I got my first Oliver from the farmer I bought my property from. Saw it sitting in his machine shed one day and asked if it worked. He said it used to but had not run for some time. I only had to get the fuel bowl to seal so gas would flow to the carburetor. Since his son-in-law had no interest in it, he sold it to me. Unfortunately, he passed away a few years later. I enjoyed sitting in his kitchen listening to the tales he would tell of the old days. He built a V-plow for the 1949 77 RC nf and used to plow all the old lanes in the area with it. I found the old plow grown over in an old farm lane on the east side of the property and hauled it out. Some day I&#039;ll mount it up if I can figure it out. The tractor was missing the side curtains so I asked the new owners of the house if I could check the shed for the missing parts. To my surprise I was able to locate all the panels and the belt pulley. It came with a trip bucket manure loader which I have used for many things. It works off a PTO driven hydraulic pump. I didn&#039;t think I&#039;d be doing anything but moving snow with the old tractor initially, but kept finding different things I could do with it. I started working my own fields instead of renting them out. We have a few goats (17), so there&#039;s always a need for hay, straw, manure clean-up, and so on. Then there&#039;s the road I built with it on the land. It&#039;s about 900&#039; long. I back filled the foundation of the house we built out on the land. One year I bolted a large square tube to the bucket and inserted the lift arm of an engine picker into the channel which made an adjustable crane attachment. I used it to pick and replace the twin small blocks in an old Chris Craft boat I have. Some day I&#039;ll get some pictures of that operation on the site. The tractor has been very dependable and useful. Makes people shake their heads with some of the things I make it do. I know I&#039;m very small as far as a tractor collector goes, but I do what I can with what I have. I never restored any of them completely. The 77 came with the grille painted red and a couple tires had boots in them to hold air. Its got all new rubber now and the colors are at least correct. I suppose I really got the bug when I saw an old Oliver in southeast Wisconsin while trout fishing one year. The original colors on it were very memorable. It just was so much different then the other tractors that dominate this area. That&#039;s when I had to put the correct colors back to mine. I wasn&#039;t raised on a farm so I mostly have had to learn everything by trial &amp;amp; error. The internet and books help alot, and sometimes I just have to take things apart to figure them out. I love reading other people&#039;s stories of their Oliver experiences, reading about the history and just like looking at the tractors. Of coarse I like getting them out to go &amp;quot;play&amp;quot;.
When did you get hooked?

[Edited on 1-15-2003 by Mark]