An American Icon: How The John Deere 4020 Changed The Game

hey guys this is jacob from american implement in ulysses kansas and today we're actually at marvin miley's farm shop here marvin miley has quite a few antique tractors and these tractors we're looking at over here today are john deere 40 20s the 4020 was one of john deere's most popular models ever built and since i don't have an extensive knowledge of the john deere 4020 i called i called up my friend keith woods to help me out with this walk around keith has had over 55 years experience working for a john deere dealership here in ulysses kansas so he knows everything about these tractors and he knows everything about almost any tractor john deere built over a hundred and eighty thousand forty twenties what made this tractor so popular for the customers keith okay to start with the forerunner to the 4020 was the 4010 come out in 1960. uh the 4020 has a lot of updates over the 4010 little things that needed to be done and let's just start on the front of the tractor here number one it's got the fuel tank out front where you can easily fuel the tractor you don't have to get in the middle of the tractor to to fill the tractor up with fuel all the older tractors had a fuel tank back in the kind of the middle it was hard to get to another thing that made this tractor really really a good tractor easy to set your row crop axle spacings and it's a very strong axle it's durable stood up well then the next thing that really put these tractors out and going was a hydrostatic steering there's no mechanical link going from the steering wheel to the front of this tractor it's all hydraulic lines a hydraulic motor and a steering valve and that made super steering steering that would stay with you through thick or thin as far as pressure whatever the other thing that right here on the front end it's got a rotary piston pump that maintains this constant 2200 pounds of pressure and that the pistons stayed out whenever there was no demand and whenever there was a demand established then the pistons dropped in and started pumping the oil and that was a way above everybody else was close this is a closed center is what they call it everybody else had an open center so they was constantly pumping and bypassing and uh so that that's one of the the things that just start here on the front of this tractor that we really had on top of it so some of the things i'm seeing here then is they made a point to have some of the daily maintenance or you know just basically filling up fuel things like that they made that accessible they made it easy for the farmer the next thing that you pointed out a big thing is it was versatile so like you mentioned you could row crop with it or you could do quite a few other things and then the third thing that you mentioned was it was well ahead of its time with the engine as well as with quite a bit of the hydraulics yeah let's go on of course when the 4010 came out we had strictly two cylinders we'd run to the top end of what we could do with a two-cylinder tractor and that's when deer decided to come with the six-cylinder and four-cylinder versions of this tractor so that was a big step for us and then a very modern engine and everything and this happens to be a 69 year model tractor so it's got a lot of features over some of the others we'll talk about back here as we go along okay let's take a look at the back of this tractor or maybe the operator station at the time whenever the extractors come out they put a suspension on the seat and they designed a state instead of just an old flat platform seat they put a back rest around on it to where it was a whole lot more comfortable in fact at the time we called it a seat designed by an orthopedic doctor and so it was you know quite a bit ahead of its time that's a strong selling point yes adjustable for weight uh adjustable for height easily and as you adjusted it for your getting up closer it also adjusted down so a smaller person like you know and and we were had women driving them even back then so we needed that that feature once again very versatile comfortable for the operator and versatile right then this tractor here uh up to this side which this tractor i'm not sure whether i sold it new or not uh it may have been sold out out of our hugerton store uh it belonged to the young greens which is down kind of between ulysses and hugerton it happens to be a sinker range which has got an eight-speed uh transmission and it has four ranges and then within a range like one three uh two five four seven and six eight when you're in those ranges you can clutch it and shift it it was synchronized within those uh gears so it's made it a really nice uh versatile transmission as far as the operator station on this particular tractor in 69 which is what this tractor is we had our console hydraulics before that the hydraulic controls were over to the left side of the instrument panel and this is really a very nice feature the three-point and the hydraulic controls or remote controls were all controlled right over here so it was you know just easier to operate over here with your your left arm instead of having to reach up there with or with your right arm i don't know which arm i've got okay and uh there again like was talking a very modern engine we've got pencil injectors uh advanced hydraulic or injection system on it so okay uh a feature that on this one tractor doesn't have it up where i can show it to you a feature