There are usually a few classic tractors on the grounds of a farm show for visitors to admire, sometimes even rare ones — but to see one modified into a hot rod isn’t that common, at least in Canada.
That’s why this McCormick-Deering, on display at the World Ag Expo in California earlier this year, caught my attention.
At first glance it looked like just another restored model. But on closer examination, this tractor was now very different than how it rolled off the assembly line, probably in the 1930s.
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Vintage power on display at Saskatchewan tractor pull
At the Ag in Motion farm show held earlier this year near Langham, Sask., a vintage tractor pull event drew pretty significant crowds of show goers, who were mostly farmers.
Aside from sporting oversized tires and a glossy new paint job, it was re-powered with a Cummins diesel engine.
It’s hard to say exactly what model this was originally — probably a 22-36, which was in production from 1929 to 1934. If so, it would originally have had a massive 425-cubic inch (seven-litre) gasoline engine under the hood, but it would only have delivered about 30 horsepower on the drawbar despite all those cubic inches.
The Cummins almost certainly delivers at least that much but takes up barely half the space under the hood.
The tractor was also probably delivered to its first owner riding on steel wheels rather than rubber tires.
The McCormick-Deering brand name was used by International Harvester Co. (IH) from the 1920s through the 1940s. The brand was a callback to the names of two of the companies merged in 1902 to form IH — which itself later merged with Case in the 1980s and with New Holland in 1999 as CNH.
