HERBERT HALLMAN SAYS building a tractor out of a combine is not an original idea. Before starting on his own tractor, he’d read many stories about converting combines into tractors. But to his way of thinking, almost all of them made two basic mistakes.
“First, most have used ancient gas combines. Gas engines are a thing of the past and most of these older machines were driven by belt variable speeds. With variable speed, you only have a fraction of the speed range in a given gear as you do on a hydro, plus you have to clutch and shift gears every time you go from forward to reverse. Also with a variable speed set up, you still have to cross mount your engine and space it out so the belts will reach,” says Hallman, who farms near Fosston SK and also owns Fosston Tractor Parts, a local salvage operation.
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“The second short coming is that most of these people went to work and removed the grain tank, the thresher body and other parts, which is an awful lot of work. After doing all this, in most cases, the cab and engine still had to be repositioned. In most of these situations, the builder went into a lengthy description of how the frame was too weak after removing everything else and had to be reinforced before it could be used. Others complained of too little ground clearance, or having to cut the frame and shorten it as the wheelbase was too long. It seemed like everyone who took this approach had some type of frame problem.”
Hallman, along with helper Bob Coulter, took a different approach when building what they call the Hydratrac 100. They brought a combine into the shop and removed all the components they thought they could use. Then they dragged the combine body back outside.
“We removed the drive axle as a unit, with the transmission and hydro intact. The cab was removed with the floor and all the controls. The engine was removed on its skid, with the rad, rotary screen, hydraulic pump and hydro pump as a unit. The steering axle was removed intact, we grabbed the fuel tank, air cleaner, hydraulic reservoir, cat walks, table lift cylinders and anything else we thought we might be able to use,” he says.
“We then set the drive axle up on the floor and started to build our own frame out of new eight-inch channel iron.”
Hallman says he wanted reasonable power, so it had to be diesel fired and have hydrostatic drive. He chose the IHC 815. As a salvage yard operator, Hallman has about 100 different makes and models of combines to look at.
“After sizing up all the machines, only the IHC 815 and 915 seemed to lend themselves to this type of operation. All of the parts needed to build a tractor were complete components. But most importantly, these were the only combines that had the hydraulic pump and hydro pump gear driven out of the bell housing, so there are no shafts or belt drives to try to line up,” says Hallman.
“On reassembly, all you have to do is take 10 or 15 feet out of all the hydraulic lines and electric cables and rehook everything back together. So your engine can go in any place it is convenient to put it. Another bonus on these combines is that the thresher clutch is an over-centre hand clutch inside the bell housing. We would need that to run the pto.”
With the motor mounted lengthwise and back behind the cab, the weight distribution is better that if mounted crosswise, under the cab. It also means the pto can be driven directly off the end of the motor.
“We built our own frame starting from the drive axle. The next job was to position the cab at the extreme front of the frame, which we mounted on rubber 1370 Case cab mounts. The engine was on skids as a complete unit, so we fabricated mounts and bolted it in. Next we rolled the steering axle under the frame and mounted it in place,” he says.
As the unit was quite high and the cab was not roll-over protected, Hallman felt a roll bar would be a good idea. He built the bar and was able to incorporate the original combine fuel tank into the roll bar. This put the tank up and out of the way.
The original air cleaner and hydraulic reservoir was the best choice for these items, so they were remounted.
About a month into building, the only component other than the frame that didn’t come off the 815 combine was the cab ladder from a 9700 White. At this point, the tires and engine were removed and the whole unit primed and painted.
Following the paint, the components were put back together, hydraulic hoses and electrical wires connected, and the tractor fired up. Everything worked fine except that it steered backwards. They had the steering hoses hooked up the wrong way.
While the tractor was mobile, it didn’t have a three-point hitch or pto yet. The pto came from an 1155 Massey Ferguson. It turned in the proper direction and provided both 540 and 1,000-rpm speeds.
“We built a box which enclosed the back of the pto to keep oil in it, plus it provided a mounting flange that was used to bolt the unit to the tractor. A propeller shaft from a wrecked truck was used to drive from the thresher output on the engine to the pto,” says Hallman.
Getting a manual linkage to the clutch-engaging arm was next to impossible, so they mounted a small hydraulic cylinder to engage and disengage the pto clutch.
“We hooked the cylinder up to the unload auger valve in the cab. Our live pto engages and disengages as nice as any factory unit does,” he says.
“For a category II three-point hitch, we had nothing to use and there was nothing on the market that would fit our tractor, so we built this from scratch. The mounts for the table lift cylinders were exactly the right distance apart for the pull arms. We beefed these up and mounted the pull arms there. We were even able to use the table lift cylinders to activate the three-point hitch. These were way too long, but we mounted them so we only use the last foot of the stroke.
“We then hooked these cylinders up to the table lift valve in the cab. The hitch is single acting, which is good, as it gives us some cushion and in most applications you don’t want down pressure on a three-point hitch.”
The first job the tractor had was to blow snow. The tractor is nine feet wide to the outside of the tires. Hallman wanted a blower that was as wide as the tractor and Farm King is one of the few companies that make a snow blower that wide, so he bought one and mounted it on the three-point hitch.
“At this point, we were out of double-acting hydraulic valves, so we couldn’t rotate the chute. To solve this problem we mounted a triple valve under the cab floor and now have two spare sets of remotes, should we ever need them,” he says.
“This blower is made for 180 hp and we are at only 101 hp. But with the hydrostatic drive we can get down to about one-tenth of a mile per hour or less. I have never found a drift we can’t blow through, even if it’s deeper than the blower. When we finish a cut, we can back out at a high rate of speed and start another cut, all without clutching or shifting gears.”
In the future, Hallman plans to mount a forklift mast on the three-point hitch. He plans to rework a Versatile bi-directional header so it can be used to swath. He’s considering putting a sprayer on the unit.
Hallman also has some organic land, and along with an organic neighbour, he plans to build a 50-foot weed clipper for the tractor. It would be used to clip the heads off weeds above short crops like lentils, peas and flax.
“Organic farmers have had limited success removing the canvas from swathers, but there are too many places on the table for material to build up on. You also get too many wheel tracks in your crop,” he says.
While most of the tractor’s design works well, Hallman says there is one change he would make. “We would mount the engine three or four inches lower, as the pto shaft from the engine to the pto is at a little too steep an angle.”
Contact: Herbert Hallman 306-338-3336