that john deere had actually back when we had the two cylinder was our rack and pinion adjustment so you could loosen up your wedges and it had a roller on it and you could roll that wheel in and out instead of having to struggle push pull and whatever so that's a feature that john deere has patented for years and years now some of the other tractor companies now are using that but it's a feature we had for years that was our exclusive and a good one okay come back here to the back end this tractor has dual remote cylinders controls on it and uh an interesting thing and a lot of people now don't know it but these hooks on the back that's where you hooked your three by eight or four by eight remote cylinder that you switched over and put on the disc that you were picking up or the chisel plow so we used to change cylinders uh take it off of one implement and put it over on another implement and now we've got everything's got their own cylinder and that's a really nice feature then a feature that john deere had on these tractors and to come out on the 4010s and on the 4020s is we used a cone tip especially designed cone tip to where we could plug in under pressure you could leave your implement up and hook it up and before that well you had to figure out some way of either jacking up taking the pressure off the cylinder or some method to to get that pressure relieved and that's why john deere back in 1960 went to their own special design hydraulic tip and so we can hook up under pressure okay another nice feature that we have now on the 40 20 is we got dual speed ptos you can see the stationary shaft is sticking out there off pointing to the left that's a 1021 spline pto shaft this particular unit here has got a 540 in it and it's got hooked up to this drill and they're easily changed a pair of pliers take the snap ring out pull the shaft out switch them over you've always got your shaft they're clean all you got to do is just switch them over and they're designed to where they go into the right set of gears so when you got the right spline you got the right pto speed that's a nice feature well today we don't just have one 40 20. like we mentioned earlier we have three so let's take a look at these other tractors and see some of the differences from this restored 40 20 and some of these other ones that are wearing their work closes as you had mentioned earlier keith yep into work clothes uh this tractor here i sold this tractor new to a gentleman that lives out west of town uh it's a standard tractor the front axle on it is solid not adjustable so the customer that bought it he didn't have row crop he didn't need that feature and it was less money to go with this standard axle one of the things that's different then they had crown fenders instead of the row crop fenders like we have on that tractor and the tractor back here this tractor in a lot of ways is is quite unique in that it is a standard it's got the crown fenders on it it does have a three-peat three-point hitch which a lot of tractors that were standard didn't even have a three-point hitch on them but this customer wanted a three point of where he could use some other things like a rotary mower or whatever on it and then it is also a power shift and a spare shift is eight speed transmission you can shift it from first clear through eighth and back and has an inching clutch on it to where you could stop it with the clutch but you can also just shift it up and down never having to use the clutch and that was something that we come out with in 1964. this tractor is a 64. one of the ways i can quickly tell it is it's got large injectors in here where 65 and newer had pencil injectors like the one up front just a small feature this tractor here has had a modification done to it and it's got a 12 volt electrical system on it from 1960 whenever they come out with a 4010s up until 68 all of the 40 10's and 20's had a 24 volt charging and starting system uh the idea of that was that we've got a better spinning to get a better starting uh on the tractor uh in 69 they come out with some starters that had the ability to crank well without having to be 24 volt right so the 24 volt was it had you had to know how to operate it it's kind of what it amounts to to make sure you didn't have a battery run down or issues like that so this tractor here it has a clearly a third party loader on it was this something that you could actually get through john deere at the time or did you see most people go with a a third-party option when they added a loader to their tractor uh we could get a john deere loader at the time like this particular loader it is a really heavy duty loader that's one thing i might say maybe john deere didn't have as heavy duty loader as what they needed it was a good utility loader but there were a lot of manufacturers uh in fact i sold a lot of the old gb great bin loaders and whatever on and for example the gb had a 900 loader that went almost 15 foot in the air and things like that but that's why they went with that particular loader is it is a little heavier duty should we move on to the next one or is there anything else you see on this one mention here if you'll notice all three of these tractors marvin has put on the rollover safety with the canopy they didn't come out with that feature until uh was i think around 68 or 69. as you can see it says john deere roll guard and this roll guard is strong enough however you have this tractor set up weighted it could stand