1956 #Farmall200 & #McCormick-Deering #FC-21 Fast-Hitch Sickle Mower Overview and Tune-Up

morning first thing i'm going to do is get these animals down in the back pasture and then i want to get the tractor and come down and grab the sickle mower and get that tuned up my boys come on come on cows let's go come on hopefully they're smart enough to all go through the gate and not go on the wrong side of the fence yeah it looks like they're coming [Applause] let's go come on [Music] hey henry come on [Applause] [Music] usually this hog panel gate will keep them in but the other day for some reason they decided they wanted to be on the other side of it and they trounced it so i'm gonna have to get uh a gate hook and run the barbed wire across the top and i do have posts coming down here so i can run electricity down here if i needed to we did get most of a day's worth of rain but the pond is still down at least three feet i've got them out on gracie's meadow today and i've got them all penned up out there they can get into george's meadow and then get in the woods road and come back up around and that'll take him a little bit to figure that out but they've chewed this field down pretty well and they've chewed the top field out pretty well so i want all the sheep and cows over there today this field here hidden meadow only has barbed wire on the interior fence there's sheep fence and barbed wire around the exterior but the sheep can get through the barbed wire here so it'll keep the cows in but not the sheep so if i put them all up there the sheep will be out of there pretty quickly i've popped quite a few more rocks out of here these big ones that are still left i'll have to get my nephew with his excavator to see if he can dig some of those out but i'm gonna go get the 200 and grab this mccormick mower here and put that on and bring it up and go through it make sure that's good to go i heard my first rooster crow this morning and when the turkeys go in july the roosters are going to go with them and so they'll be about three and a half months old and they're great for stew i make chicken pot pie with them they're not really great for roasting there's not a ton of meat on them but but they do make good pop funny thing is i got rid of like 20 something laying hence i'm still getting the same number of eggs with 20 something less birds and then i got about 40 pullets that should start laying here in about three months so i need to get some more egg customers it's a it's tough with eggs [Music] it's one of those uh one of those commodities that kind of waxes and wanes you'll get a lot of people will buy chickens they'll want their own eggs then they get inundated with eggs and then they sell a few extra and then they they i don't know if they just you know they they think that they're gonna make a lot of money with eggs but then you'll you'll get a you know whole flood of people will have eggs for sale for a period of time and then they'll realize that the egg market really isn't very profitable and then everybody will go away and then there'll be a couple of us and so we'll enjoy a period of time where everything is stable and i can make enough money off the eggs to cover the costs and people who think they're gonna get rich off eggs that's gonna be another whole video um the cost of of actually you know getting set up with chickens you won't live long enough with a small backyard flock of chickens to make your money back and particularly in these rural areas where you don't have that market and where my wife particularly that market we don't have a lot of clientele who are willing to pay extra for organic or free range or um you know the quality produce and meats that we have here they'll they'll go to market basket and and be happy with their 99 cent eggs so that's a ramp um i'll have to save that for another day but let's get the tractor out and uh go get the mower so this is a 1956 farm all 200 that replaced the farmhouse superc in 1954 and an option that these came with was the the fast hitch they called it it's a two socket hitch that you can attach and detach the implements from the tractor seat uh if there's a driveline you'll have to hook that on obviously but but all the the mounted implements could be just uh it's like a snap you pull these tabs up right here and the ears the the prongs go in and then the tabs snap back down and lock it into place and for a period of time john deere wanted to buy this patent but international wouldn't sell it and so john deere went with the ferguson three-point hitch system and then that became a universal standard and this kind of fell by the wayside which is unfortunate because this is really a great um system i want a world of tangents today [Music] and that happens i was gonna edit this part out but i think i'm gonna let you see it uh so what happened was i went to back up okay let me start at the beginning i had my hose hole digger unblocked but the cows decided to itch on it knocked it over into the mower which prohibited me from really getting as close as i wanted to so that was my first problem the second problem was this rock my front wheels were getting hung up on it and so when i'd almost get to where i wanted to go it was uh so much work for the tractor to get up over it that i was spinning a little bit right here from there and so i couldn't quite latch in because you got to come back just enough to snap it and then you can see here i hit the post hole digger with the tire so now i gotta get this post hole digger out of here and and uh somewhere else and get it blocked back up where the cows don't go i'm really