Brief Oliver 2255 History

well I was hopeful to make this video before the rain started but as you can see didn't quite make it so we're just gonna sit in a cab here for a while and maybe the rain will stop and I can step outside for a minute but anyway I figured today since the weather shitty and I'm not gonna do anything else and people have been asking about it today we're going to talk about the 2255 and come on chat door there we go not necessarily going to be talking about this tractor in particular so much as how the 2255 came to be to begin with so and I just to make sure I was getting everything right I went and dug out the Oliver Magazine from 2018 where they actually talked to the design lead on the project and there's well we'll get to it in a minute so first we'll set the stage for ya hopefully alright so right around 67 68 when white motor decided to shitcan the corporate tractor design which was going to have tractors classed all the way up to about 130 to 140 horse the overall management for the farm equipments division got moved to Hopkins Minnesota which was a Minneapolis Moline plant and the management team became made up mostly of Minneapolis in personnel and they had the plan that what they were going to do because after about 1960 a nine Minneapolis Moline it kind of kind of abandoned there's there lower horsepower tractors and they were really focusing on the higher horsepower stuff like the G 950 G 1050 yelled all the big horses that Moline was famous for they were focusing on that so in their head what they wanted to do was use all of the high horsepower Moline tractors for the top end of the line and use all the oliver tractors for the lower error for the low horsepower end of the line so if Moline didn't have to design little horsepower tractors that was Moline plan which is basically why the Oliver 2050 and 2150 basically got scrapped right after the right after basically they started getting produced Moline Moline engineer or Moline Management as what killed the 20 50 in the 2150 because they were going to use moline's for the higher horsepower end of the line well fast-forward to 1972 the Moline line of tractors somehow managed to get shit-canned all together and with the death of the corporate tractor and at that time the Moline G 1350 which was the big guy in the line that left the oliver line without and the g 1350 was at the time of 21:55 our soul of the 21:55 oliver so what that what happened was with the sub G 1350 being shitcan oliver no longer had a high horsepower tractor to fill line up enter the 2255 so basically right Taylan 271 right at the beginning of 72 the 21 / 2255 project began and really all they did are all they had to design was a new frame tub a front axle to carry the weight and outboard planetaries the transmission is basically all 1955 part for the most part they had to design axles for planetaries obviously but the planetary czar off of a mole danger G 1350 so now that you got the stage set see if I can now that's the stage is set this is the prototype 2255 and this is Bill Martin the guy that became the head engineer on the project it actually started out as a gentleman by the name Oh where's that it was a resistor I just went through and read this son of a [ __ ] oh wait wrong page this page this is the page I was looking for John Rex John Rex was the initial project engineer and then he left Oliver and Bill Martinson came or came in and took over the project for the duration so you can see here be basically it all started with the engine they wanted to get away from the 310 waukesha because at the time that was what was given Oliver all the issues and given the backer given the bad reputation so they picked 3150 cat which basically they picked the motor and decided to build the tractor around it so this is the very first time the prototype saw daylight got final drives off the G 1350 they had to redesign the frame tub to fit the motor the prototype tractor just used production 55 series sheetmetal it doesn't have any of the flares on it yet to cover or to cover up the fact that this massive v8 was sticking out so out the side of the hood used basically every part you see on here except for the cat is Moline and then all our fuel tank fenders that are still an Oliver primer so Moline air intake cat engine the center tube an axial support and wishbone we're all designed specifically for the 2255 to be compatible with G 1350 front outer tubes and spindles and hubs so it's got G 1350 front hub spindles and all that stuff and then the 2255 and stead of having a train chain coupler was the first tractor to come out with the trunnion mount three-speed basically there was a machined hole in the front of the transmission with a matching trunnion on the back of the three-speed and the whole thing slid in without without a chain coupler was a shaft shaft connect which they should have done on all the 55 series and basically that was the 2255 design and a nutshell was basically designing a tractor fit that motor it used the clothes they used the same clothes under hydraulics as the rest or as the 17/18 in 1955 the vast majority of the internal transmission components are the same as in 1955 although the gearing did change a little bit because they wanted the field speeds are matched to just about the rest of the 55 series but like the 18 1955 or revin about 26 50 and the 2255 will run about 2800 so to get everything to come through with the finals and that's the one thing they don't talk about in here is if they change their gearing but with the final drives and I shouldn't went and looked it up in parks book to see if the gears were called out for a different number with the final drives I got to believe that that extra 200 rpm they just stepped it down in the finals and it probably came out about right and the one thing they found in the prototype which they have a good picture of where you're at right here the production 22:55 have a hole right here in the frame so that you can get to the oil filters on the cat yeah they didn't do that on the first frame tub and they they found that out real quick so yeah then that all these photos are actually taken in Hopkins because the 2255 was designed in Minnesota was not designed at Charles City so basically it started at the very beginning of 72 they did all the design work they needed