Home Built Tractor

Memories & Friendships

Memories are made of rides like the 10th annual Heritage Tractor Adventure through Grundy and La Salle counties.

To me, the best of times is the second day of the three-day ride, with a couple hundred vintage tractors chugging along the route — and an occasional breakdown, sometimes fixable en route and sometimes not.

I always chose the second day to ride along. Camaraderie makes this day so great. It’s the friendship of the drivers and the wonderful, heart-warming stories they tell of how they got their tractors and why they keep coming back to the HTA, year after year after year.

It was Tuesday. We left the Grundy County Fairgrounds at 7:30 a.m., headed for Streator, riding as many backroads as we could to avoid any possible traffic holdups. We did travel Illinois 47 through Morris and across the Illinois River Bridge to eventually meet up with DuPont Road and head southwest.

It didn’t take long. The first breakdown occurred when an Oliver stopped running just south of the bridge. A Case 830 quit after that. Just west of Waupecan Valley, a John Deere driven by a Wilmington resident stopped when gas began streaming out of the tank onto the ground from a broken line. The driver spent the rest of the day’s ride in a golf cart.

Farm radio and magazine personality Max Armstrong, who led the ride on his 1953 Super C Farmall, had a bit of a problem with the steering prior to leaving the fairgrounds.

“But the guys fixed it, and off we went,” he said.

Bumping along at 8 to 12 miles an hour, you see a lot of things that are missed when traveling 50 to 60 miles an hour in regular traffic. Also, residents along the route traveled are pleased to see the machines and wave as the iron horses go by. Others are startled, such as the guy at his mailbox who waved us down and asked what was going on.

“I heard this noise, and I came out to see what’s happening, and there’s all these old tractors going by,” he said. “Where are you from and where are you going?” We told him. We said we’d see him again when we came back this way in late afternoon, and he laughed.

The first stop was at the Illinois National Guard training facility in Brookfield Township, south of Marseilles. I had fun pointing out the fields where my cousin used to grow corn, and is now the site of La Salle Generating Station.

My uncle’s farm is submerged into La Salle Lake today, the station’s cooling body of water.  Part of my dad’s timber is now ING combat land. Two homes another cousin built are still standing, but the home of my great-grandparents is long gone. And so it goes.

Ags on the 8102 - MyTractorForum.com - The Friendliest Tractor ...

As requested, here are a few pictures of my 8102 with the ag type tires mounted. With my busy summer and no internet access at home it's taken me a while to get on here again. I used this setup for discing up a plot of hard pasture after I had rotary plowed it. The disc needed about 220 pounds of tractor wheel weights in order to do any damage. However, the wheels didn't slip so I'm happy with the traction that these tires provide. And for good measure, here are a few attachments I picked up last week. They've been heavily used but I have the sickle bar going and I stole the wheel assembly off of the rotary plow for my other plow. The old rotary plow wheel setups with the spokes were built much better than the newer ones.

Popular Mechanics

Farm equipment dealer

Tractor and gas engine review

Popular Science

Illustrated Directory of Tractors