james f

If you really want to do this right and have the folds match on the inside and outside of the finished trailer you need to use a strip heater. This has a piece of resistance wire that heats up when current is passed through it. Placing this wire close to a sheet of plastic for a short period of time heats just a strip of the plastic enough for you to easily bend it to any angle you want, where it sets once it cools down. I've never actaully used one myself but I've seen plenty of stuff made using this method in school. I'd say it would take skill and some trial and error to get it to work properly without completely melting or burning the plastic, and I would say that the best results would be achieved using thin sheets to give the sharpest bends

Have a great one at home of my older brother (26) with my father looking at a big four-wheel-drive Ursus at the RDS spring show in Dublin sometime in the mid 80's, my brother cant be more than 5 or 6. Not at home at the mo though so I cant put it up for you :'(

Thats a nice trailer chassis too compared to some of the other ones they have

Anyone else get a smell?? :D

YES!!!! by the way, you wouldn't have any gates for sale would you? :D

Have to say I think you got away lightly there, wisdom teeth are a serious business!! :o

Sounds interesting James, have you any photos?

So it annoyed you and made you laugh? ???

Well Rory, I have bought your magazine religiously since day one, and will continue to do so as I think the content best fits what I am interested in. However I would on occasion buy other magazines if I saw an interesting article or I was going on a trip and wanted something to read and I had the most recent CT read already, so from that point of view that would go against your competitor magazine, as given the choice on a particular day I would always go for a new issue of CT. I used to enjoy T&M when it was very good at its job of dealing with vintage tractors, but I think it has lost its way a bit, abandoning the 'veteran' scene to Stuart Gibbard's magazine Old Tractor, and trying to move in on CT's turf by covering classic and modern equipment. Along with this the quality of the articles and the layout has declined significantly. I think it should refocus on the vintage scene, ie Fordson Major/Ferguson 20 etc era, and stop trying unsucessfully to copy CT ideas like tractor rebuilds and servicing guides. There must be more tractor restoration stories and private collections they can report on instead of resorting to the filler of recent years. (sorry about the rant but i think its sad the way T&M has declined in the last few years)

Hymach make some pretty big ones too, with telescopic arms: http://www.hymach.it/visual_maxima.htm

Couldn't you have moved the security barrier/fence a bit?

Love the Bell containers. Grew up seeing them almost every day in the Hartman plastic chairs factory

Its a device for harvesting the beet leaves (tops) so they can be made into silage for livestock feed. Pretty popular in the 70's but not very common nowadays

What happens is the machine throws the crop back a certain distance as it goes through the machine. How far it gets thrown depends on the machine but it could be up to six feet with a haybob for example. Then when you set into work at on end of the field the crop gets thrown back onto the headland area, and when you get to the other end and lift out it often leaves a bare patch, or not if you dont lift on the headland. Anyway what happens is the whole swath moves lengthways down the field and bunches up at one end, leaving you with lots of lumps when you come to finish the headland. To avoid this happening you should try to go in opposite directions on successive passes of the field to push the crop back in the other direction, easier said than done though!!

Nice pics Gav, that top saver is extremely unusual :)

The real ones were only based on Fordson Majors, though some copies based on 754s(Ford5000) and such like have been made. As I see it, the options from this casting are County 754, 764, 944 and 964

Camera tricks Great pics as usual sascha. Beet harvesting is a particular favourite of mine also, though we tend to use smaller belt type machines, and theres no way you would be ploughing and sowing the next crop in the same field the same day!!!

Interesting to note that they are going into making Valtra models

I'd still say it a serious issue though Ricky. As far as possible paint and primer shold be of the same type be it cellulose, enamel acrylic or whatever. As you have found out also, roughening the surface significantly improves 'keying'. Was it the primer that didnt go on first or was it just the top coat that was the problem? If it was just the top coat, sanding down the primer before the top coat helps as well.

??? The 3000 had the worst hydraulic pump in tractor history! You'd be lucky if you could lift the plough off the ground in the morning :o

CKD stands for Completely Knocked Down ie completely crated up with wheels and axles taken off, as opposeed to PKD or Partially Knocked Down, where they just took the wheels or tyres off and ran them on wooden temporary 'wheels' @Datman: nice 5000 there. If you put up the serial number we should be able to tell you where and when she was made. the serial no. can be found on a sticker underneath the bonnet or (I think?) stamped on the bell housing behind the starter motor

Seems to have disappeared?

Thers a good mix of outdoor and indoor shed types around my way, though mostly outdoors. Not all outdoor ones have walls, just a slab like the one Stan put up, or with a bank on one side like our own. When making a pit in a shed, we always tip outside on the ground and then the loader backs out over the silage and pushes it in when the trailer is gone. Personally I think an indoor pit is an awful waste of a shed, especially as very few people let the cows feed from the pit face nowadays, but in lots of cases that's just what is there on the farm and most lads will work away with it rather than have to build a new outdoor slab with provision for effluent run-off and all that in order to gain the use of the shed.

This was on a stand at this year's 'Ploughing:

Leave the chap alone Simon \