Ford 9N 2N 8N Fergy Differences

hi everybody welcome back to the claremont classic garage today we're going to try and answer a question that has perplexed mankind for many years there's many questions that have perplexed us what is the meaning of life why are we here is there a higher power who shot jr but there's one question one question that means a lot to a lot of people and that question is 9n 2n 8n or just an old grave ferguson all these little things before you were the the brain children of of of two geniuses harry ferguson and henry ford ferguson had developed his three-point hitch way of attaching implements that revolutionized farming because number one guy in the garbage truck likes our tractors number one it was a simple easy method to to put implements on and off the back of the tractor and number two it finally once and for all eliminated the propensity of drawbar tractors to flip upside down when the plow hit a rock or something anyway um the very first one was the the 9n that came out in 1939 it was followed by the 2n which came out in 1942 and the 8n which came out in 1948 on the end there is the famous ferguson the little grey fergie that made its debut after the war 1948. ferguson had been in partnership with different people making tractors with his three-point linkage up until that point but they were mostly very low production it was when he got hooked up with henry ford that things really took off anyway i'm going to try to explain to you the differences between some of these machines because i know um a lot of people they buy a little place in the country or something and they decide they want a little tractor and they're there they're confused bang for the buck these little guys are hard to beat back in the old days they were really expensive i mean 20 25 years ago a good running eight end would be 4 000 bucks all day long now in 2021 you can get a pretty decent 8n for 1500 and they'll do a lot of stuff for you i'm not going to get involved in the the evolution of these guys that came later uh the forts and dexter the ford thousand series the the ford naas 100 series were kind of in between but they were just greatly improved versions of these the the 4000 series were the the the first really modern uh tractors with live hydraulics live pto so they like i said uh equated well with forts and dexters and super dexter's and massey ferguson 35s they were all very closely related and they were the epitome of a small tractor they are they are absolutely awesome i've had all three of those in my life and and i love them all but these little guys are mostly what i stick with so let's start the tour shall we we'll start our tour with the 9n these came out in 1939 and they were built till 1941. um you won't find too many early nine ends that still have a grill in them because the grill was cast aluminum and they always got smashed and fell out the tractor i believe it's it's 24 horsepower and the original nine ends came on tall skinny 32-inch wheels like that one over there that's a uh a nine by 32 on a 32-inch wheel starting in 1940 which this one is um 10 by 28 tires became available to stop the propensity these things had for for sinking in in muddy conditions so so ford made a little wider tire available that's how this one is equipped and i'm pretty sure i would say that's how it was always been equipped this tractor came from a golf course so uh it was owned by the golf course since new it was never left outside a day in its life and it's it survived pretty well it's had a few little you know modifications done to it like the boat steering wheel that they weld it on anyway those are minor things this tractor is still uh six volt positive ground that's how they were it's very very easy to change them to 12 volt there's kits you can buy and do it literally in an afternoon this also has the original we call these smooth axles they're they're very very highly coveted by collectors because um this flange and the axle shaft are are all one forging and uh they used to break so they were mostly changed out on warranty to the riveted axles that you see on this one so if you happen to come across an old 9n and you're just interested in using it for working around your property and it's got smooth axles in them uh sell them to a collector he'll probably give you his riveted axles and do all the work and give you some money on top of it for your trouble and you'll maybe end up getting your tractor for free that's how you make make these things work on the back here which is common across all of these machines we've got harry ferguson's three-point hitch and we've got a pto the pto is a small one and an eighth six-spline pto so to use these in the modern world you have to buy an adapter we'll touch on all of that when we get to the two end uh other things on on these old nine ends they started out with a an all-aluminum steering column and dash and then over the years it morphed into a combination of some of them are aluminum with cast iron on the top some of them are all cast iron and on the two ends they finally went to a cast iron with a with a tin or a plate steel dash all silly little things you can look for um these nine ends they have little a few little chrome bits chrome chrome chrome chrome chrome and uh this is supposed to be chrome too there's a little bit of it left there they did away with that on the 2n also um other things but oh something also interesting these early ones they do not have a pressurized cooling system the radiator cap is literally interchangeable with an oil filler cap off the valve cover on your old v8 they fixed that later and this tank the tank on the top of this rad is huge it comes back to about here and it does not have a fan shroud that is correct um anyway enough with this thing let's move to the two end with the united states entry into world war ii all kinds of war measures were put in place and there were shortages and yada yada ford released a new model of tractor the 