Oh but what could've been.....

Wish I was but a fly on the wall in that IH boardroom back in '84-'85. They were SOOOOOO close to the best tractor ever built, IMHO. Would have saved the company?!? What do you guys think?

(quoted from post at 20:05:40 01/31/12) Wish I was but a fly on the wall in that IH boardroom back in '84-'85. They were SOOOOOO close to the best tractor ever built, IMHO. Would have saved the company?!? What do you guys think?

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I'm not sure one series of tractors would have saved them. It had been building for a while and it no doubt would have taken a while to get it back. I keep thinking of the draft control we were working on for IH that would have been in the series following the 460-560s. To show the difference it made, we tested with a gas 460U and pulled a 4x16" semi-mounted plow... have any of you ever seen a 460 pull that much... I've plowed with it in some nasty alkaline soil and I [u:c81b5780df]know[/u:c81b5780df] it would do it. IH engineers loved it, but I heard their managment thought it too expensive. JMO, but I think it would have taken something like that to save them. It was years before IH or anyone else had a system to compare.

You're probably right, but everytime I take a close look at one of the early CIH Magnums or 88 series IH, I think I find yet another similarity I didn't see before. I've heard and read both sides of the story. That IH had the Magnum designed and built before the merger, Case just was not allowed to put an IH motor in it because Navistar kept the engines to Case basically threw together leftover IH parts and used their Cummins/Case developed engine to make a tractor. I tend to believe the first, but either way those 71-72-89 series Magnums are about as bullet-proof as a farm tractor can be.

No the problems that took them out of the gene pool festered long before the death. IH might still be with us IF they hadn't screwed up the 460/560s i "59 AND came out with the '06 (806, 706,606) no later than 1961, the 06s are what they should of had in 1959. The 1959 tractors and their rear end problems drove a lot of farmers to Deere's new generation

I"m sure I"m going to catch he--- for this but the Union put IHC under. IHC was picked for the strike and JD, Cat and others were left to keep producing equipment. IH did not think strike would last as long as it did. When it was over IH was whiped. JD, Cat & orthers out on top!!!

I am ignorant towards these "newer" tractors.

What am I looking at on the contol panel with all the sticks coming out of it????


Thanks(Always like to learn something new every day!)

My dad was working in a dealership when the sh-- hit the fan at IH. It all started over a wobble box on the cutter bar on the grain heads, JD sued IH on patent infringement and , the judge who decided the case did not know his a-- from a hole in the ground . The boxes didnt even look the same. So, he awarded JD milions of dollars in damages,along, with the strike IH lost thier a-- and tenneco seen they were in trouble and bought them really cheap. and the rest his history.

No, what did them in was the strike and the patent infringement suit against them that Deere won concerning their cornhead design. Those two things were the beggining of the end. Never heard anything about wobble boxes on grain platforms.

The 3 tall levers to the right are hydraulic controls. the box on the left front is your gear shift. Throttle control next to the arm rest.

The farm economy wasn't all that great in the early 1980's either... Not that it ever was/is, but it was especially bad then. ALL the manufacturers were hurting to some degree, but IH was already in a hole.

No, the reason IH went under is much more complex than any lawsuit, but this is the first time I have seen the JD one in print. There is are several pages about this on the first page of the forum on the Red Power forum site. Everybodys opinion, some reasonable some not -- you might read it.
IH demise

It's never as simple as any one or two things... We just can't get our pee-brains wrapped around the hugely complicated mess that was International Harvester in the early 1980's. It's much easier to blame one or two simple things.

It was about 5-6 years late. Had the 50 and 30 series have been introduced instead of the 86 series IH wouldn't have started the 1980s in such a hole. Competition from JD, Case and even Ford had left their 4+2 + TA transmission in the dust.

IH could have made the strike work for them. They had a fairly large inventory when it started and it slowly burned off as the strike went on. When it was over they were in a great position to start the recession, but they did the exact opposite of what they should have done. Instead of maintaining their low inventories they ran balls to wall production sinking massive amounts of money into expensive equipment that sat unsold on dealers lots - some times for years. The massive carrying cost of that inventory (money borrowed at 20% to finance euipment that lost value as it sat on the dealers lot) is what broke them.

Nothing in particular. Just how similar it all looks to say a CaseIH 7120, which first came out in 1988. 3 years after the last IH tractor was built.

