I just brought home a 1963 IH 175. When I first went to look at it I was immediately impressed at how straight and clean it was and how it didn't seem to have any wear in the loader joints and the control linkages. It had been sitting for 3-4 years after the previous owner got a new machine and my understanding is that it was just used around a farm for many years prior to that. After checking the fluids and putting a new set of batteries in it, it fired right up and operated very well. The hourmeter was bleached from the sun, but since everything was in good condition, I wasn't too worried about hours. I pulled the face off the hourmeter so I could see what the dials said where the sun hadn't been beating down on them over the time it was sitting. 494 hours. I'm curious if 494 hours is likely given the machine condition. It has clearly been outside most of it's life and has been repainted once. All hydraulic, steering, brake, and decel/governor linkages are nice and free moving but have absolutely no slop in them. It fires up immediately and runs smooth. Transmission and steering operates flawlessly. I just took the decel pedal off last night to inspect everything under that platform and was impressed to see that the clevis and pin at the pedal had 0 wear, despite being dry fit and out in the weather. Those sorts of linkages on my 1964 IH TD340 are sloppy as hell. Track measurements average out at about 65% life left. Roller and idler diameters haven't been measured yet but all are in visually great shape and all were still full of oil. I can't find any sprocket specs but they have 3/32-1/8" worth of flat left on the ends of the teeth. I'm not sure they had much to start with since it's only a 7" track pitch. Bushings have never been turned and are fully round aside from a small flat from reverse wear. Just to satisfy my curiosity, what else should I be looking at? How many hours does the bucket cutting edge look like it has? BTW, this is a rocky part of Kentucky along the Ohio River, and there can be a lot of sand the closer you get to the river. Thanks!
Hi, Egads!! You made a very poor deal!! You should immediately cut your losses and sell it to me for half of what you paid for it!! It will disintegrate into the rocks and sand you have down there. Parts are nonexistent and besides, the hourmeter probably quit working about 15,000 hours ago!! All kidding aside, it looks like you picked up a "barn find" where the previous owner just wanted something bigger, smaller, with a different name on it, or to just get that horrible shade of yellow (not even close to the original IH yellow- more like house paint) out of his yard. Maybe he needed the money to pay for his "newer" money sink. The only thing that looks a little out of place compared to the hours is the track wear--although it IS a 58 year old machine and the metallurgy in the tracks and rollers back then probably wasn't as good as more recent wear-resistant steels. I seem to recall that track life was about 2000 hours back then...and you don't know how long this one spent treading on nice soft cow turds as compared to running on shot rock. The bucket looks just nicely worn in. Big bonus if the pins and bushings on the loader linkage are good. If you want to do some further checking, take oil samples from the engine, trans, finals and hydraulic system. That will pretty well tell the rest of the story. Oh, and by the way: buy your guardian angel a beer!!! You snagged a nice machine! Jon.
Those tracks are extremely tight for a reason. It is the only way tracks with that much wear will stay on the sprockets and rollers. It is usually the front idler that they fall off when running. They may not even be the original tracks that were on it when it was new.
It is highly unlikely the hour meter is showing original operating hours, but so what. Why does it matter how many hours it might have on it? Just use it to make some money.
The tracks were only tight in that picture because I backed it into that spot up a slight incline. They aren't normally that tight and they aren't even close to coming off.
It doesn't matter. Purely curiosity.
As slick as the Loader shoes and curved as the cutting edges are, that machine has a minimum of 4000 hours in Serious Duty.
Agree with the others - that machine has more than 494 hours on it. Sprockets and bucket wouldn't be that worn in those few of hours. However looks like a gem and a good purchase. I'd say 2000-3000 hours on the clock.