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A NEW BRITISH ALL-WEATHER TRACTOR.

22nd May 1919, Page 18
22nd May 1919
Page 18
Page 19
Page 18, 22nd May 1919 — A NEW BRITISH ALL-WEATHER TRACTOR.
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Built in Scotland, the New Glasgow Tractor Has Three Driving Wheels.

0 NE HAS ONLY to glance at the tremendous farming areas in America to realize why the American tractors have, with very few exceptions, proved failures in Great Britain. The farms are so uniformly level that one travels for hours across the principal farming distriets looking in vain for a hill of any sort or even slight gradients. Again: if on looks at the climatic charts of these sections they will find that the autumn ploughing season is quite a long open season as compared to this country. It is impossible for American manufacturers to realize the condition under which tractors must work in the British Isles to compete with horse cultivation. One tractor that is considered, quite a good one in the district where it was prodheed was imported by the Government. After it had been started to work considerable difficulty was experienced because the wheels picked up so much mud. A cable was despatched to the makers, stating the trouble and asking for advice as to how to overcome the trouble. The reply was very brief and unsatisfactory in solv• ing the problem "If it is too wet for our tractor it is toe wet to plough."

If ploughing was only done when conditions were favourable in this country, very little of the arable acreage would be farmed. The American farmer would never dream of ploughing the fields when they are as wet as those ploughed here, because he believes it would ruin his land, and so it would in most cases. However, there is one little trick of the British climate that prevents this ruin. The heavy frost in winter, causing the ground alternately to freeze and thaw several times during the season, breaks up this wet heavy clay furrow so that spring finds it in good friable condition. .

What is wanted here is not a fair-weather tractor, but an all-year-through machine that can work where horse can work without damaging the tractor or injuring the soil. It must not be of such light weight that its power causes it to slip its wheels when the ground offers poor, footing, nor so heavy that it absorbs most of its own power to pull 'itself along and packs the wet soil so tightly as to prevent proper drainage. This brings' out the point that the most important requisite is wheel-grip. Not wheel-grip on one wheel of a pair of differential-driven wheels, but on all the driving wheels. Experts of John 'Wallace and Sons, Ltd., and the D.L. Motor Manufacturing Co., Ltd.,, Motherwell, have been investigating the cause of the failure of American tractors in England and Scotland and spent much of their time in the past two years building various models and testing them.Their first discovery, was that the motor lorry style of differential would never stand the strain of tractor .work,. then that hills must be ploughed as t ell as level fields, that the relation between weight of tractor, wheel grip and engine power must be evenly balanced, and they have not only built a tractor embodying these points, but have put it through such severe tests as are afforded by the winter climate and hilly fields of 'Scotland. If it will Work satisfactorily in Scotland, where.eonditiOns are severe &mod extreme, it is reasonable to suppose that this new tractor, known as the Glasgow tractor, will give satisfaction in any part of the world where farming is done. "

Farmers, conservative as they are as a class, are nevertheless inclined towards British tractors builtto, suit British farming and having all the honesty of construction and workmanship that makes Britishbuilt machinery command the ,highest price and the most reacly..sale the world. over. Not built to sell :but built to' work, not under ideal conditions but under any and all conditions wherever and whenever farming is possible. It is stated that the drawbar pull of the Glasgow tractor is in 'comparison to its weight and power, higher than any other tractor produced, and evenly balanced. By this is meant that the drawbar pull is within a small percentage of its weight in pounds. This means for the farmer that the weight in proportion to the power is such that the wheels do not dig in under most adverse conditions. There is always a limit of flexibility in four-wheel tractors working on rough ground,, but in no field is there ground that will not allow a three-wheel tractor to keep all three wheels on the ground. This is the three-point suspension theory that so many manufacturers have striven for • but failed to achieve because they put a very light single wheel in front that is only exerting a very light pressure at any time and is completely off the ground in a hard pull because of the action of the driving torque on the back axle relieving the front wheel of its proportion of the static load.

The Glasgow tractor has two wheels in front and one at the rear—all of them drive wheels. The result is that the load remains under all conditions equally distributed on the three points, giving each wheel its just proportion of weight and power to get the full benefit of available tractive surface. It, is impossible for one wheel to slip without the other twoe doing likewise. Under observation of practical agriculturists, experiments have been tried in snow, wet soil, frosty ground and loose dry soil, and the wheels have not shown the slightest tendency to slip. The reason is, the weight is balanced with the power and both are transmitted to the ground at three points equally, and the fact that there is no differential gear to start one wheel spinning as in other designs. Every tractor designer has fried to omit these differential gears, as the differential ifealways a weak point and troublesome to thc farmer, but no satisfactory solution had previously been arrived at. This, because they had no chance beyond reducing their machine to an actual one-wheel drive. The Glasgow tractor has three positively-driven wheels and is yet flexible and turns at the headlands easily and gracefully, John Wallace and Sons, Ltd., have . secured the sales rights for the entire output of the D.L. Motor Works, and with their knowledge of agricultural machinery and agriculture co-operated with them in producing the finished article. The Glasgow tractor will be on exhibition at the Royal Show, Cardiff.

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Locations: New Glasgow, Glasgow, Cardiff

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