thinking putting my machinery down here where the cows are is a bad idea because they won't stop pushing on it and rubbing on it and it just makes my life difficult so i had it kind of out on the side pasture where they didn't go but i wanted to get it away from the house view so you can't see when you come in um but i gotta come up with another planet apparently so anyway it's hooked on you can see the ground here where i was spinning and just not having a good time first thing this morning so uh so the first thing we hook up once this is on make sure that's latched in and i'll back up a little bit more and push that in second thing this rod right here was bent by the cows so i just had to straighten that out and what this rod does here is it goes to the rock shaft on the side and that's what actually lifts the mower up and down you use the fast hitch to attach the mower and then we'll bring it up and get the pto the driveline um you want the drive line to be horizontal perpendicular not perpendicular parallel with the ground and that way you don't put stress on your u-joints so let's get this hooked there's up pins right here take those out [Music] now we can lift up the cutter bar the next thing we want to do is get the driveline on but i'm going to take this actually up to the house and grease it first so we'll put that on up there so the next thing is the typically would be the drive shaft we hook that up but i didn't bring my grease gun down so i'll do that up at the house the third thing you hook up there's this right here and this brace is the mower because when you're mowing it puts a force towards the rear particularly at the end push pulling towards the rear so this stabilizes it so we took it here i'm not putting it back down here this was a terrible idea um so i gotta come up with a new parking area shoot so [Music] [Music] [Music] it's free spitting on this universal i have to change out this crease fitting all right i think i can shut the tractor off now drive lines on the breakaway is on it's not really a breakaway it's a stabilizer this is a breakaway here [Applause] don't lose this so one of the problems people have with sicklebar mowers is they park them down on the fence row and they leave them and then they go back whenever later hook them on and they don't work right and so these things when they're tuned up they work perfectly if you let them sit around and don't take good care of it like anything you run into issues so we'll go start with the basics go through how it works and then i'll show you how to keep it in tune so this is a pharma fc 21 the f is for fast hitch and so the c this was made for a super c or 200 the 230 is a little different as far as how uh the mower is picked up even though it has a fast hitch everything else is different and 240 the same thing so like i said when i hook this up i want this driveline to be parallel to the ground so we fixed the universal it's all been greased i'm going to pop this off here in a minute and check my oil level and so this just takes gear oil and sometimes i'll put the hydraulic booster and my hydraulic things um it just stops leaks the gaskets on these eventually start leaking this one's this one's been fine but we'll go from there you can just put heavier oil in it too so the first thing you've got your driveline coming out and then you got the spring here and this is a slip clutch so if you say you encumber an obstacle with your knife and so these sickles can't slide back and forth the first thing that usually slips and gives is your slip clutch and it just makes a grating sound like a and so it's really loud but that's what that's the first fail safe the second is your pitman right here and it's made out of out of wood and so sometimes if you hit something um that this slip clutch doesn't catch that's your second fail safe and that'll that'll bust and the tricky part with this is getting the bolts on um you can see i've got some going one way and some the other and just because you've got this weight on the flywheel here that prohibits getting in behind there so fixing this in the field is usually um not the funnest thing in the world but it's often done and then the third fail-safe on it is you've got this breakaway here so what happens is if you hit something with this immobile object and so you're going forward you hit like a tree or a fence post or a stump or something that sickle bar will cut back like this and it'll break away here and then you can get through the obstruction and then to correct that you drop it back to the ground back the tractor up and it snaps back in so we're all connected um this goes to the rock shaft on the side that's what lifts up the cutter bar and so we're not going to use the fast hitch anymore and then we've got another rock shaft there's two on the side of the motor and that'll tip the draw bar side to side and so what what that'll do is that'll give me a little bit more lift when i pick it up so once you've got everything greased um that part over there is all pretty straightforward where people run into trouble is they get bent fingers um we'll have to check this one up and see what's going on here you can see that that's all bent so i'll probably have to put a new one on but we'll have to take the strap off here to get to it so we'll check that out these sickles here where it hits the shoe have to be really sharp otherwise you start clogging up here so these are under serrated sickle sections and this is typically what you'll find at like tractor supply these days and then you've got the fingers which are also called rock guards so these if you