Classic Gehl Video With Good Variety Of Tractors....

[Absent Minded Farmer]

The nice thing about Gehl having been a short line, is the amount of different tractors used with the equipment in the videos. This is one of those videos, giving a sampling of what was on the farm in '49 & before then. There's even a budget tractor & horses in use. Though the horses aren't out pulling a chopper. I've included a couple other videos that are conversions from VHS. The first additional one is a few clips, of skid loader antics, from some TV show in Germany.... I think. The second is a re-post of a newer JD baler vid that I had posted on the JD board. Added it here for those of you who do not visit there.

Also, I don't know who did the film transfer for the first one from '49, but it's awfully dark. So.... I've been tasked with copying these 16mm films to see if the results can be improved. There are also quite a few more films that need to be transferred than what has been completed. Hopefully that all turns out good, because the professional conversion option is quite spendy.

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Enjoy!

Mike

 

[Hoofer B]

Very nice. I am less than 2 hours from West Bend and there was alot of Gehl equipment in our area. I bet those farmers who were chopping hay thought they were on top of the world with the amount they could harvest in a day. Bill

 

[Absent Minded Farmer]

It's quite surprising how much they could chop with one of those! Can't believe how fast they could cruise through the corn, either.

I'm about 15 minutes from the factory & this area has/had a lot of Gehl equipment, but was a battle zone at times between them, Fox & IH.

For example....

There's an interview on VHS in the Gehl collection that's of a local farmer going on about how much he liked & always used Gehl. Now, before the 1250 he got, he was using a SP Fox. I recall seeing it as we had a warm October in the early '80s & the guy referred to in the video was chopping a late cutting with the Fox on a part of my grandparents farm that was rented to him. That field boarders my property & I remember watching him chop hay for a bit & then running back to the TV in the family room as the Brewers were in the Series & I wasn't going to miss watching that either! Lol!

Mike

 

[IAfarmguy]

Neat vids. I may have performed some of those stunts with my skid loader this afternoon. Except not on purpose! Thanks for sharing and posting. When I was a kid my dad and an uncle made hay together. Dad ran the Massey Harris chopper and my uncle unloaded wagons blowing the dry hay into the barn. It was my job to fork the hay down the chute into the hay bunks after school.

 

[dextonderek]

Thanks for sharing these videos!

 

[caterpillar guy]

We had a couple pieces of gehl equipment. A corn chopper about the age of the one with the augers for the stalks. Ours had the gathering chains and rigid noses. The other was a gehl 72 green chopper. Never thought much of either neither were really great choppers. The green chopper if you put enough horse on to make it work well it would take out the drive line or the gearbox. The old corn chopper would not chop very fine and I thought both were not much of a chopper. the green chopper we used to put a measly 830 case on it. Never put the 806 on in fall when wet. didn't want to change out drive parts. The MD would work but under powered on the green chopper. Didn't blow very well on the MD either.

 

[tomstractorsandtoys]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting. Have you done anything with the IH ones? Tom

 

[INCase]

I miss my time working as a test engineer for Gehl.

We also miss West Bend. was a nice town to live in but VERY expensive even back in 1995-6 time frame and i'm sure its worse now.

 

[Alvin 41]

That chopper and blower are the exact ones we first used about 1951. We bought pto chopper ,but quickly got the engine ( LeRoy)drive because our MM-U didn't have live pto. Boxes were Decker ,made in Janesville WI and had double apron chains driven by tractor pto. and also used for ear corn with the same unloading procedure into a corn elevator.

 

[Absent Minded Farmer]

I can't seem to find much about Decker. I've heard of them before though. Did they make a false endgate box?

Mike

 

[Absent Minded Farmer]

Glad you enjoyed! I'll give you a call tomorrow about the IH videos.

Mike

 

[Absent Minded Farmer]

Those auger heads were neat looking, but they loved to wrap in weeds or tangled corn.

A neighbor ran his 7200 on his 3288 & it could make that tractor talk for what it did.

Mike

 

[Absent Minded Farmer]

Glad you enjoyed!

Mike

 

[Absent Minded Farmer]

Glad you enjoyed!! I don't know if anyone was chopping dry hay around here when I was a kid. A couple local horse farms have asked for chopped hay & that's the only that I know of.

It would have been neat to see a mow drying setup. Those were done well before my advent also. :v)

Mike

 

[Rich'sToys]

My Dad chopped dry hay for many years when I was a kid. Our equipment was John Deere, but the blower was similar to the one in the video. Our wagons unloaded from the rear also. I still have the Bishman unloading unit we used to pull the false endgate to the back of the wagon.

 

[Alvin 41]

The Decker factory was in S Janesville , about where Ace Hardware is now.Don't know what else they made , This was about the time Knight in Brodhead started making steel boxes.

 

[Duey C]

That German sure was comfy with the Gehl skid loader! Doing that with my 4510? Not anytime soon.
Worst I do is stand in the bucket to back him into the garage. Head ain't on a swivel anymore!
For teaching newbies to drive a Gehl, get him in the seat, start the engine, have him curl the bucket up, hand him a cold beer for his right hand and tell him now you're ready to drive it.
Might have to go back to a two stick drive someday, I like the old Gehl except for the fact that the cab shrunk bad.
And I need to make the handles larger-still for easier use.
Was the 4625 pull-down/safety bar the lockout for the boom? Or was it sill in the seat like a 4510.
This seat switch lockout still works perfectly. Thank goodness.

Bought a Waukesha XA from a work friend off of a Gehl chopper for $15. Needed the timing gears for a late 20's XA and they fit right on.
Never could bare to get rid of the rest of the power unit.
Neat videos!

This post was edited by Duey C on 02/25/2023 at 06:31 pm.