Bob I can atest to the magnum series of tractors. I am the maintainance guy at a 1500 head dairy and we have two 7110 magnums. One has 11000 hours on it and the other has 22000 on the tractor and 17000 on second motor. Only need motor cause boss tried using sinthetic oil and she spun a bearing. Also now couple other guus in area who have magnums with similar hours. Basic maintanence keeps both running strong. They still will any job we want but mostly get easy work. Sorry so long winded.

So, What Exactly am I looking at here? I see 5488, but I also see a similiar console to a magnum, (with a 5488 Z style shift pattern) and doors that open the "Right" direction. Is this a IH prototype tractor or a well done (and well used it appears) custom build?

I can tell you what happened to IH in one name: Fowler McCormick. He took the helm in 1941, saw the company through the phenomenally profitable war years and post-war boom times, the company was able to actually pay off its debt burden it had carried since the depression, and it all went to Fowler's head. He apparently got the idea that it was all due to "his" leadership.

That "leadership" gave us the longest production run of any tractor line ever, the letter series lasted from 1939, just before he took over, to 1954, three years after he was fired by the board of directors for his incompetence. Here is what lead to it all and the eventual fall. Fowler left the tractor division to rest on its laurels because he thought that since they were selling all they could make, and so were the other manufacturers, it would last indefinitely. So he ignored the advances and inroads the competition was making and, flush with boom times cash, branched out into all kinds of other markets that IH had no real business trying to enter. For example, he took on industry giant Caterpillar in the construction market, losing HUGE sums in the process trying to play catch up, and we all know about the refrigerators and air conditioners that also never showed a profit for the company, not to mention the fact that Fowler did not spend enough time overseeing all his "visions for the future", preferring instead to start something then leave it to someone else to make happen while he moved on to his next big idea, or went on yet another vacation, (his time spent away from the company nearly equaled his time spent at the company).

This took IH from a company flush with cash and with no debt at the end of the war to a company deeply in debt once again by the time Fowler was ousted in 1951. Then the man the board replaced him with, had both arms tied behind his back by the very same board in that they ordered him not to cut their losses and run, but instead to pursue all the new markets Fowler had entered in order to recoup their investments. Bottom line, IH never recovered their investments and it never recovered from the severe new debt load brought on by this trivial pursuit.

Then came the fiasco of the 560 we all know about, caused by the fact that with the debt load, the board did not want to spend too much time or money developing the new tractor, thus IH lost first place to that green outhouse company from just up the way. The Board did learn their lesson in all this at least, and spent the time and money to do the 706/806 tractors right, but the damage was already done and they never recovered the lost market position.

IH had not had a truly innovative tractor since the first Farmall came out until the 3488, but IH was so far gone by then, even it could not help them, and the company started looking into filing chapter 11 as far back as 1981, but managed to hold on until near the end of 1984 when Tenneco took over.

Then of course Tenneco shoved IH into Case, who had been having their own problems, and the usual lay-offs and plant closing ensued, and we lost a legend.

Others here have already discussed IH's labor issues, lawsuits and such, so I'll skip those, except to say that all these things simply aggravated the already existing debt problems just that much more.

Sorry for the overly long book, but I just felt like I needed to vent.

-Bob

Call me ignorant, but what was the 560 fiasco? I haven't heard of it before...

(quoted from post at 20:39:24 02/02/12) Call me ignorant, but what was the 560 fiasco? I haven't heard of it before...

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Early 560's suffered from an unusually high failure rate of final drive components. Someone at IH thought it was a good idea to do a small amount of modification to a M rear end and put a 6 cyl. engine in front it and 4 and 5 bottom plows behind it and do very little field testing. They knew there were issues with 400's/450's, but they weren't too concerned about it.

Some tractors ate more than one rear end before IH came out with a sort-of-recall that fixed the problems. IH tried several things until they got a fix that worked.

Some tractors were seemingly unaffected and still have the original components in them.

AG

(quoted from post at 16:55:13 02/01/12) So, What Exactly am I looking at here? I see 5488, but I also see a similiar console to a magnum, (with a 5488 Z style shift pattern) and doors that open the "Right" direction. Is this a IH prototype tractor or a well done (and well used it appears) custom build?

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FC Andy:
this is an IH prototype. The Magnum was something IH had in development but couldn't afford to push forward with it. I have heard early Magnums have IH cast into many major components. People have made custom tractors or prototype replicas by bolting an IH engine to a Magnum clutch housing and rear end. The bolt pattern is for IH engines. The cummins rear plate for a Magnum could allow you to bolt a cummins to an IH as well.
Check out the IH books by Ken Updike.

karl f