hit a rock in the field it's supposed to slide the mower up over it but these get bent um and then it messes up your clearance in between the sickle section and the finger with these old mowers the the bar itself sometimes gets out of true so you have to shim the back side of these fingers with washers in order to bring it up and get it so the clearance is correct but this one doesn't look good so we're probably going to take this one out so my brother just rebuilt this for me put all new sections on these are called sections these here are called sections and it works like scissors so it's this right here and so you can see how this goes this right here slides back and forth and how that happens is with this pitman and it just goes see this is bolted at the edge here so when this turns around this will go like this and that's what slides the knife back and forth so this whole section right here with all these sections on it this whole piece with all these sections in it is called the knife and so this knife can be removed you just unhook the andia pitman here and the smart thing to do which i didn't do it this year but usually i do it is you take this knife out and store it indoors over the winter you don't usually want to leave this outside you also want to avoid painting this if you can and so the paint that's on it is just from the edges here and then you got your hold downs here and you need to put the high arch hold downs on when you put lock nuts typically these these uh knife sections here are riveted but they're a lot easier to change out with bolts but in order to do so you have to change out all your arches and put high arches down which you can still buy all these pieces from case international and then we use the bolt here so it's in pretty good shape i just have to change out a couple pieces then the last part is the end i usually take out one knife section and put this double section in the end and that stops this plug in the outer shoe these fingers they used to have removable ledger plates and the ledger plate you can see this is the serrated part here and so this part used to be removable and you just get a box of ledger plates and pop these out and put new ones in and it was tedious and time-consuming um you take this whole knife out and you sharpen each section and i'll show you the knife sharpener that i have which you would set on the wheel or a vice or a tripod and so the old horse-drawn mowers obviously had a wheel and this um knife sharpener was designed to set on that wheel the last part is the swather or your grass board and i can't tell you how many mowers i've seen that this is missing on and a lot of times if people are mowing under fences or along fence rows they'll take these off because they get they get hung up but if you're cutting grass you need to have this on because what this does is it takes the grass you've cut here and pulls it back and so you've got a swath about a foot and a half wide to put your tire in when you come back through and then your inner shoe back here rides in that clear section of grass that you swather cleared back because what will happen is if you don't have that on and you don't have the grass pulled back when you come back through you're trying to recut grass that's already been cut and it usually will plug up your mower usually when i mow i'll have it so it's tipped up just a little bit and that way it'll ride up over up obstacles and it just seems to mow a little bit better so this device i have here is an old mccormick knife sharpener and so this part right here would set on your tire and then you would run your knife through here and out through the back and then this right here is your grinding wheel which would grind down the edge of your knife and then you just crank this like that and that would sharpen it and so they had a tripod for it and you could take this handle off and put a pulley on it and you could have a treadle pedal for your feet and later on they had it for an electric motor but this is just an antique now that i keep and i think it's cool it says mccormick gearing on it and it's in just like brand new shape and i have the original manual for it and everything so i think that's pretty cool to have you'll notice the 61 cub is missing and so i sold that yesterday when i tested it out i turned the pto on and it worked pushed the clutch in it stopped let the clutch out it came back on um but then as soon as i put it under load when i brought it home the pto wouldn't stay going and instead of trying to invest more money in it and time i let it go and and cubs are hot right now so i actually turned a profit on it and i know that you're probably looking at my mahindra here with my rotary mower and you're wondering why i didn't lower to the ground i've gotta do some maintenance underneath and so typically i lower my influence down when i'm done but it's uh it's it's sitting up right now my dogs love to follow tractors around and i guess it goes without saying when you're going to use a sickle bar mower it runs pretty quietly and so you want to make sure that there's no kids or dogs especially around because that that could go south real quick that you know the noise of the machines over here and this just makes a little bit of a rattle going through the grass so you always want to make sure we don't have a disaster like that [Applause] so what we want to do before we go out in the field is go on every one of these fingers or rock guards that one's too small tighten these up because what happens shake it out there and this will get vibrating you end up losing a rock guard it's a lot easier