Tractor Restoring -- A Hobby That Takes Patience

Hi All,

If you have a lot of patience, restoration can most likely be very rewarding.

Last year I got a note from David Irish who used to live here in town with some photos of an old John Deere he restored.

To refresh your memory a bit, you can click on the following link:

http://www.vtgrandpa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=622

This morning I received a note and some photos from David Shea who has also tackled restoring an old tractor.

His note and photos are below:

Thought that you might be interested in my restored 1953 Ferguson TO 30 tractor. I am the third owner of the tractor. It spent the majority of it's life at the Palmer farm. Early on in it's life it did all of the plowing, harrowing, mowing, raking, and baling. Later on the tractor scraped the manure from the barn. When I got the tractor, this time last year, it was in sad shape and very smelly. When I first saw the tractor I saw it's potential and feared that if it were not restored it would soon be melted down for scrap. I spent a good share of my spare time last summer scraping and wire wheeling off all of the years of rust, prepping the surface for paint, locating out of production parts and putting it back together. Some of the parts came from as far away as Ohio and Texas!

My son will be the first to tell me that it is the fastest tractor in the world. I will say that it runs great and looks great considering it is 53 years old.

The tractor is for sale to make room for my next restoration as for what that is, I have not found it yet!

David Shea