phil phoenix

Ahh I see, you have broken the armrest off the T7.190 to get the giant in😄, thats cheating.

Your driver doesn't look like a siku one Paul, a bit smaller. I couldn't fit a siku one into any UH cab without damaging something.

You can't improve on navy blue metallic so hopefully they won't try. The DOE show special edition 7.300 was awful as well.

Fall steam above on the farm presently with the maize drilling in full flow, with our JD 8R 410 pulling the 16 row Vaddy drill. Our Fendt 936 is on cultivation duties along with the 728 & 724. Our remaining tractors are still hauling old maize into the A D Plant and new digestate out to customer fields.

Our contractor has completed his new line up of tractors and has added another ex hire T7 to his fleet as a gopher tractor, this time one of the very popular T7.210 model's, which joined the T7.225 & JCB 542-70 in hauling fertilizer  for the JCB to load onto the 225 and its Amazone spreader.

Bill's son who is driving the new T7.300 blue power has splashed out on a trendy weight block for the tractor which is now hooked up on the big 24000 litre Joskin tanker and weather permitting it will be out this week prepping old maize stubbles for this years new crop.

Seeing as the New Holland T7.210 is the most popular tractor in my area, I decided I would make one up out of the UH Gen2 T7.190 model which features a new light/indicator design, new seat and cab controls plus repositioned wiper blade.

So firstly I took the 190 to pieces, then painted the underside of the cab roof matt black including behind all the lights. Then added a 22 reg plate as I want it to be an ex hire tractor for my layout. Also the indicator change came in early 2022 so it couldn't be older.  After taking the bonnet off I painted the rad grill & sides matt black. Then having bought some white waterslide numerical decals online, I cut out and added them. 

Finally I replaced the wheels & tyres as I wanted to replicate the R28/65/600.............R38/65/650 Size's that are fitted to 95% of all 210's in my region.  I used a set of rims off a NH T5.130 which are perfect replica's. And finally the tyres off a UH Massey 8220 which are also exactly right michelin size replica's.

And I found a nice old D.I.Y blue weight box and jazzed it up with lights, warning signs & NH decal on the front.

I got there at 8.30 for an early start and half the car park was full !!  Plenty of people visiting.

I was after some cheap donor tractors and managed to track down an MF8260 for £30🙂 and the same guy was also giving away a new UH Deutz Fahr 8280 for £45 total bargains!!

Just found out that Collings Brothers have gone out of business!!!   They were CASE dealers for Cambs area for years before being dropped in 2021, and then took on the Deutz brand and had a hugely successful first 24 months selling over 60 tractors, but things have really dried up in the past 6 months, and recently I noticed they had a one year old 7250 Warrior in the last Cheffins sales auction at Cambridge, that sounded alarm bells for me, as if they were a bit desperate for money!   Hugely difficult times now for dealers with a perfect storm of sh1t hitting the farming industry.  And Suffolk Agri bit the dust as well, another reknowned CASE dealer in the 90s.

But there's nothing to go behind it as usual...........................The old 600/620 models were perhaps UH's best todate in accuracy and detail, certainly far better than Wikings JD 9620RX.

Delivery Day!!

Our contractor picked up his new NH Bluepower T7.300 on Thursday from Ernest Doe's and then drove to the old farmyard to collect the Claas combine header, which was later followed by the 770 Lexion itself. Still more room in the shed for another harvester, which we are still negotiating with Claas for.

The new blue tractor will be going on the big Joskin tanker after easter to do some direct injecting into old maize stumbles and ripping them up at the same time.

A nice MF 8S in TNS for service I think, plus sugarbeet drilling pictures of A.L.Lees T7.210's, part of a fleet of over 20 of this model that they run.

I never saw any pictures from nurembourg this year after last years absolute model bonanza, very odd?

Due to the frustrating rains we were forced to come up with things to do during January, one of them was to build a mounted cultivator capable of assisting drainage across the farms which could be pulled by our 200 - 300hp tractors, a six leg subsoiler, two banks of opposing discs and a big packer roller.  The Fendt 728 was the chosen machine as it hasn't done any serious or hard work yet, thats about to change.

Our contractor has had some issues with the tyres on his new NH T7.270 tractor, one tyre kept deflating and on inspection there were found to be some serious problems with three of the four on the tractor. The tyre manufacturer is looking into it, however contractor Bill is insisting on a tyre brand change as the obvious cure, he has not had issues with previous tyres from the maker so negotiations with maker and dealer are underway. His other new T7 is now at the dealers being PDI'd and also sat on the same makers tyres!!  Silly season will commence as soon as April arrives as we can't put off the backlog of work any longer.

As no model manufacturer has produced either a Sumo trio or Cousins Patriot I thought I would pair together a couple of available models to produce a similar tool.

An Imants subsoiler on the front hooked up to a Kuhn 3020 discs and heavy packer.  I did a bit of weathering to make the rig looked worked, and unless someone comes up with either of the above it will have to do.

Cousins Patriots have been a godsend in these parts, preparing the soil structure to better cope with the heavy persistant rains we have seen recently.

