10 Forgotten Farm Combines of the 1980s

Somewhere in a backfield right now, a 40-year-old combine sits rusting under a tarp. Not because it stopped working, but because the farmer who bought the new machine couldn't afford to keep both. These machines threshed millions of bushels, survived the worst farm crisis since the Great Depression, and then got quietly forgotten. They never got the credit they deserved. Here are 10 farm combines from the 1980s that most people have completely forgotten about. 1. Gliener N6 Let's start with a machine that was genuinely ahead of its time and paid the price for it. The Gliener N6. Gliener introduced its first rotary combine, the N6, in 1979. This was Gliener's answer to a rapidly shifting market. International Harvester had launched its axial-flow rotary combines in 1977, and the industry was starting to move away from conventional cylinder and walker designs. Gliener, which had been building combines since 1923 and was part of Alice Chalmers, came out swinging with the N6. The N6 was powered by an Alice Chalmers 426-cubic-inch six-cylinder diesel engine producing 220 horsepower. It had a 245-bushel grain tank, enormous for its era, and it was available with a 30-foot grain header and the first 12-row corn head available in the United States at the time. On paper, this was a class leader. The problem was that early production N6 machines had reliability issues. The rotor concept was new, and the early Series 1 and Series 2 machines had mechanical problems that frustrated farmers and damaged Gliener's reputation. Dealers who didn't properly pre-deliver and set up the machines made things worse. By the time Gliener sorted out the N6 into a reliable Series 3 machine, the damage to its market image was already done. But here's the thing. A properly set up, well-maintained N6 Series 3 was a genuinely excellent machine. Operators who understood how to run a rotary combine and kept up with the greasing schedule found that the N6 was capable of output that competing machines couldn't match. The Allis-Chalmers engine was well-supported, and the transverse rotor design that Gliener developed for the N Series became the foundation for all Gliener combines that followed, including the machines Age Keo produces today. That design has now been in continuous production for more than 45 years. The N6 started it all. Number 2. Gliener L3. Staying with Gliener for a moment, because the L3 deserves its own entry. And it's a completely different story from the N6. Where the N6 was the flagship rotary that struggled with early reliability, the Gliener L3 was the conventional cylinder and walker machine that quietly outworked nearly everything in its class. The L3 produced 158 horsepower from a turbocharged six-cylinder diesel and used a conventional threshing cylinder with six straw walkers. Nothing experimental, nothing unproven. What made the L3 special was its geometry. The L3 had a 50-inch wide threshing cylinder and walkers, but the cleaning shoe was 60 inches wide, a full 10 inches wider than the threshing mechanism. That extra cleaning width gave the L3 exceptional grain cleanliness and separation capacity relative to its horsepower. Farmers who ran L3s in wheat and soybeans found it would handle more grain per hour than the horsepower rating suggested. The L3 also used hydrostatic ground drive, which gave operators smooth, precise speed control in varying crop conditions. Pull into heavier wheat and you could modulate your speed fluidly without going through gear ranges. Today, the L3 is one of the better known forgotten combines. Farmers who own them are fiercely loyal, and they're hard to find in good shape because the ones that weren't worn out were kept running. Alice Chalmers built these machines in Independence, Missouri, and the parts cross compatibility with Deutz Alice equipment that came after the 1985 sale has helped owners keep them going. A 1983 Gliener L3 with low separator hours is still a productive machine on a small to mid-size grain operation. Number 3. Massey Ferguson 860. The Massey Ferguson 860 is one of the most underappreciated combines ever built in North America, and its story is impossible to separate from the broader turmoil that hit Massey Ferguson as a company during the early 1980s. The 860 was built at Massey's combine manufacturing facility in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. It was available with two engine options, a Perkins AT6 354 4-6 cylinder turbocharged diesel producing 140 horsepower, or a Perkins AV8540 V8 diesel producing up to 179 horsepower in later versions. The V8 configuration came paired with a hydrostatic ground drive, making it one of the more unusual powertrain combinations available in a production combine at the time. What Massey got right on the 860 was the threshing cylinder. Massey developed a high inertia cylinder design that processed grain exceptionally well, delivering outstanding grain quality and minimal crackage even at aggressive feed rates. Operators who understood combine setup recognized that the 860 cylinder was one of the best in the industry. Combined with a 200 bushel grain tank and a well-designed cab, the 860 was a competitive machine throughout its production life. The problem was Massey Ferguson, the company. The farm crisis of the early 1980s combined with pre-existing financial mismanagement nearly destroyed Massey. The company entered creditor protection in Canada in 1980 and went through years of restructuring. The uncertainty around the brand made dealers and farmers nervous about buying Massey equipment even when the equipment itself was excellent. Today, a clean 860 with a six-cylinder engine and the standard mechanical drive is one of the better bargains in vintage harvesting equipment. AGCO acquired Massey Ferguson in 1991 and has maintained part support and the Perkins engines, now under Caterpillar ownership, remain extremely well supported globally. The 860 never got the credit it earned. It was a victim of its parent company's problems more than its own. Number 4. Massey Ferguson. 