Yessir, I've gone thru all the numbers and features available with the changes they made on the NAAs. It's got all the upgrades ...appears to have a block built in early 54 but the rest has the changes and features that were put in for late 54 and up. I believe this is the 7th tractor I've owned over the years. I have another right now that I bought new in 2003 right before I retired. I worked it for 2 years making money mowing and clearing and paid off the tractor and the implements I bought and quit doing it for a living. That was the worst tractor I've ever owned. It's a Farmtrac 35. When Ford went out of the smaller tractor sales and they were split up, some being produced by New Holland and some went to Long Agri, then the smaller tractors went to India. They only produced them there for about 2 years and are now being built by somebody else in Europe. The Farmtrac 35 was supposed to be a tractor built around the 2000 series Fords. The body metal is inter-changeable and lots of the same features but the Indian made Tractors had some kind of diesel engine made somewhere else, probably India. I had been trying to find a manual for it since I've owned it without any success. But since it was only made over there a couple of years, I never found one. There are places on the innertube that say you can download a manual but the links are dead when you try. That tractor never was as much a tractor as the old gas tractors I've had. The hydraulics never acted right from the start. Little problems all along and I got tired of screwing with it.
I think the absolute strongest old tractor I ever had was a Case VAC, also a 1955. Bought it from an old farmer for 300 bucks. Sitting in a field for years, the rear wheels were toast and rusted thru. The block had a hairline crack at the water line from sitting out in the field and freezing sometime in it's past. I pulled that one home. de-tired it, welded the wheels up with strap metal and glassing over the rims and put the old tires back on it. Never did fix the crack in the block. It always dripped but not bad enough to lose enough water to make a problem. Believe it or not, I never changed the plugs in the old Case. Cleaned the carb out, put a new distributor cap on. Had a 6 volt system with a bad battery, never changed that out either. It did have the old crank handle and that thing fired up so easily I never used the starter. I did a world of work with that old beast for about 5 years and actually drove it up on the trailer when I traded it. Talk about "GRUNT".
I told the guys I was looking fo another old gas tractor and they thought I was out of my mind for going away from the diesel. Nope, I can make the gas ones run....
. I suspect the valve guides/seals are worn the way it smokes a little out of the breathers, not too much at all out the pipe. Cranks and works real good.
