Monday, November 1, 2010

Raising a Crop of Tractor Preservationists

October 29, 2010, 4:00 pm

For?this Sunday’s Automobiles section, I wrote about my visit to the Red Power Roundup, an annual meet for collectors of International Harvester products, especially tractors and other farm equipment. The event took place in June in LaPorte, Ind.

Among the questions I raised in the article was the matter of where future?tractor hobbyists?and restorers would come from. Part of the answer might be found in a contest sponsored by Delo, a Chevron product line of?lubricants.

Earlier this month at the national Future Farmers of America conference in Indianapolis, Will Chappel and Tyrel Bohrer of El Campo, Tex., won the Delo Tractor Restoration Competition. The winners’ project, documented on video,?required nearly 900 hours of work to transform a rusty wreck of a 1966 Case 1200 TK tractor into a gleaming, functioning machine. They took home a first-place prize of $5,000.

Whether as a winter project?by farm-connected people or simply a case of?nostalgia, farm machinery restoration is clearly exciting people — and the excitement is being reflected in the auction results of vintage farm machinery. A rare 1911 Case went for $420,000 at an Illinois auction two years ago, according to the Aumann auction house, not quite Ferrari money but better than many recent muscle car sales.

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