2n now the 2n wasn't really all that different from a 9n but they changed enough little things on it that they could get around wartime price controls um when the 2n came out some of the very first ones the very first ones were just like this one but then once all the war measures came into play the two ends actually appeared stripped down they had no electrical system whatsoever they didn't even have tires they were on on steel wheels like an old english fortune great big steel wheels on the back with cleats steel wheels on the front you could only start it with a crank and they ran on a magneto and then slowly slowly uh ford convinced the government that agriculture was vital to the war effort and they they released they released him from those from those war measure restrictions and the tractor slowly slowly started to to gain back all their stuff until they eventually just became a two end like this uh the there are minor difference like the hood between this and that is interchangeable but there are little differences up underneath it uh one thing they did was on that one you can see the bolts for the bottom of the dog legs are hidden on this one they're they're exposed they change little things like that like the front this is held on the steering arm is held on with a clevis a clevis bolt and this is held on with a cinch bolt just little things like that but the basic engine the three speed transmission were the same you get to the back and it's the same it's still got the same three-point hitch and the same little pto so on these old things if you want to run a post hole digger or a finishing mower chances are you won't find one with a small one in eighth pto there's the difference that's a modern one and 3 8 pto so you just go down to tsc and you get one of them and that goes on there with a pin and you've just modernized it you can also buy replacement pto shafts for these tractors that already have the large spline on them they're probably uh 150 bucks now if you plan to use this thing with a bush hog you need one of these this is an overrunning clutch they call it now this one goes from one and three-eighths to one and three-eighths so i'll see if i can put just stick that on there but you can get them i also have one in there that goes from the small size to the large size so what happens is if you're running a bush hog it has so much inertia it's the way the pto is is is geared off the transmission on these particular tractors the bush hog has so much inertia when you get to the end of the field even if you push in the clutch and apply the brakes the bush hog will still drive the tractor and you'll go right off the end of the the row into the into the bush and that's bad so we put an overrunning clutch on so it allows see it turns one way not the other it allows the tractor to turn the bush hog but not the bush hog to turn the tractor and that's very very important no brakes in the world will stop this thing with a bush hog driving it now as far as the lift itself goes these tractors are only equipped with what we call draft control so the quadrant lever here does not control how high up the lift goes it controls how far down into the ground it goes you can't if if you think you can use this with a with a blade or something and and hold it up at a certain level it won't work it'll always it'll always be hunting now there are some devices you can buy that that attach on to here and and overcome that one is called the fergie positioner the other is called the zane the zane fang invented by a really smart guy named zane sherman i i think he's probably passed away now he was in alabama i i bought some stuff off and he was a really really smart guy he was like the smokey eunuch of tractors anyway what ferguson's three-point hitch does is this if you've got a plow on here and you're going along you're going along fine the three-point hitch allows the the the power to transfer into the back tires and plant them if for chance you hit a rock in the ground or a tree stump or something that would flip an old drawbar tractor because they'd hit an obstruction in the ground with the plow and the back wheels would just keep going and the front of it would buck up and they'd go over and a lot of farmers were killed that way what ferguson's three-point hitch does is if you're going along with your plow and you hit a rock the hitch pivots this way and it it pushes on this spring which releases the hydraulic pressure in the ferguson system effectively taking all the weight off the back wheel so the wheels just spin it's it's a fantastic system saves a lot of people anyway that's about it for the two end now we're going to move to the eight end after the war ford designed the 8n and this is the one that everybody wants the 8n solved a lot of issues from the earlier tractors yet it stayed the same size it stayed the same weight it did everything that those old things could do and more except go slow in reverse that's a whole nother story so when the 8n came along even though it looks pretty much like these it's not even though it looks like all the parts would interchange a lot of them don't now what we've got on the 8n the engine went up to 27 or 28 horsepower it went from a three-speed transmission to a four-speed transmission and they revised the hydraulic system to now include this little lever on the side so when it's up like this you have what we call position control so this lever now controls the actual height at which your implement will float and when you put it down like that whoops it goes into draft control for plowing pretty neat and that was standard fare on pretty much everything after that dexter's massey 35s 1000 series they all had that feature um at the back of the 8n it's pretty much the same as those other ones uh same small pto same ferguson three-point hitch although they did odd they added uh bolt bosses underneath this so they could bolt on a bracket and add a swinging draw bar this is a dearborn swinging