"The 110"
Yea, I know it's fuzzy. Leave me alone. And yes, its sporting its new sheet metal.
Tractors in our family tend to earn names. The Cub became "Cubby", the Farmall H was called "Henry", Papaw named the Ferguson "Furgee", I fought to keep the 4520's name "the 45". Once I got this little green machine, it got a name too.

Two years ago, I was in the mood to buy some old piece of iron, and rebuild it into something I could be proud of.

My only problems were size and funding. The barn was getting pretty full, and I didn't have a job, which translates into not alot of $. So whatever I got would have to be small and cheap.

This ruled out any kind of full sized tractor.

And then there was the whole fact that I didn't know how to restore something, and I was afraid I'd lose patients.

Another variable to add to the equation.
So now here's where things start adding up. Since I didn't need something big, with alot of parts to replace, and wouldn't run me into the thousands of dollars blown, maybe what I needed to go for was an old lawnmower, about the age of Cubby. As it turns out, my neighbor Terry down the road got a whole bunch of lawnmowers off some kinda deal or something, and one of them happened to be an old "New Style" John Deere 110. This thing was a complete basket case, and as I found out later, about 3/4 of it wasn't even there! So I asked him about it, and looked up information on the internet from sources and ebay, and the more I looked, the more I drooled. I just had to have it!

So after my graduation from high school came in 2003, I hooked the trailer up to Cubby, and I drove over to his house and presented him $50 for it. An hour later I was dragging it home behind my other lawnmower.

So now I had this giant pile of parts to make sense out of. The transmission was good. No way to know if the engine ran. And who knows how many parts were missing. So I found out about a place called "Butch's Small Motors" in Hall Indiana. I took a trip down there, and this guy has like 4 or 5 110s sitting around, but they're all complete. This doesn't help me a bit, til he mentions he has one more sitting in the barn that he had forgotten about. It had everything but a motor and a hood. Hey, I have those things! So we bought it to the tune of $150, and brought it home. After giving it a good power washing, I switched over the motor and the rear end, and the hood, and put it all together.

Finally getting it to run for the first time was fun, but it had a lot of engine troubles early on, so I went and tore into it and rebuilt it.

Its been over a year since I bought it and tore into that project. And since then, I've felt overwhelmed, confused, angry, joy, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Yes, I'm not happy with the engine (it doesn't have enough power), no I haven't painted it yet, I still haven't found all the parts for it yet. But the fact is, I'm proud I brought something back to life that previously was a pile of parts. And someday I will get all that stuff done, and it'll be the best little tractor on the block.

And I still have that restoring bug. Perhaps something else is looming in the future?
Take Me Home
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