to and all the testing on it that they needed to and it was released to the dealers are revealed to the dealers at Grand Island Nebraska September 1st 1972 so they went from hey we need to build a hundred and forty horse tractor to releasing it to the dealers in less than nine months granted it wasn't a ground-up redesign or a ground-up designed from nothing tractor but still the fact that go from nut from paper to a production model tooled up and ready to rock and roll in less than nine months that's that's pretty amazing right there and this that is believed that this picture right here is the first 2255 for the first production 2255 off the line so this is the prototype this is the first production and the 2255 would go on to be the largest tractor to where the Oliver badge they're the highest horsepower obviously the 26:55 was the largest tractor but the 2255 had it beaten horsepower and then the 2255 would also go on to be the last Oliver to roll off the Charles City line in 1976 they ran a batch of them for export and I don't know if I actually ever had ever got exported so Lord knows where that last tractor ended up so yeah and then in 1973 the United States Auto Club which doesn't really have a whole lot to do with farm equipment was asked to do a test with four major farm equipment manufacturers and they had Oliver Massey John Deere and International Harvester the three miles the Oliver 2255 1150 Massey 46 30 deer in a 1468 International which was IHS v8 model then 1150 was I'm Massey's big v8 tractor the only cut the only two they tested four categories they tested cold start time turning her 80s silent level testing the cab and starting under load from a dead stop to reach working speed which they were all pulling if I remember right every single if I was pulling a six bottom plow the only test Oliver lost then they came in second was the sound decibel test they lost it to the John Deere sound guard cab and the only reason they lost was because Oliver at the time didn't have a pod cab yet and the fuel tank is still right there and it that having that fuel tank there transfers a lot of sound from the engine compartment into the end of the cab but it's still not all that loud in here as you can tell because Oliver beat out Massey and international starting time 3208 kicked everybody's I asked to point two seconds starting from a twenty eight degree cold start International was almost a minute a turning radius they tied International at 14 feet six and a half inches obviously came in second on the decibel test and starting from no load Oliver beat out I ate i H which they can't IH came in second Oliver beat him out by 25.6% which they timed that out in seconds and they I lied they tested on five things then Akers plowed per hour Oliver beat out Massey which came in second by 18% using less fuel so basically at the time the 2255 could smoke anybody out there except for obviously sound which if you've ever ridden in one of these things especially when once you have I mean this thing that needs a cab kit something fierce but these can't these white cabs they put on these really are not that loud the only thing that sucks in them is the visibility because of that bar they put across the front kind of I don't know it's not terrible it's not that's one thing I'll give it a sound garb sound guard gonna have more visibility but that's really about it so yeah that's basically the 2255 in a nutshell and I'm sure I skipped some [ __ ] that I shouldn't have but basically the 2255 project kind of retired a lot oliver engineers because they saw what was coming down the pipeline with white motor and there was that I thought they talked about it in here but I couldn't find it there was a there was a fair number of people who left right basically right after the 2255 got completed they're like okay this is our deal and they left and a lot of them went not went on to work for other farm equipment companies come home left for deer a couple of them went left or left and work for Steiger but as cool as the 2255 is it it's kind of the capstone on the whole oliver heritage basically and then not too long after that the gray tractor started rolling down the line which obviously great the whites had a lot of oliver heritage in them but they still weren't an Oliver hey kind of quit raining so so yeah that's the 2255 and for the guys that keep that are asking and curious I wouldn't expect me to be working on this thing anytime at least the next year if not a little longer because I don't think you understand just how much it's going to take to get this thing going again I fully expect between 15 and 20 thousand to put this thing back in the field and if I was made of money I could make it happen but I'm not so I can't it's here that's safe but it's not super high on the priority list right now the one thing that I do have to do to it well not necessarily have to do to it the one thing that I want to get done as far as hunting down parts is I need to get parts or well first off I want to look at a to 180 and see what they did and then get parts off of a two and eighty to put it to an eighty exhaust system on here which basically they had forward shot manifolds and the exhaust still came out in the same spot as a two honey on a to 180 but like on these are truck men basically truck manifold and they shot the exhaust right down and tucked her up tight to the oil pan came into a white pipe then came back up through here and that puts a lot of heat into the oil and I cook the oil and anybody ever worked on 3208 cat they run hot so anything you could do to get the heat away from them it's better but they must have they had to have done something different on the two and eighty for the fuel filter because out of 20 to 55 it's right in the way of the forward shot the exhaust or exhaust manifolds and I know it can be done because I've seen it on 2255 before I just need to look at it and see what I need for parts so anyhow that's just a little unformed we'll look at the 2255 and how it came to be what it is now so I guess that does it for this one and we'll catch y'all on the next one

Channel: Oliver66FarmBoy

Views: 21,526

Rating: 4.9235668 out of 5

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Id: 4FcNDokchKM

Length: 20min 8sec (1208 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2020