750. Running alongside the 860 in Massey's lineup was the 750, a slightly smaller machine that carved out a dedicated following among smaller grain operations and custom cutters. The MF750 was powered by the same Perkins AT63 544 diesel producing approximately 145 horsepower and used a 50-inch threshing cylinder paired with a 60-inch cleaning shoe, the same wider shoe geometry that Massey used across its combine line. The grain tank on the 750 held around 160 to 170 bushels depending on configuration which was practical for the farms this machine was sized for. What the 750 offered was simplicity and reliability in a compact package. It was not a machine designed to harvest 500 acres a day. It was designed to efficiently harvest grain on mid-size farms where the operator maintained their own equipment and expected the machine to work season after season without constant dealer intervention. Farmers who ran 750s in wheat, oats and barley, particularly in Canada's prairie provinces and the northern United States grain belt, found it handled small grain conditions exceptionally well. The wide cleaning shoe relative to cylinder width gave it a margin for handling tough conditions that narrower competitors didn't have. Today finding a 750 in good working order is genuinely difficult because so many of them were worked hard and eventually worn out. The ones that survive are a testament to how well built they were at the factory level. Number 5. International Harvester 1480. The International Harvester 1480 deserves far more attention than it typically receives in conversations about great combines because it was the machine that proved the rotary concept could work at scale on North American farms. International Harvester introduced its axial flow single rotor combines in 1977 with the 1440 and 1460 models. The 1480 arrived in 1978 as the flagship of the lineup. A larger machine with a bigger diameter rotor, a 190 horsepower turbocharged diesel and a grain tank holding approximately 190 bushels. What made the 1480 genuinely revolutionary was the single longitudinal rotor design. Instead of a conventional threshing cylinder followed by straw walkers the axial flow rotor handled both threshing and separation in a continuous helical motion. This delivered dramatically better grain quality with less mechanical grain damage and it provided more thorough separation with fewer moving parts than a straw walker system. In corn particularly the axial flow design was significantly more efficient than conventional machines. The 1480 was not without its early problems. The rotary design was new enough that some operators struggled with proper adjustment for different crops and the single rotor could be sensitive to changes in crop conditions in ways that conventional machines were not. But for farmers who learned how to run it and International Harvester trained dealers heavily on proper operation the 1480 was a transformational machine. When Case Corporation merged with International Harvester in 1985 the axial flow design became the foundation of Case IH's entire combine line going forward. The 1480 evolved into the 1680 under Case IH. The design has now been in continuous production for nearly 50 years. The 1480 started that legacy and it gets almost no credit for it today. Number 6. New Holland TR-86. New Holland introduced the twin rotor combine concept with the TR-70 series back in 1975 and throughout the 1980s they refined that technology into some of the most capable machines on the market. The TR-86 introduced in 1984 is among the most overlooked combines from that era. The TR-86 used New Holland's twin transverse rotor design. Two rotors running side by side across the width of the machine. This configuration distributed the threshing and separation load across a wider area compared to a single longitudinal rotor which gave it exceptional capacity relative to its engine power and a very good balance of throughput and grain quality. The TR-86 was produced alongside its larger sibling the TR-96 and while the TR-96 got most of the attention from large scale operators the TR-86 was the machine that hit the productivity sweet spot for medium to large grain farms. It had enough capacity to keep up with aggressive harvest schedules without the higher fuel burn and purchase price of the TR-96. New Holland built these combines with the kind of long-term durability that kept them working for decades. The twin rotor design has far fewer moving parts than a conventional straw walker machine and what parts it does have are generally robust and well engineered. Parts support through New Holland which later became part of CNH Industrial has remained solid and the active community of TR series owners has maintained an impressive knowledge base for keeping these machines in service. The TR-86 deserves more recognition than it gets. It was a genuinely capable machine that was overshadowed partly by its own bigger sibling and partly by the marketing dominance of John Deere and Case IH in the same era. Number 7. White 8800. The White 8800 is the kind of combine that gets passed over at auctions because it carries a brand name that most younger farmers don't immediately recognize and that's a shame because it was a well-built capable machine that served a lot of operations well throughout its production life. White Farm Equipments 8800 used a conventional cylinder and walker threshing system with hydrostatic ground drive on the versions that came after the early belt drive models. The hydrostatic drive was a significant improvement over the variable speed belt system used on earlier production. Farmers who worked with both versions were clear that the hydrostatic was far more reliable and gave far more control in varying field conditions. The 8800 had a 52 inch cylinder width and was powered by a diesel engine in the range of 150 to 175 horsepower depending on year and configuration. It