The Manitoba Agricultural Museum is pleased to announce the completion of a project preserving the Museum’s operational vintage machinery. This project involved the replacement of the intermediate/reduction gear on a 1920’s Avery Co. gas tractor.
This particular Avery gas tractor is owned by the Manitoba Agricultural Museum and is a 1920’s vintage 25-50 Model. It is a 4 cylinder with a 6 ½ X 7 inch bore and stroke, and is a horizontally opposed engine. This type of engine was popular with various manufacturers from 1912 to the mid 1920’s. This configuration of engine is only currently used in a few small modern engines and not with today’s industrial agricultural engines.
The origin of this engine consists of two 12-25 hp engines put side by side with each other on a platform to create a 25-50 sliding engine. A sliding engine consists of the engine mounted on a frame that slides back and forth on the main tractor frame. The whole engine is mounted on a plank that when slid back, causes the tractor to go forward. And when the whole engine is moved forward it causes the tractor to move backwards. There are two gears on this tractor. The first is a crankshaft, or pinion, gear. The second is the intermediate/reduction gear. This gear meshes with the forward or reverse driving gear.
This tractor runs on kerosene, with an engine speed of 700 rpm at full throttle. It has two forward speeds and one reverse speed. Most of this machine is made from cast iron, including the gear that has now been replaced.
The original gear, measured at 50 inches diameter, was showing signs of weakness as long as ten years ago. Eventually a piece of the gear was actually broken out, and because of this, the entire tractor was rendered inoperable. A team of volunteers prepared a proposal for restoration funds to be taken to the Board of Directors, where it was approved.
A temporary weld of replacement metal for the missing piece was created in order to cast the new gear. A band was sealed around the outside perimeter and hub for shrinkage. It was cast as a foundry blank at Matrax Industries in Winnipeg, MB with a new type of metal called Ductile-80. Additional work was done by General Metals in Winkler, MB. The teeth for the gear were cut by volunteer Ryan Penny from Winnipeg, MB. He used an automatic gear cutting machine built by the Newark Company in 1906. This job took 45 hours.
The labor to remove the old gear and install the new gear was done between October 2010 and April 2012. It was done by a handful of volunteers, who had to remove the rear wheel and the locomotive style cab, in order to access the gear. Once the new gear was in place, volunteers had to put everything back together properly!
The Avery Co. was founded in 1874 by Robert Avery, a Union soldier in the American Civil War, and his brother Cyrus. After the war, Robert returned home, and he began a series of inventions to aid in the process of farming including a seed drill he had designed while a Prisoner of War in the infamous Andersonville prison camp. He apparently sketched out the design in the dirt of the prison yard using a stick as a drawing tool.
Over time, the Avery Company grew successful with a string of successful farm machinery products including the “Yellow Fellow” separator. Unfortunately the Avery Company could not keep up with the rapid technological changes that occurred after World War One. Business began to slow down because of a lack of innovation in new products. The Avery Company suffered the same fate as many early farm machinery manufacturers, bankruptcy in the early 1920s, reorganization of the company and resumption of business, bankruptcy in the 1930 with yet another reorganization seeing the company continue on. However the US entry into World War Two saw the company shut its doors forever.
Another museum project is complete, and, with the new gear, the tractor is now operational. This project couldn’t have been done without a team of great volunteers! So come on out and take a look at this veteran of Manitoba’s pioneer agricultural era. May 29th would be an excellent date for a visit to the Museum to examine the sliding engine arrangement on the Avery 25-50.
