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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Wednesday, January 06, 2010 at 19:22:56 :
In Reply to: OT: For the tractor lovers smong us....... posted by Randy Baker [204.132.142.2] on Wednesday, January 06, 2010 at 16:05:18 :
Mr. Tucker wasted a lot of time on a screw-type now machine before he invented the ladder-track pontoon machine that was really successful. The problems with the screw machine are no stability on side hills (slides right down) and poor performance on deep snow. You can see in the movie near the beginning where the man gets off to show how deep the snow is that he's breaking through a hard crust. I suspect they picked that on purpose for the movie. The machine was just light enough to stay on top of the crust. Tucker's design can also negotiate short stretches of bare ground since there is nothing that makes a sliding contact with the ground. On snow, the pontoon bottoms carry the weight, and the tracks just provide propulsion, but on ice or bare ground, the tracks hold the pontoons above the surface so they're not dragging across the dirt. I think the Fordson would eat itself up pretty fast if it had to go across any bare ground, especially if it was paved or rocky.
Still, it's quite a clever idea. I wonder if any are still around? It wouldn't even be all that hard to fabricate one. I wonder how two lengths of spiral aluminum culvert pipe would work?
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