was positioned as a mid to large size machine capable of handling a broad range of crops across the corn belt and grain growing regions of the north. What distinguished the 8800 was its build quality. White Equipment and the Oliver brand that preceded it had a long tradition of heavy overbuilt construction and the 8800 carried that philosophy forward. The main structural components were heavy gauge steel, the threshing cylinder assembly was robust and the machine was designed to be maintained and repaired by farmers who worked on their own equipment. The white brand went through significant ownership changes during the 1980s eventually becoming part of the agco family which has affected parts availability to some degree. But the 8800 has a dedicated owner community that has helped keep these machines in service longer than their rarity might suggest. They are underappreciated at current used equipment prices. Number 8. John Deere 6620. Here's a John Deere that almost never appears on forgotten lists because it was one of the best-selling combines of the 1980s and yet it's almost entirely overlooked in conversations about great harvest equipment from that era because all the attention goes to the bigger 7720 and 8820 machines above it The John Deere 6620 was the workhorse of the 40 series lineup producing approximately 150 horsepower from Deere's 466 cubic inch six-cylinder diesel in the Titan II version. It used Deere's proven conventional threshing cylinder and six straw walkers and it was available with the same sound guard cab that Deere offered across the 40 series. One of the most comfortable operator environments available in agriculture during the 1980s. What made the 6620 so dominant in the mid-size market was its combination of reliability, operator comfort and Deere's unmatched dealer and parts network. A farmer running a 6620 was never far from parts and service and the machine itself was refined enough by the time the Titan II version arrived that major breakdowns during harvest were genuinely uncommon. The 6620 Titan II was the machine that a huge portion of American grain farmers harvested with throughout the 1980s. It harvested millions upon millions of bushels of corn, soybeans and wheat across the Corn Belt and the Great Plains and yet today it's almost invisible in agricultural history discussions overshadowed by its bigger siblings and by modern equipment. A clean 6620 with reasonable hours is still capable of productively harvesting a small to mid-size operation and Deere's parts support ensures it can keep doing so essentially indefinitely Number 9. Case IH 1680. When Case Corporation and International Harvester merged in 1985, the new Case IH company needed to rationalize two separate product lines into one coherent brand. The 1480's successor the 1680 became one of the most important machines that resulted from that process and one of the most underappreciated combines of the late 1980s. The Case IH 1680 was the direct evolution of the IH 1480's axial flow design featuring an updated engine producing 205 horsepower and various refinements to the operator cab, hydraulic systems and threshing adjustability that addressed the main complaints about the 1480. The 1680 retained the single longitudinal rotor that had made the axial flow design transformational but with enough refinement that operating it across a wider range of crop conditions was more straightforward than it had been on the 1480. The 1680 launched during a difficult period for the newly merged Case IH organization. The farm crisis was at its peak, dealer network consolidation was ongoing and farmers were cautious about making major equipment purchases. As a result, the 1680 never achieved the sales volume its engineering quality deserved but the 1680 left as its legacy was the proven axial flow platform that Case IH would continue refining for decades. The 1688 that followed it, the 2100 series that came after that and all the way up to the current Case IH axial flow 250 series machines trace their lineage directly back through the 1680 to the original 1480. The 1680 is a forgotten bridge machine important to how modern harvesting works but rarely remembered for it. Number 10. New Holland TX-36. Rounding out the list is a machine that most North American farmers have never even seen in person. The Ford New Holland TX-36. Ford acquired New Holland in 1986 and began the process of integrating both companies agricultural equipment lines under a unified brand. The TX series represents some of that work. A line of combines that drew on New Holland's twin rotor engineering heritage while being developed and marketed under the Ford New Holland banner. The TX-36 produced approximately 240 horsepower and used New Holland's transverse twin rotor design which by the mid to late 1980s had been refined over more than a decade of field experience into an exceptionally reliable and capable system. The TX-36 had a 240 bushel grain tank and was designed for high capacity harvesting on large scale grain operations. The TX series machines were more common in Europe than in North America which is a large part of why they're forgotten in the American agricultural context. Ford New Holland was aggressively pursuing the European market during this period and the TX series was designed to handle tougher harvesting conditions, heavier crops, wetter weather, more varied terrain that European farmers regularly dealt with. In North America the brand consolidation confusion between Ford and New Holland meant the TX-36 never established the same market foothold it held overseas for a farmer who finds one today. It represents an exceptionally capable piece of harvesting equipment with a proven twin rotor design, strong path support through the CNH network and the kind of build quality that characterized New Holland's best work during this period. So that's it for today. If you like this video then please hit the like and subscribe button for more videos. Thanks for watching.