I took these pics of a 4255 which replaced the 4250 back in 1989......................the 4250/5 was 144hp and physically exactly the same as the 4450/5 which was 160hp.  The 55 series were only visually different from 50 series by the decals design and indicator lights where there used to be two normal work lights.

The 4350 replaced the 4240S in 85 and was gone by 87.

Here's a new CASE Puma for the David Brown diehards out there😎

Absolute must watch for the golden age tractor era fans, stunning MFs, Ford's, JD, CASE, David Brown, Muir Hill etc..................The sale is on Saturday March 23rd.

My choices would be MF 2725E,  Ford 2000, JD 4240S

We have started to bring the equipment down to the new barn this week, starting with the CLAAS Jaguar 980 and the recently acquired whole crop header.

Just imagine there is a river running around the perimeter edge Paul and the two entrances are via bridges😉

To build a really good big one with incoming roads or tracks would just take up so much room and also time to build it. This one took three unplanned weeks off work from start to finish.

With the contractors yard now finished we can start moving kit in and free up space around the A D Plant as planned.  Our main contractor Bill Legge has quickly moved in all our tankers which are now ready to go spreading liquid digestate as soon as conditions allow.  Which is not a bad thing as he is still waiting for one of his new tractors to arrive.  As a brief recap Bill knew he would have to change two machines this spring as the 3 year warranties were due to expire on his MF 8740S and his original 8S.265. Although the 8740 had been a good reliable machine Bill found that the lighter 8S could do most of the same jobs and more economically, which persuaded him to look at tractors in the 250-300hp bracket.  He decided to consider other brands to his usual first choice favourites MF due to repeated annoying electrical issues and numb brakes. Both these problems have been well documented by other 8S users with one online blogger "Four Winds Farm" having their 8S tractor taken away for four months by their dealer to fix all the issues! His newer 8S and 7S bought after assurances the troubles were "sorted" has not proved to be entirely the case, although both newer tractors have been better than the original machine so far.  So during last autumn he looked at a few different brands, Valtra from the same dealer as his MFs, John Deere, Deutz and New Holland.  All performed well but he felt that a brand from a different dealer would be best so Valtra were ruled out, followed by Deutz as the dealer was too far away. That left JD & NH, the Deeres were very good and impressed whilst the new NH T7 PLMs particularly impressed which had not been anticipated.  The new cabs being very comfortable and quiet and spacious too. The fuel economy on the demo tractor DOE's left him for a couple of days was better than the MF which was an added bonus. After recieving quotes he decided to order two New Hollands, a T7.270 which is about the same power as his 8S.265 and a flagship T7.300 machine with 280hp that comes with all bells & whistles and will be driven by Bill's son.  Bill's father used to have an all Ford fleet back in the 70s & 80s until MF won him over with the pioneering 3000 series tractors in the early 90s. Whilst Bill was at the DOE show in February he also bought an ex hire 2020 T7.225 to replace his 11 year old MF7495 which was sold last autumn.

Bill's team will be more flexible across our farm and AD Plant enterprise moving forward into 2024 and with an increasing workload due to more land more customers for digestate. And with the spreading expected to commence this week a new Bednar cultivator has arrived to mix the AD plant fertilizer in to our maize ground in front of the drilling campaign.  The swifterdisc was supplied by DOEs and was attached to the rear of his first new NH tractor the T7.270 when he went to collect it.  His T7.225 was delivered soon after the DOE show and has been busy spreading nitrogen on some of our cereal crops.  His team have also been busy spraying across the estate using both his MFs as conditions dictate.

Well I guess its his land and tractor so if he wants to do a Jeremy Clarkson impression he jolly well can😄

I was wondering if "Grassmen" favourite Tony O Mahoney had bought one of the new T7 plm tractors to add to his large fleet of modern New Hollands, the answer was yes. A new full spec T7.230

On the face of it this is just another picture of a CASE 580 Quadtrac, but its significant because its just replaced a JOHN DEERE 9620RX.  The farmer is the same one in my pictures above, they had 7 big JDs 9RX/ 8RX's/ 8R,s and a huge fleet of over 20 NH T7.210's mostly.  They used to be all blue but JD replaced the Ford 8970's over 20 years ago and that was that.  But the farmer did buy a Quadtrac 535 and then replaced it with a 600 before JD replaced it as soon as the first 9RX came out, then bought another in 2021 to replace the first one.  So I was surprised & delighted to see a red one has kicked JD out for a change.

But why I wonder?  I'm not sure price is that big a deal to this landowner with his 15,000 acres+, maybe he didn't like JD's latest business push which appears to be "If you want access to all our data tech like bio lab etc, you have to have a fully green fleet".  That was what his neighbour was told, who now has changed over all his hired in kit from NH & MF to JD's this season🤬

Hopefully farmer Lee told JD to "f" off  after having spent millions on various 8 series JD for 20 years and still not qualified for top tier status because he has other brands to.  I suspect that Quady is a protest tractor and a very nice one at that.

Here's the pics from Saturdays walk.

All done, it has been a labour of love thats for sure.  Its nice and neat and also well lit unlike my previous effort built in a dark dingy back room.

20 minutes ago, SPN said:

I'm hoping for a T7.270 Methane

Buy the T7.300 and rebadge it T7.270 and then supply your own methane😁