Halverson
Following up on the recent message thread about round hoods for 50′s era Economy/Power King – I had stripped the sheet metal off my Economy and sent it to a friend in the chemical dipping/stripping business. The stripped and “e-coated” hood is shown in the folder “1957 Economy – Halverson”. This hood was basically spot-welded together from various sheet metal parts. The sharp corners appear to be reinforced with small right-angle pieces which were also spot-welded in place. Despite the reinforcement this hood seems to have fatigued and the cracks were gas-weld repaired. This is the bolt-on hood, so no hinges. This tractor did not have electric start so there’s no cut-out at the rear of the hood. I’d imagine a few of these hoods got tossed just because they slowed access to the engine when having to make adjustments.
One thing I learned about Economy/Power King tractors at the Dodge County show – they are similar to Rolls Royce automobiles – just because they are the same model doesn’t mean they are identical! Economy/Power King tractors each appear to have some character of their own.
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You ain’t kidding on that! the pre 60s ones are all different from one to another. It was like they hand fitted each part as they went along……Jon
________________________________ href=”mailto:PowerKingTractors@yahoogroups.com”>PowerKingTractors@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thu, September 2, 2010 10:02:58 AM
Following up on the recent message thread about round hoods for 50′s era Economy/Power King – I had stripped the sheet metal off my Economy and sent it to a friend in the chemical dipping/stripping business. The stripped and “e-coated” hood is shown in the folder “1957 Economy – Halverson”. This hood was basically spot-welded together from various sheet metal parts. The sharp corners appear to be reinforced with small right-angle pieces which were also spot-welded in place. Despite the reinforcement this hood seems to have fatigued and the cracks were gas-weld repaired. This is the bolt-on hood, so no hinges. This tractor did not have electric start so there’s no cut-out at the rear of the hood. I’d imagine a few of these hoods got tossed just because they slowed access to the engine when having to make adjustments.
One thing I learned about Economy/Power King tractors at the Dodge County show – they are similar to Rolls Royce automobiles – just because they are the same model doesn’t mean they are identical! Economy/Power King tractors each appear to have some character of their own.
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Until the mid 60′s Economy never made that many tractors a year. A serial number a few hundred apart from another could have been made 6 months later. So there are a lot of difference in the tractors just from a time line prospective. Economy brochures from the early days are hard to date. They also used stock photos for years, so the pictures are not always up to date. Larry said he had seen a ’49 with a hood which would be the earliest I know of. It would make sense they just started offering the automotive type steering so it would work with a hood. The earliest hoods are very square looking. If anyone has a ’49 or ’50 with a hood that is fairly original, it would be nice to see a picture of it. The ’57 hood is the same hood they used from the mid fifties until they added the dash and changed to a two piece hood. Robert
You have to add that third party clients such as Lawn America did batch processing of their requisitions. Dan said that those contracts were sporadic and they never had much lead time to adjust for other things that were going on. It would have helped EP to plan for those, but it just didn’t happen.
Larry
Interesting, I thought they did not offer a hood till the late 50s. Boy I would like to have one of those tractors but I never have seen one with the hood intact….Jon
________________________________ href=”mailto:PowerKingTractors@yahoogroups.com”>PowerKingTractors@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thu, September 2, 2010 12:27:56 PM
Until the mid 60′s Economy never made that many tractors a year. A serial number a few hundred apart from another could have been made 6 months later. So there are a lot of difference in the tractors just from a time line prospective. Economy brochures from the early days are hard to date. They also used stock photos for years, so the pictures are not always up to date. Larry said he had seen a ’49 with a hood which would be the earliest I know of. It would make sense they just started offering the automotive type steering so it would work with a hood. The earliest hoods are very square looking. If anyone has a ’49 or ’50 with a hood that is fairly original, it would be nice to see a picture of it. The ’57 hood is the same hood they used from the mid fifties until they added the dash and changed to a two piece hood. Robert