Le Mongrel

by Willy Carson

Just one more. What harm can one more do? I’ll buy one more and then I’ll have enough; I won’t need any more, then I’ll stop…

Some will know exactly what this means, they are the ones wearing a slightly guilty expression, but for those who have yet to experience this syndrome, yet to be studied by the medical or psychiatric professions, imagine yourselves to be in the following situation. You are strolling among the kennels at your local dog pound. You have no intention of going home with a new four-legged friend but you start to feel a dozen pairs of eyes following your every step. You may resist the urge to look into those pleading eyes, but your curiosity takes over and before long you have convinced yourself that another dog would be a good idea; how could it not be a good idea. Soon it makes perfect sense (in your own mind), all that remains is to choose the perfect dog. The Irish Setter with its sleek coat of vibrant colour and graceful movement is the stylish option or maybe the Border Collie with its intelligence and confidence; but who wants to risk being outsmarted by a dog? Then at the end of the row you find the one that everyone else has walked right past. It’s just a plain old mongrel; bits of this and bits of that; no pedigree at all but it’s just what you were looking for!

Geoffrey and Gareth Mark have a few interesting things in their shed including a pair of Ford Model T motors, which graced the pages of The Vintage Scene in the July/August issue last year and with pedigree stretching back to the pioneering age of motoring they would be welcome in any collection, but it’s Henry Ford’s contribution to early twentieth century agriculture which is the subject of this visit to their yard.

Having grown up on a farm, Ford knew all too well the hardship and toil which were the lot of his forefathers and he set about reducing the drudgery on farms around the world, by introducing a new level of mechanisation and, after much experimentationand development, in 1917 he introduced his new Fordson Model F tractor. Most of the early, primitive tractors such as the International Harvester Titan and the Waterloo Boy were heavy, cumbersome contraptions with the engine, the transmission and the steering mounted to a separate chassis but Ford approached his design with a radical new concept, whereby these individual components were bolted together to form an integral chassis known as unitary construction. Production began in his modern, efficient plant at Dearborn, Michigan with the new tractor offered at a very competitive price and soon the Model F came to the attention of the British Board of Agriculture, who were looking for a way to increase domestic food production, at a time when both horses and men were needed on the battlefields of France and Belgium. The Fordson was the perfect solution to their problem and soon 6,000 new tractors were on their way across the Atlantic.

Well suited to smaller farms, with proven reliability and solid performance in the field, the new tractor was well received and Ford took the decision to build a new tractor factory to supply the growing European market, not in England, but in Cork, Ireland, the home town of his grandfather. The production facility opened in 1919 with just 303 tractors built in the first year but over the next 13 years another 39,000 tractors drove out of the factory, onto the adjoining docks and made their way to Britain and the continent. It is the most straightforward sea journey from Cork to Cherbourg, a journey made by the very tractor which you see on these pages, one of those first 300 to leave Ireland.

How could you not love an old dog like that?

Over the years the old-timer has been modified to the extent that it is almost unrecognisable as a Fordson, but it is that unknown history which caught Geoffrey’s imagination, “Like a lot of the early, more primitive machines, there was only so much life in the Fordson’s TVO engine, so it’s not surprising that the tractor has had a transplant at some stage. What makes it really interesting is the type of engine that was used to keep the tractor going.”

Cibié headlights, a flywheel of dubious pedigree and what’s the French for Lucas? The assisted braking system takes its power from the belt pulley shaft. A continental cobbled-up coupling.

The replacement engine is a CLM (Compagnie Lilloise de Moteurs) diesel two-stroke of modular design which produced 11hp per cylinder and since this engine is a twin, its power output would have been 22hp, about the same as the original Fordson TVO lump. Built under licence from Junkers in Germany, this intriguing piece of engineering has some very interesting features. Instead of the traditional crankcase induction associated with a two-stroke, there are two pistons per cylinder. The lower piston is connected to the crankshaft in the traditional manner, but the upper piston is connected to its own crankshaft which operates in conjunction with the lower crank via two conrods, which are arranged along the outside of the cylinder and in a gallery passing through the transfer ports. As the pistons converge on the combustion chamber, the air charge is compressed ready for the injection of fuel. At the same time, in the void above the upper piston the pressure is reduced, opening an atmospheric valve which allows the next air charge to enter in readiness for the next stroke. As the injector introduces the atomised fuel and the burn takes place between the pistons, they separate, spinning the crankshafts, the lower piston exposes the exhaust port as the upper unveils the transfer port, forcing the next charge down into the combustion chamber and the cycle begins again. There are a lot of simultaneous operations going on so, as you might expect, when it fires into life it all sounds a bit frantic, demanding attention in a way that the original 4 cylinder, four-stroke Fordson engine never could. This old mongrel has an unmistakeable bark. the drum above the hitch. There was a steel cable attached to the drum, which pulled on the trailer brakes and by leaning on the hand clutch lever the drum turned and kept the trailer behind the tractor when going downhill. At the other end of the drum shaft there is even a band brake, which could be tightened to act as a trailer handbrake.” Since the French registration indicates that the tractor came from the Puy-de-Dôme region in the mountainous Massif Central, this adaption allowed the driver to enjoy his lunch in his favourite hostelry, regardless of whether it was at the top of the mountain, half way up or half way down.

At the front there are further modifications. The tombstone belongs to the CLM engine, so the front axle is a hybrid affair, using some Fordson parts and other parts of unknown pedigree, but most noticeable is the electric starter which bolts directly to the crank. With all the hallmarks of a farmer’s modification the starter is mounted onto an outrigged frame which also acts as a support for those impressive Cibié headlamps possibly robbed from an old Citroёn Traction Avant. The frame also carries a starting handle, for those brave enough to coax the old dog into life by more traditional means.

Geoffrey and Gareth have two more Fordson Standards, one they have restored to its original spec, while the other has had the TVO engine replaced by a Ford D Series lorry engine, but when it comes to character, the old French mongrel wins every time. As Gareth says, “It looks a complete lash-up but that’s part of its charm.”

The modifications don’t end with the engine. Because of the hitch mechanism, Geoffrey believes that the tractor was used for some sort of haulage operation, “I was told that it had been used to pull a four wheeled dolly trailer, which would explain the hitch mechanism and the brake modifications. The standard Fordson brakes operated on the transmission, but the back axle of this tractor has been modified to take drum brakes, which explains why the rear wheels had been changed. As well as the changes to the tractor’s own brakes, the PTO belt pulley shaft was used to cobble up a trailer braking mechanism. The pulley has been replaced by a bevel drive which, through a hand-operated clutch lever, turns a shaft which operates Gareth (L) and Geoffrey are a lively characters,

“it’s the tired old mongrel that sometimes needs a sniff of easy start.”