Still bothered by the Foose 4020

First off I am not going to put a picture of the Foose tractor here because a) most of those pictures are copyrighted and b) it's tacky, well maybe not tacky, just too busy for my taste.  He has too many things going on with the tractor distracting you from the overall image.  The New Generation line of Deere's tractors, of which the 4020 is the prime example, were quite often noted for their simplistic design beauty.  These were the first tractors to look like they were completed at design.  There are no extra bumps in the hood for hiding a starter, no brackets sticking out the sides, no 4 or 5 color paint scheme. 
  I saw the videos Chip Foose made while designing and building the tractor.  In his original drawing he had a couple of neat ideas.  Turning the side vents 90 degrees gives the tractor a streamlined look.  The height drop and smooth belly pan add even more streamlining.  I am not sure about the black streak down the side or the extension up front where the weights belong.  Those might actually look ok if you remove the garish vertical yellow stripe from the middle of the tractor.  The chrome exhaust is not bad but it makes mounting the tractor a hot prospect unless you crawl over the back.  The right side looks better without the exhaust so it makes me want to find a better routing of those pipes. Here is one sketch Chip came up with.

 

I like the exhaust in this one.  The narrow black stripes on the yellow middle make me think that stripe could stay, or not.  He also has the side vents green in this sketch.   Yeah, love the green side vents over the silver ones. 

Love to have the money to do one my way.

No Southern Indiana pictures. How about these?

The pictures I took in southern Indiana did not turn out very well.  I was using my phone camera from a moving car.  What could go wrong?  Blurred, too high, too late, too low, too soon, and finger on the lens.  Yep.  When I do it - I do it right.  So I have two other pictures I thought I would toss up here.  The first is my daughter and me heading down the road, wide open on the previously mentioned 4020.  1964 Synchro-Range.  Diesel.  1 family owned.

The next picture is from the Annual Tippecanoe Steam & Gas Power Show in Battleground, IN.  (Battleground is right next to Lafayette and Purdue university.)

I took picture (with the phone camera) because it reminded me of a build-it-yourself from Popular Mechanics magazine in the 1950's.   Yes it is a Gibson tractor, but it does look homemade.

the John Deere 4020

I was cruising youtube whlie waiting on an after hours meeting and came across this link:4020 pulling wheelies.  At first I thought - Wow! How cool!  Then I remembered.
When I was 6 or 7, I saw dad pull a wheelie while pulling a 24' field cultivator.  Not just any wheelie.  The cultivator was on the 3 point hitch which means all of it's weight was being supported by the tractor.  Our 4020 did not have duals or weights on at that time which made the tractor VERY light.  So light that when he lifted the cultivator the front wheels came off the ground about 1-1/2 feet.  Dad calmly drove out of the back yard, turned down the road for about a tenth of a mile and then turned into the field and stopped.  His hands were not on the steering wheel, only the throttle and the left side of the seat.
The show did not end there.  He then unfolded and put the cultivator into the ground.  As he took off across the field the front wheels came up again and did not touch ground until he hit the other end of the field. A good 1/4 mile wheelie. He made six or seven rounds that way because he was re-tilling the part of the field that had not been planted due to a rain out.  (the duals and weights were off because this was also his planter tractor.) Poke around on youtube for more tractor videos.  or better yet post some of your own on there and tell me about it. I'll post their links here.  We need to preserve our tractor history almost as much as our soil.