Luv how Mike asks himself questions for us. Thanks Mike

i am 80 years old and this video made tears come to my eyes. when i was young , my father started with a massey 82 to a super 92 than a 410 then a 510 than a 760 than an 860. in 1957 dad worked with massey and mounted a 2 row corn head off of a massey sp corn picker. it dropped the corn on TOP of the cyl. this was on the massey 82. i started work with massey in 1965 as a service man. worked 41 years for massey until they din't keep up with the times. i than went with case/ih.. i live in west central iowa but have a small wheat/soybean farm 9 miles south salina.. love to go down there and show the young guys how to harvest wheat ha ha. i have been known to stop at a harvest and ask if i can run a combine and they say get in and stay 2 to 3 days. when done they say how much do we owe you and i say nothing .these are salt of the earth people, same as you guys. i love your channel and would to see your operation swap harvesting stories

Those 6 cyl. Perkins engines were real workhorses.

Man this video brings back memories. The sound of that Perkins is music to my ears. My Dad bought a 750 new back in the 70s before I was born...the old red cab with the small auger, non-hydro, no radio...but it did have A/C. The cab actually stayed kind of clean if you kept the blower speed up, and it gave you a gentle rain on the really humid days of wheat harvest. We mostly grew corn and soybeans, with only a little bit of wheat...so the tiny little heater got more use that the A/C did up here in MN. We ran a pickup head on it for wheat (also experimented with mustard a few years), a 15-ft flex head and 6 row 1153 corn head. I can remember my Dad jumping out of cab and then walking alongside and behind while it kept going down the field, so that he could see how everything was running and if he needed to make adjustments. I grew up riding in the back of the cab until I was too big to sit up straight without hitting my head on the roof, shortly after that I learned how to drive it. We didn't need alarms, you just listened for noises and felt for vibrations that were different...and they always growled if you were pushing them too hard. Cutting short beans on dry sandy (and hilly) ground with no height control was a stressful experience...you couldn't afford to leave any beans on the ground and Dad made sure we got as much as possible or else we weren't allowed to drive combine. We ended up getting several more used MF'ers over the years and ran them up until 2001 I think.

One of the best combines ever made, and didn't need a service truck at the end of the field like new ones.

I just love the older equipment... I dunno what it is.. its just cool!!

Helped with Lethbridge area amber durum harvest in 1975 as a 20 year old. When I arrived the boss put me in a super 92. We started most days at 7a.m. and combined til midnight. When the 92 blew a head gasket after about 6 weeks I was put in one of the 750’s. I was in heaven running that

We used to run Gleaner L2’s against the 760’s every year custom cutting at a friends who cropped 7000 acres net Thief River Falls Minnesota. He had 5- 760’s and we had 2 L2 all running 24’ headers in heavy spring wheat up to 70 bushels per acre. We had the same capacity. Once we ran across the fence from an 8820 with a 36’ Macdon and we were all going the same speed. Back up closer to Winnipeg we ran against a 760 with a 24 ‘ head in a thin stand of wheat but it was yielding 40 bushels. We were both going 7 mph but on a half mile run we could lap the Massey after a while because we could boost the speed to 9 mph on the turns and use the wheel brakes to spin the machine on a dime. We were 10000 pounds lighter and that really made a difference. Then in the mid 90’s working NW of Winnipeg my buddy had 10” of rain in August. Water everywhere. I ended up equipping my machine with custom built steel rice paddles like a riverboat bolted to the wheels. I still got stuck 18 times that fall and my buddy 12 lol. He put on RWA because his L2 had Hydro and duals but had to take the duals off because they became a 6’ wall of mud he couldn’t get through. One day he buried his machine to the frame in the middle of the field. We brought out a Steiger and got it stuck. Then a second Steiger got stuck trying to pull out the first. Then a long cable attached to the neighbors Versatile got the Steigers out and finally 2 of them to get the combine out. 9 men 8 hours to get that machine out. Fun times lol!

The old girl is cutting more than the JD X9 did

I grew up on Classey Masseys , grandpa had a 300, then a 410 ,then my dad kinda took over and we had a 510, all that in late sixties to mid seventies then I got involved and we had a white cab 750 then a gray cab 750 then my wife died and I gave up the farming ! Always wanted to have a 760 or an 860but never had the opportunity !! We had a really good Massey dealer in our area and he had I would say a majority share of the market at the time , everybody wanted to have the biggest and Deere and IH were behind !!! Great to see you're hanging on to a little of the past everyone needs a reminder every now and then of where they came from !!!

I loved how at the end you can see an ideal on the road star struck at the old girl.

Hahaha me and my older brother sat on the roof of our dads 860 with .22s picking off coyotes as kids. Hahaha the purrr of that Perkins brings back some memories

Hi Mike, Could you do "a history of the farm" someday? With old images etc.

I ran a 760 in corn and soybeans in the early 90's when I farmed just out of high school. Did my first combining with a 410 in junior high. Brings back some good memories and a few bad ones with breakdowns. Thanks for the video Mike!

I grew up with a whole series off Massies, 300, 410, 510 then 760. Always worked, just ruggedly reliable. Thanks for the memories.

I remember when I was a kid my uncles neighbor showed up with his brand new Massy 760. We all thought it was the biggest thing we had seen. There were a lot of them that guys kept going around here since they used them for grass seed. They still like a conventional for grass seed. I agree about the straw walkers. Crawling on those things was torture!

Massey combines didn't throw much grain out the back . They were good combines.

What a beautiful old Massey, and sounds absolutely awesome. Great that you keep some of the old stuff around must bring back some great memories. Got to say the straw chopper looked ahead of its time.

Love seeing old equipment , reminds me of a little boy growing up watching my uncle farm

Mike, I like how you appreciate the old stuff yet. Yes, new stuff has to step up; but the old stuff still has a place in our hearts. They're still part of the family.