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‘Runaway Massey’ Tested On A 1/10th-Mile Track
Engineers who design and build farm equipment have long been tasked with testing prototype models for workability, strength, durability and other characteristics. In the early 1960s, Massey Ferguson built a 1/10-mile circular concrete track in Thomasville, Ga., to test its prototype 1130 tractor. Like old-fashioned hor
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‘Runaway Massey’ Tested On A 1/10th-Mile Track
Engineers who design and build farm equipment have long been tasked with testing prototype models for workability, strength, durability and other characteristics. In the early 1960s, Massey Ferguson built a 1/10-mile circular concrete track in Thomasville, Ga., to test its prototype 1130 tractor. Like old-fashioned horse-drawn power mechanisms, the tractor’s front wheels were tethered to a pole at the center of the track, creating tension that kept the tractor turning left. Engineer Jim Clark says the tractor was set up to run 24 hours a day. Clark designed a safety kill switch that would stop the engine if the tether line broke.
Clark says the system worked well. The tractor towed a ballast device whose drag could be controlled by changing gears. After hundreds of hours of testing, interrupted only to add fuel and change oil, the prototype was evaluated to determine whether modifications were needed before production. On another occasion, Clark says the tether design “worked well until it didn’t.”
Clark says they were testing the wear life of the rake tines on an MF 25-mounted rake. Different suppliers sent product samples, which their team attached to a bar so the tines barely scraped the track surface. Clark and his team measured tine wear each morning, at midday, and again in the evening when the tractor was refueled. The small tethered tractor pulling the rake circled the track without issues for several days and nights. One morning, however, Clark says they heard the tractor engine running, but it wasn’t on the track.
At some point during the evening, the tether line broke, the kill switch failed, and the tractor veered off the track. They spotted it nearly 100 yards away, stranded in a small ditch, with the mounted rake supporting the tractor’s wheels off the ground.
Clark says the tines had done some serious raking in the soil along the edge of the concrete track. Thereafter, the small tractor was known as “the runaway Massey” whenever it was used for testing.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup (www.legacyquarterly.com).
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