Customer Reviews

Classic Farmall Tractors: History, Models, Variations & Specifications 1922-1975 (Tractor Legacy Series)

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Don't bother with this book. I was hoping for a complete anthology of the Farmall line, this book fails to deliver. Gives a lot of history but not enough information on the actual tractors and the attachments that would have been available. Not enough pictures either. Disappointed, may return the book.

An excellent history of Farmall tractors, from longtime IH guy Ken Updike. Lots of concise technical information about each model tractor, richly illustrated with high-quality vintage color and black and white photos from the factories, farm fields, and dealerships where these tractors were built, tested, and sold. My one gripe concerns coverage of the final-drive problems encountered on the Farmall 460 and 560: The author sets the stage at the start of the chapter by writing "...the drivetrain on the 460 and 560 was maxed out in the Hundred and Fifty Series tractors. Adding more horsepower to this drivetrain could be a recipe for disaster, and it was." But the issue is never mentioned again, except as a side note in a paragraph about the Brass Tacks sales demonstrator program: "IH actually ran the Brass Tacks Demo program twice on the 40 and 60 Series. The first run was in 1958 and 1959. This program was probably terminated early on due to rear axle and final drive issues in the 460s and 560s. Once this was resolved, the program ran again in 1961." Given the damage those failures did to the Farmall reputation just as John Deere was about to introduce the 3010 and 4010, I would have been interested in more technical detail about the problems and the modifications IH put in place to fix them.

This is another great book from IH author and historian Ken Updike. I found the text engaging and informative without being overly dry which is easy to do. There are also lots of pictures and ads, almost all are vintage and many are in color, used throughout. Overall I'd highly recommend this book to anybody interested in IH.

This volume is filled with vital and interesting information of the "golden age" of Farmall tractos. I have been a student of Farmall for a number of years, and yet learned much new information -- sometimes on models not included in other books on Farmalls.
It is a book well worth the money, filled with great photos and information.