drawbar um those earlier these earlier ones there's no provision underneath the axle housing to bolt on a draw bar so what these guys had was what we call a v-draw bar that um it it clamped onto these arms and bolted to your draw bar so it came out like that a v-draw bar simple but but it it it didn't swing also on the 8-in they they introduced the 3-position rocker for different implements and stuff oh the other thing i have to mention on the 8n they finally put decent brakes on them these are just uh 10 10 inch bendix brakes very similar to what's on a car and these ones the brakes are terrible that's another reason why none of them have any grills in them because none of them have any brakes the grille is the brakes that's another great thing on the 8n the other thing they did on the 8n was they moved both brake pedals to the same side which on these guys the brake pedals were always always separate one on that side one on this side and um when you're trying to stop you need two legs on this side it's kind of interesting there's ways around it um companies made handles to go on on this brake lever so you could use your foot for the clutch your hand for this brake pedal and your foot for the other brake pedal uh just one of those idiosyncrasies now throughout the entire production of these tractors you were able to accessorize them they were so popular there were so many companies making little bits and pieces and doodads for them there were the the sherman brothers which were associated with ford they were the official ford accessory provider and they made all kinds of stuff like these very popular in the day sherman auxiliary transmissions that fit in between the back of the engine and the front of the actual end transmission you could get uh a reverser so you could leave this in in one gear and this simply made it go forward or backward you could get an under drive you could get an overdrive and you could get a combination which was under drive and overdrive um they also had i think one called a creeper which was a super underdrive or maybe that is the underdrive there's so many i get them confused anyway this one i don't even know what it is because the cotter pin that holds the handle to the actual input shaft of it or the shifter shaft of it inside is has come out and it and it doesn't do anything one of these days i'll split this thing open and see what the heck it is there were also companies like cyclone that made these cyclone uh pre-cleaners for the air cleaner there were other companies that made stuff like this a hand-applied parking brake for the 8n that's uh we call that a monroe seat it was made by monroe the people that make shock absorbers instead of your seat being on the big old leaf spring like it is on that one it's got a coil spring and a shock kind of nice um there are tons of accessories for this like this the tall air intake that that's an accessory the vertical exhaust that's an accessory the light kits on these were an accessory they didn't come off the assembly line with lights so that was something you bought at the dealer um this one here has a factory light kit on it but there were all kinds of other options little companies that made light kits for ford tractors light kits for you know random tractors and there's uh oh this one's got a doubt and dowden foot throttle just all these neat little stuff you could get on these um another thing you'll hear people talk about is front distributor or side distributor so this one here you can see what they mean by front distributor it's in there it's driven off the end of the cam shaft the ignition coil sits on top of it and that's your distributor uh nine ends two ends and early eight ends up to the middle part of 1950 had the front distributor then in the middle of 1950 up they came with the side distributor so this is just like a an automotive distributor it makes a lot more sense uh when you're when you're trying to to tune it up or diagnose it it's just much more like what you would what you would find on a on a car and these ones are the most the most desired eight ends is the side distributor models there's some other improvements on the side distributor like they finally they finally started putting inner grease seals on the bearings to stop the gear loop from getting on on the brakes that's a huge improvement uh even if you've got an early eight in if you can find the trumpets and axles from a late one you'll never have trouble trouble with the with the brakes again uh they also improved the steering box in uh in the fifth the mid 50 and up ones they have they have this one with with actual proper adjusters so um all in all the 8n is a pretty pretty nice machine more accessories you can get for them is the bumper it's just this one's this one's pretty decked out here's the this one has a a sherman combination transmission you'll notice the difference in the in the in the shift handle if you see this one this cast one like this you know right away it's a combination transmission if you see that one there it's just a round rod with a knob on it then you know it's an overdrive and under drive a creeper reverser it's one of the other ones this one like many of them has been converted to 12 volt and has an alternator on it oh another thing you could get for these this is a very very rare option this is a sherman brothers life pto conversion kit so this 8n actually has a live pto not in the sense that we're used to with a two-stage clutch this one i guess it does have a two-stage clutch they're just separated so if you're going along uh and you're more or whatever you're running starts to bog down you just pull that lever and it disconnects the drive to the back wheels but lets the pto keep running until your implement clears and then you carry on these are very very hard to find it wasn't even in this tractor it was in this one this brings us to our last exhibit the little gray fergie these things were made from uh in one form or other i kind