Porter

Apologies for the rather retrospective nature of the blog posts so far. It was my intention to start a blog from week one of June, but as I'm sure you can appreciate, the work pretty much overruled this idea. What I'm attempting to do is condense the past few months into a few salient blog posts to give a good idea of what has been happening to date, and then update as and when something exciting happens, or something useful can be shared.

Anyways, here's a little info on Porter, for those who'd like to know.

Porter is a 1954 Ferguson TED20 tractor, powered by a four cylinder Standard engine which can be run on Petrol or TVO (vapourising oil). Porter was originally supplied to a farmer in the Hamlet of Martin near Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire by Boston Tractors and was used in an orchard and an adjacent woodland for various uses and had a rather hard life having had a new engine and gearbox at some point, before being abandoned in a hedgerow.


The tractor was purchased from the original owner and restored by its previous owner, to its current condition and was used predominantly for showing and light ploughing duties. Here are a few snaps of before/during restoration.

I decided I needed a tractor, having brushed-off the idea of doing all of the work using an old Land Rover with a winch as being too costly. I'd also dismissed the concept of a tracked unit for moving logs on the grounds of versatility; so a tractor it was to be!

The Ferguson TE20 came in a number of guises centred around intended use and fuel type, but all were suited to the Ferguson range of implements, of which I might add, there are/were many. Porter in fact came with a two furrow mouldboard plough, which may see use in the future depending upon the fate of the meadow. I swiftly made a complimentary purchase for Porter, namely a rear transport box which can be seen in use here;

Whilst Porter is certainly not up to concours standards, he is in good nick, both mechanically and cosmetically speaking, however that wasn't the case when he arrived. Initially the starter solenoid wasn't functioning correctly (the TE20 series of tractors started by means of a sixth 'starter' gear which actuated a small switch in front of the centre console), so Porter had to be started by shorting the terminals with an old set of pliers, which was er....'fun' to say the least. The fuel wasn't particularly clean either; the petrol tank is split into two compartments, the largest of which contains the TVO, however it was full of rust so it needs to be stripped and re-sealed at some point. I've already had the carburettor stripped and rebuilt (for less than the cost of parts to do it myself, which was a bonus), and the spark plugs have been replaced for a fresh set of NGK's. I'm still not happy with tick over, but I'm sure smooth running will come in time, especially once I've got a new distributor cap and a couple of gaskets for the manifold.

Anyways, that's about all I can tell you about Porter at the moment, I'll leave you with a few more pics of him in all his glory:

 And I couldn't resist one of Evelyn 'The gaffer'.