted to go in second gear put it down in second gear let off the brake let off the clutch you'll see we're moving forward back back up so i hope you enjoyed this brief little tutorial of how i start and operate the ford 8n tractor if you like videos like this make sure you click that thumbs up button like i said we've got lots of other great videos on our channel about tractors chainsaws this ford 8n the john deere tractor the log splitters all kinds of rural western pennsylvania living so if you like videos like that and you're not already a subscriber go ahead and click that subscribe button we'd love to have you following us along this is the first video i haven't been wearing a coat on in a while it's like a heat wave here it's 44 degrees so you can see it's a little bit muddy everything's starting to thaw out hopefully that means spring is coming i have had fun plowing a lot of snow this winter but i'm ready to get into some summertime routine here i like the days are a little bit longer now so it allows me to get some work done at night time outside so thanks for watching we'll see you again the next time so [Music] so so like i said every tractor has its own little bit of personality this particular eight end the choke has to be out all the way before you hit that start button on my nine end you had to hit the start button and then pull the choke out and kind of feather it in and out to get it to start and the old shut you had to have the choke out all the time when they were starting it even when it was warm so if you've got an older tractor like this and it has its own personality comment down below what system you use to start it up what works best for you it may just help someone else out [Music] foreign

Channel: Purple Collar Life

Views: 26,778

Rating: 4.9305553 out of 5

Keywords: Ford 8N tutorial, How to, Ford 8N how to start, Ford 8n controls, Ford 8n operation, Ford 8n how to start and operate, How to drive a Ford 8n, how to use a ford 8n, ford 8n, ford 9n, ford 2n, Ford tractor, Antique tractor, restored tractor, tractor tips, tractor time with tim, wranglerstar, GP outdoors, Hometown acres, purple collar life, tractor 101, tractors for dummies, new old tractor

Id: PDl2YH4IyyU

Length: 17min 41sec (1061 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021