of think from about 1946 until 1956 and there was all different versions of them they were made in england they were made in detroit they were made all over the place this one is an english-built one not in canada that's mostly what we had the english-built ones the t-e-a there was also the t e tractor europe the t e d the t e f and the t o which is the one that was made in in detroit the t o twenty ferguson um it had a continental engine these have a british engine i'll show you how to tell the difference if you happen to stumble across an old gray ferguson it's pretty simple if you see the oil filter on a slant like this it's a it's a british built standard engine from coventry england and you've got an english one if the oil filter is straight up and down it's a continental and you've got a to20 from the states um a ferguson it's a little different again in that it um number one always had a four-speed i can't speak for the ones made in detroit i've never had one but um the ones from england they've got cast aluminum transmission cast aluminum transmission cover and steering box cast aluminum oil pan they made a lot of use of aluminum because they had lots of it after the war something else you'll notice different between the two of them the ford to get at the gas cap and uh and the battery you you just open this door and they're in the hood the hood's fixed on the ferguson [Music] the hood flips and you've got the same stuff your gas tank your battery um ferguson's they switched to 12 val are 12 volt a lot earlier than everybody else did and it was always an overhead valve engine as opposed to the flathead in the in the ford these are these are great great machines the only real downfall with these is that if you have an american one the z120 continental engine that that they use to them they have a real bad habit of cracking inside and filling your oil pan with coolant um these engines are solid little engines they're great uh the only two problems they have is number one they've got wet wet sleeves in them so that can cause trouble and number two because they're from england they can get expensive to fix if if you need a bunch of parts on the back of the ferguson you'll find that it's very similar to the other ones it's got the same three-point hitch and the same little pto the only thing is that the ferguson never had position control it always had only draft control like the 9n and the 2n but there's a way around that when i redid this one i i used a hydraulic pump and a lift cover from an 8n so this one now has position control and draft control just like an 8n that's it it went in easy i think i had to cut a little webbing or something out of the top of the housing but aside from that it just bolted right in and works like it should that's an easy modification you can do on anything even if you've got a 9n or a 2n and you stumble across a scrapped out 8n get the lift cover in the pump it goes right in and then your 9n or 2n will have position control just like an 8n so that uh basically covers some of the nuances and the differences in between uh these tractors as as they evolved over over the years and the ferguson versus the fords um which one is right for you i don't know it depends what you're gonna do with it if you if you think you're gonna blow snow with these things it it's that's a dicey proposition especially with these eight ends because in reverse uh they go the same speed as in third so it becomes very difficult if you're fortunate enough to find one of the old drive ahead single stage v snow blowers it was actually designed for these things so you can usually get away with those so long as the snow's not too too wet and and heavy the the sherman transmissions won't help you because uh you get one like this one has they say oh i'll just put it in under drive and i can blow a stone problem is it whatever percentage it slows down the wheels by it slows down the pto by the same percentage so you're kind of you you could there but for using them for bush hogs for finishing mowers for post hole diggers uh all that stuff that they're great they're not ideal for rototilling either because they go too fast in the first year but um aside from that hey if you want to use it just for scratching around your farm putting in you know a deer plot or something they're they're great for that um i obviously couldn't decide which was the right one for me so i've got well several examples of each uh probably the most we've got around here is nine ansters i don't know there's probably 10 of them around here i guess the best part of these old things is that they make they just make you smile looking at them using them riding them just driving around the field i don't care if i'm even doing anything with it i just like to hop on one and and drive around the field i i love them i love them that much they've been a big part of my life since we moved to the country um anyway i hope you learned a little bit of something about about all these old tractors today and um i'm i'm far from uh uh expert on these things but i've had enough of them over the years to know a few things and i certainly haven't covered every single thing here it would take hours and hours and hours to cover every little difference but hey if you hear people talking about 9n 2n 8n ferguson and and what even makes it more confusing is that these ones uh there's supposed to be a little badge on here ford and then underneath it says ferguson system people call these ford fergusons that just muddies the waters even more but this is what they're talking about when they say ford ferguson anyway um i hope you enjoyed this and um we'll come back again for some more old tractor hijinks but until then uh thanks for tuning in and this is kevin checking out from the claremont classic garage so long you

Channel: Claremont Classic Garage

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Id: 1I9eSX_kHCc

Length: 29min 59sec (1799 seconds)

Published: Wed May 12 2021