to fix it here than it is out in the field so it's three quarters so it's one size down from three quarters at 11 16 for 5 8 11 16. um and so we look at this here you can see it's got a little bit of a bow to it that's because it's flexing on the support rod you can see this one's towed down a little bit there's different serial numbers on these fingers we want to check seeing here this gap you want to make sure that it's going to cut we want it close enough so it cuts but not so far apart that see with this one here this one's a problem look at that see that so we've got to shim it in back it's going to wear that knife section down so we'll take this finger off right here and shim it all we should have to do here is loosen this up enough to get in behind it a little bit more let's see if this quarter inch washer will fit in there i really only need a little bit hard to hold the camera and do this at the same time just take that put it in behind so that shims it and now it's right there so then we can tighten this back down now it's not hitting the top we're not going to break the tip of the section off here all right now i'll just put the wrench back on tighten that up okay that one's good these will vibrate loose i've been buying stainless bolts for these with the nylon lock washers and usually that works but occasionally it does come unhooked these really need to be snug on the knife sections you crank these too much you'll end up snapping the bolt so they're only probably grade three just be careful you don't snap them off but you do want to be snug and the way these bolts are they are fluted so they'll bite in on the bad side you'll know when you lose one of these because you'll get a section of unmowed grass so you can't just go down to the fence row and grab your sickle mower and throw it on and start mowing because then you'll end up broke down so some of you have asked do i cut all my own hay do i buy my hay and the answer is yes the good fields that went with this farm got sold off before i even was born and so the hay fields that i do cut i have to drive to the closest one is about three quarters of a mile up through the woods to the land trust i gave up some of them and i i had four john deere 24t square balers and i had several tractors for bail and hay but the problem with old equipment is you spend most your time working on it and new equipment is so far out of my reach for price it doesn't make any sense to own it so i've got three oldest sicklebar mowers the newest one i've got is probably a 1988 or 89 international case international and then i've got a new brand new tedder rake so i ted the hay which fluffs it up and then i could put it in rose and the hay at the land trust i just go pitch fork it loose into the truck and throw it in some of the extra stalls and then the other fields that i still have i cut it and ted it and rake it and then i have somebody custom bail it into rounds and then my sister puts in about 10 000 square bales a year so i go over and buy like 150 square bales and that that usually gets me through i'll probably get less this year because i'm cutting back on the cattle and probably get rid of a few sheep so i shouldn't need as much so i put a little bit in there get it close to the top but don't overfill it you let it expand a little bit [Music] first thing tomorrow we'll drive to land trust and go cut some hay so i'll fuel the tractor up and put some additives one thing people fail to do with these old tractors is remember that these tractors were built to run on you know regular gasoline with lead in it and so you put this lead substitute in and not a lot i use just a couple of glug glugs per tank is enough and the reason you put this in is because when these tractors were built the valves and the seats were very soft and they were designed to have lead to lubricate that and now with the unleaded gas that's missing so you have to add this in then the second thing i put in and usually i use marine stable because it's better but i think i'm out of it so we put this fuel protect in there then we're good to go [Music] so i hate to do fuel cans those plastic things that don't vent they got that stupid spill proof nozzle on it i've spilled more fuel with those than i've ever steeled spilled more fuel with those than i've ever spilled with these old metal cans i gave them all away and went around the yard sales and bought a pile of these old metal eagle cans that's all i used [Music] gas gauge yeah that's about half full you put too much fuel in here when you go uphill it comes out the top so we don't want to do that all right everything's good it was good check that okay yeah hopefully this video has been beneficial to you and i hope you've enjoyed it i i really appreciate everybody who watches and comments on the videos uh i really i really do appreciate that and as always have a good night and thank you for watching we'll talk to you next time

Channel: Ledgemere Heritage Farm

Views: 469

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: homestead, maine farmer, maine farm, Air Force veteran, self sufficiency, zone 4, zone 5, small farm, jersey cows, katahdin sheep, Wensleydale sheep, dorper sheep, Mahindra, farm all, IH, John Deere, family farm, milk cow, dairy, fencing, garden, sustainability, Joel salatin, Justin rhodes, polyface farm, chickens, laying hens, meat birds, hay, round bales, farm solutions, sheep, winter farming, apple cider making, pastures, wood lot, snow management, farm management, tractors

Id: pbWl7OzWZG8

Length: 36min 46sec (2206 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 26 2021