Simon

Looks good Coxy, been waiting to see this painted. Got any photos of it on a tractor so we can see the scale of it?

Ha, yes, the sidelights. A friend and I 'pimped our rides', the TS & a 6180 - turned the lenses upside down to give clear indicators and amber sidelights, then fitted amber repeater bulbs. Simple things..... Been ploughing today on the 6030, nice change over christmas, will get some photos and post them later this week.

Small point Sean, the rear fender extensions from where the mud guards slope and tail light housings should be black. Had to look at it for ages before I could work that out! Looks great, keep posting pics.

Big rolls! Ideal business. Knock working in the office on the head and go back to what I was doing before. Only this time making some money!

simple59v8 My wife is not convinced by my purchasing so if I'm bidding please leave me to it!! How does everyone arrive at these usernames...? Especially marky! Simple - 'simple' simon [my name on the log book, bought from a friend, the sod], - of my 1959 V8 Land Rover. Come on, lets have eplanations of the good ones...

I was a young man and it damn near killed me! Especially when the dexta threw it's exhaust into my lap while tearing down the main road from one job to another! The melted pyjama bottoms given to me by a chap in a house by the road are still on the exhaust!!

How long did it take you to work out the key stokes to get that right?! And yes, you're right, I think anyway.

'Step frame' is the correct name for that type of trailer isn't it?

A friend of mine started contracting when he left school with an IH 674 from a farm sale. Nearly 10 years down the road and he now runs a new MF 6480, a 6180 trailed chopper, couple of nice trailers, pottinger mower, plough, hedgetrimmer, and various other odds and sods. I don't know the precise extent of his fleet these days as the last time I saw him was at his wedding. And that was probably the last time his wife saw him too! He works all the hours that he can, mostly because he loves what he does. If you can start small then a smart little business can still be built. To get you thinking this was how his tractor fleet has evolved. He borrowed around a thousand pounds for his first tractor and went out as tractor and driver helping local farms, ours being one, tedding, trailering etc. Approx dates & tractors: 1996/8 - IH 674 1998/9 - MF 590 2wd 1999/01 - MF 690 2001/03 - MF 3080 2003/05 - MF 6180 + MF 699 2005/07 - MF 6280 + MF 3080 2007/ - MF 6480 [which he turned up at his wedding on] + MF 6180

Took these this morning, bit dark and it's stuffed in a corner at my house while I'm extending, but here's a couple of the Manitou. It replaced a 1984 Sambron J24s rear steer mono boom loader we've had from new back in the autumn. Not got round to tidying it up yet but once I've been over it we're hoping she'll last for years! The Dominator is a peach, she came from a contractor at Clifton in 2006 to replace the 1978 Dom 85 we'd run since 1998. Only slight downside is the header is only 12' - not a major problem as it's 8 miles by road from field to store and we only run 2 trailers on one tractor so it actually isn't a downside at all!

The old man and I had a small contracting business along the lines of yours We ran a Renault Ceres 85s, a Ford 1910 4wd with Lewis power loader and the old Dexta. Key operations were haylage for the horsey brigade using a Wolvo mini round baler and Wolvo wrapper. Also did hedgetrimming with a Bomford Supertrim and hedgelaying and forestry. It was bloody hard work - particularly the mini baling and wrapping - but an interesting form of contracting. I'll find some photos and scan them in for you. The mini baler looked hilarious behind some of the tractors I ran it on - Renault Ares 540, Ford 7810 III, TS115 SLE!

Blimey, a Moore Unidrill, don't see many of those! All those Fergie plates look fairly local to me - which dealer did they come out of?

Glad you like them Marcus..... if the blue hurts your eyes the orange will no doubt blind you........... I'll certainly find some, we had boatloads of events but I don't remember taking many photos - it was in the days before camera phones and affordable quality digital cameras..... you know technology makes us get old quicker?! I remember one good session I had snapping some of my 'rig' before a delivery.... I'll try to find them this evening. It's a bit unfortunate that I didn't take a great deal of pics, was quite a nice bit of modern history. In light of this and as the building - although lightly modified - is still there and I get on well with the new occupant, I'm going to attempt a 1/32 of it. Need to start collecting Renaults though..... and transits... masters.... fastracs.... lowloaders.... kubotas..... mcconnel kit..... the list goes on....

I'm waiting for another email from my local sign man. He can computer cut vinyl for me down to about 6mm tall - will be good for the Claas lettering on the Dom78. He'll also print smaller onto clear vinyl - it's the old white area chestnut again though..... Everything is self adhesive. I suppose the way to make it cost effective would be to see if anyone else needs any and get a job lot....