to roll over and would never crush or bend it's a very very strong structure did john deere make this rollover guard specifically to to add to older tractors that didn't come with them yes that is correct they they come out with that and in fact they had a special price on them they they were selling them at virtually net price uh at the time to get our farmer growers to install them on their tractors for safety and when they did that they come out with seat belts on them and whatever oh and this tractor here has got a uh aftermarket seat on it uh which is more like our you know this fact i think this seat come out of a tractor with a roll guard uh body on it a john deere cab body any guesses on what model that john deere tractor was that the seat came out of oh uh white it could have even been actually about 76 or seven is when they came with this seat in the 4430s the first uh seats that they had was seat like what is on this front tractor except they put it was brown whenever they put it in the cab you still see that tractors these days the new ones the ones with or the ones that don't have a cab tend to have the yellow seat and the ones that do have a cab tend to have either a cloth or a leather tan or brown seat uh-huh that's just one of the ways that they they set them up whatever so okay and then this tractor another one that's in its work clothes it is a 68 4020 so it's got the hydraulic controls over there on the instrument panel instead of back here and then of course this has got added hydraulics so they wouldn't have to tie up their rear hydraulics to run this dozer and and this tractor here is a sinker range which is the eight speed manual shift tractor uh of course both of these tractors have been converted to a 12 volt electrical system because it is so much easier to operate what was the most popular model from these three which one would you see the most of in our area the ones that be the most uh that i sold the most of over the years would be equipped more like the one that is up front uh with a row crop front axle the row crop fenders and three point of course dual hydraulics and whenever we was able to get into having triple remotes on it we started selling some triple remotes on the 4020s so that tractor would have been the most popular tractor now it is a little unique and it's got the dish steel dish wheels which most all of the tractors i sold had wheels like this one here the cast iron usually we had a big weight on the inside to get the traction that we needed to pull our heavy implements like a heavy-duty offset disc or whatever we will use these cast wheels so that would be a feature that would have been on a tractor like that up there on the front and then back in the day we sold a lot of aftermarket cabs that we put on like an ansel cab or whatever okay this tractor is a little unique and it's got a single hydraulic which that was standard equipment and then the two hydraulics on the rear hydraulic outlets were for more versatility what to you made the 40 20 really special the fact that it was ahead of time against our competitors so it got off to a really good start it was a popular tractor and probably the most special thing about it is a number of them that were sold the serial numbers on the last tractors was like 250 some thousand uh was the serial number which they did take off and go consecutively from 1 000 on the 4010s and went on up every once while they jumped to an even number within a year so they've maybe skipped some so that's why there's as a 40 20 is only 180 000 when the serial numbers went up to around 250 000 but uh like i say it was just a tractor that was ahead of its time in a lot of ways and then our competitors started playing catch-up and you know and then we come out with a 4430 with a soundguard body and that put us in a whole new class very good you mentioned the other day that you or i know that you're you've been in the business for over 55 years after retiring maybe um what is it three four years ago ah three years ago three years ago you mentioned that you started your sales job right about the time that these were first or they were still in production um was the first tractor you sold new of 40 20. yeah so 65 40 20. i started selling in in 1965 uh and the very first one i sold was a 40 20 power shift a 1965 year model and and like i say i don't know where the tractor is at today i i would like to know but anyhow that's a long time ago and be hard to catch up with it and the customer i sold it to he was a very faithful customer in fact he would usually trade about every two years he'd have seven eight hundred to maybe a thousand hours on that tractor he traded off for a brand new one and i usually had customers that was sitting around waiting for him to trade so he did a really good job of keeping that tractor nice yes he he took excellent care of it it was almost as good as brand new when we traded it in kind of like that front one right there kind of looked like that front one very good thank you [Music] you

Channel: American Implement

Views: 148,299

Rating: 4.8616714 out of 5

Keywords: antique, tractor, loader, classic, john deere, 4020, 4010, 4040, farm, farming, history, historic, expert, collector, restoration, restored, how to, hydraulic, power steering, museum, combine, sprayer, american, implement, old, machine, item, vintage, rebuild, work, kansas

Id: YvflZevulj8

Length: 21min 46sec (1306 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2020