Farmers take operations in house where they are weather or time critical and don't have a decent contractor they can rely on. We only grow 150 acres of cereals for instance, but we have our own combine. If you can get the sums to stack up then doing things like foraging yourself reduces dependance on other people. Your kit should be less likely to break down if well maintained [in theory] than a contractors because you're doing less acreage. So it makes sense to do it. If your kit is clapped out then a contractor is going to be more reliable and cheaper in the long run. It's horses for courses. Some of us just like doing certain jobs and not others! We get a contractor in for combination drilling and spraying. Everything else we do ourselves, and combining is something we look forward to all year!

The little fiat - painted blue and badged Ford 4135 - is a corker on the loader. It's really well matched to the 610. Because we have quite a few orchards on the home farm we need something a bit smaller, she's ideal. Seems to have plenty of lift, will just manage to shunt fert bags around and she drives a KV 2.7m flail topper round the orchards. It's the old man's pride and joy although she doesn't look it at the moment! Thanks Spud, will get some more up when I get a few minutes, we've got quite a nice range of fairly new well maintained kit, quite proud of it!

Last ones for now

Yet more

More pics

Thought you might like to see some of our kit and know a bit of background about me as a new member. We farm just under 300 acres on the Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire border. Just over 200 acres are share farmed. I now work for an interior fit out contractor designing offices but prior to that I have worked for Renault Ag at what was their flagship uk branch - CRA Ludlow and before that for William Davies Honda, and ag engineer with a Honda ATV franchise. I'll dig out some photos of Renault - was a super little dealership, unfortunately it was just before the huge restructuring and it closed down after only 2 years of operation. Below are some pictures of our kit. The TS was replaced this autumn for the T6030+. I'll post some photos of the rest of our kit when I get the chance. The Dominator combine will be one of my first conversion / scratch attempts for 15 years, watch this space! Simon

Definitely prefer to buy parts! Otherwise I'll have more tractors to find wheels for!!That and not having a 4020 to hand! Any one know any good ones? PMA32 only have bigger ones - proper Euro style - I want olde english! There was a fad for sticking trailer wheels on the front round here but the offset was no good and knackered the bearings too frequently so that's become less common [1:1!]. Looking for some nice little goodyears, will want the same for the Dom78 conversion when I find a suitable donor chassis.....

I used to work for Renault and spent a bit of time on these - I'll see if I can dig out any photos of my time at CRA Ludlow [Now a Travis Perkins] 700 series were a standard GIMA 'dynashift' type transmission - 4 speed gate, dump button on the stick, nudge for range change, 4 powershift ratios. 800 series were the full powershift version of the same tractor - display on the RH cab A pillar told you what gear you had and the stick was basically the hand throttle with a nice handle on it for the buttons. Both 7 & 8's had the electro hydraulic shuttle on the dash. There were very few early ones sold with mechancal shuttles. Major complaint of the semi powershift was that MF had pilfered the nice linkage for themselves, leaving Renault with a slightly awkward off set shift pattern. It takes some getting used to but once you are it's not as notchy as you think it is when you first try it. RZ Hydrostable cabs were superb, comfortable and spacious. Heating blowers were very loud though. Access to service items was pretty good - RZ's were higher mounted than RX's making everything a bit easier. Side panels on engines are a little hefty on 600 series but were 2 piece on 7 & 800's. Lift up fibreglass noses useful for cleaning rads. Top panels over engines are a bolt on concern, not like these modern lift up things like our new NH T series. Gearboxes were pretty reliable - we had major problems with a creep box on a customers 710RZ [i think that's what it was] but the problems were more of Renault's warranty obstinacies than repeated mechanical failure. Engines were good - DPS weren't they? Same as the Deere 6 & 7000 series but with slighly different blocks to compensate for the lack of a chassies frame. All in all they were a nice tractor, my choice would be for an 800 series just to get away from that notchy gear change but either will make a good workhorse. We're all blue at home now having been blue and orange at the time [used to annoy the GM at Ludlow but what can I say]. Given the choice I'd have the TM but if I honestly had to pick the better machine I think it would have to be the Renault.

What do you take the front wheels from? There seems a bit of a shortage of wider ribbed front tyres. Planning a 2wd Ford 7710 Force I conversion - needs big boots but I don't like floats - anyone have a source for wide front & rear wheels & tyres like the ones used here? Simon

Granted, the loader is great but why has no-one mentioned the MF 3000 series in the background?! What's the basis for that and can you post some photos when finished Sean? Simon

I've taken to drawing up buildings in 1:32 on ArchiCAD and printing on A1 - While the software thinks it's done a 1/32nd scale set of plans what you get is a 1:1 template. If anyone has any buildings they want 1:1 templates for to save on the faff of converting the scale then PM me and I'll take a look at them for you. Particularly suitable for specialist buildings - dealerships etc.