The Fordson Tractor Pages Forum

Hello guys!
This is the first time you see my name here altough I've been following the site and this forum sinds day one. Actually did a couple of posts and comments under the name DR. Dexta in the past. I really enjoy reading it and seeing how people help eachother with problems and questions around the world. In my oppinion this is what internet is really about...
A couple of weeks ago I finished restoring my 1960 Dexta after a restoration that took me 11 years.. (!) . I'm 23 years old now and my whole life has been about tractors and especially the bleu ones. During my dayjob I drive the New Holland T7000 and T8000 serie's tractors but I've always got a special place for the old bleu pioneers, because thats what they were in this area back in the days. A lot of farmers including my grandfather traded in there horse or grumpy Lanz Bulldog for a Dexta or a MF 35. Being 11 years of age I bought my first Dexta after mowing lot's of lawns and washing lots of cars! This was a '63 new performance with a broken clutch and it turned out to be a easy fix! But this was not what I wanted because I wanted the first and oldest model to restore so I sold this one to my dad for use around the house. A couple of months later I found my tractor sitting in the back of a local sawmill. It had been standing there for years after spending his life working in the 'Noordoostpolder' (the drylands..) and after that doing some forrestrywork for the sawmill. It looked like a mess, being covered in sawdust and what more, but is was pretty original and after fitting a battery she started in seconds! Love at first sight.. I took it home and started taking her apart bit by bit. Having no mechanical experience I was lucky enough to have some experienced people close to me, and ofcourse a good parts list with all the drawings! Looking back I must conclude that I've never found a schoolbook that tought me as much a restoring an old tractor... The one thing that I always wanted to achieve was to keep this tractor a original as possible and never to cut any corners achieving that goal. Now you see where the 11 years come from The best tool I had during this restoration was patience! to make a long story short, I took her apart from the front axle to the rear axle and everything in between and brought it back into a new condition. I've had her painted 2 years ago and started rebuilding up until 3 weeks ago and this is the result. Although modesty is one of a persons best quality's in my opinion I must say I'm pretty proud of myself.. I put her on new Good year tyres with the original 400-19's rims on the front wich aren't of much use in a heavy field but gives her a nice old look. The back rims are fitted with the original rearwheel weights wich I was lucky enough to run into. I actually got the full 6 ring set but fitting them all didn't look really nice with the narrow frontwheels. In the back there's the swinging drawbar, the pto shields, the licenseplatelight and the vertical drawbar stoppers with the chain and safetybadge. I fitted a brand new original wiring loom wich I found on the shelf of a local tractor garage, and I use the original horn to anoy the neighbours I eaven found the original crank handle. Boy was I happy when I found the magic word 'ENFO' on it. I tried to crank the tractor but I'm afraid I have to do some more powerlifting to get the tractor running that way.. On the front of the nose you see the 'Greve NV Emmeloord' dealer badge. This was actually the oldest Ford NH dealership in Holland. To bad that they changed to John Deere a couple of years ago. Ofcourse I didn't manage to do everything by the book. For example you can see the holes in the hood. Thats because it came of a '62 model because the original one was broken. The holes is something the painter should have taken care of but didn't do. So after these pictures i filled them up with really small round headed bolts wich actually gave a nice result. I drove the tractor a couple of times now an I think I know the feeling all those farmers had in the '50's and '60 when they got their brandnew Dexta. Where going to the 'oldtimerdag Ruinerwold' on the 16th of august with this one and some of her bleu and green friends. I'm really looking forward to that. It's hard to tell the whole story all at once so I let the pictures do the rest. I really hope you guys enjoy them and feel free to comment! Keep up the good work!
Greetings from Holland, Joris van der Linde

PS: Sorry for the big photosize, thats something I couldn't fix right now..

Joris,

Welcome to the board Joris, you did a magnificent job on your Dexta.

I don't think I ever saw a nicer Dexta than that one. What a beauty! And thanks for telling the story of your Dexta - very interesting reading!

Regards,
Oscar

G’day Joris,

Congratulations! Your Dexta is magnificent.
In the process you heave obviously learnt many valuable skills; learnt the virtue of patience; gained mechanical knowledge and principles that will hold you in good stead all your life; learnt to plan and be methodical; learnt to dream and visualise an outcome; experience the euphoria of success and make those close to you very, very proud I presume. and a lot of us here feel inadequate!!!!!!!

Can you explain the badge on the front cowl please?

Photos are large and high in file size which means some people on dialup might take forever to download. I’m happy to see them the way they are at the moment because I’m going to download them and store them in my “inspiration” collection. You can use an online resource to optimise them for web viewing at
http://www.sitereportcard.com/imagereducer.php

When creating albums at the host site, it is good to keep the albums organised and separate, not just one big album. I think it’s a good idea when an image is stored in the album at two different sizes. One for quick downloading and another copy that has retained a large resolution that can be enlarged or printed without loss of quality. The choice being left to the viewer to go and retrieve the larger image. (My 2 cents worth).

Did you take many photos during the rebuild? Over that period of time, digital cameras have developed only in the latter stages, eh. It would be good to see the project at different stages.

I’ll be looking at these photos for a long time to come!

In Aussie slang, let me finally say, “g’donya mate!”

Rick

Joris, what a crackin' job. If my little baby turns out looking half as good as this i'll be well pleased. Great job!

Hello Joris,

I can only say one thing: Looks wonderfull. Perfect restoration.

Originallity is always best in restoration.

Hi Joris

She's beautiful, wish she was mine. Well done.

Kind regards
Mervyn

Great job Joris.

You are right to be proud, it is a real achievement to undertake a restoration to such high standard.

Enjoy

Hello guys!
Thanks for the nice reactions! It's really nice to hear them from people who don't just like it becaue it's shiny
@Meanderer: The badge says: Greve NV Emmeloord. Greve is the name of the Fordson dealer who sold it as new. NV stands for the type of company (a tax thing) and Emmeloord is the place where they where and still are located. The badge is made out of somesort of alluminum. Nowedays they just put a simple sticker on a tractor.
Greetings! Joris

Joris,

the tractor loks really great. Can we have a view under the hood?

Regards Stefan

WOW. Well done young Man. She is acredit to you and your dedication.
Am envisaging a photo of you standing next to her looking at Stefan standing next to his old girl when he has finished restoring her.
Who would want to judge the winner of that competition ?

Folks,

This guy deserves a seat at the diner table at Winterwijk.

Would love to meet a guy like you Joris.

Joris wrote:I must say I'm pretty proud of myself

Skip the pretty, you can be very very very proud.

Starting at that age and stuck to it through a time most boy's leave behind there kids dreams. A lot of us needed years to get back to that stage.

Hope you will enjoy the coming up show, and I'm sure a lot of people will agree with what we all say here.

Well said, Henk. Couldn't agree more.

Joris,
Didn't your Dexta come with badges on the bonnet? Is this the holes you were talking about putting the round headed bolts into? She sure is a beauty young man, something you should be proud of. I'd say your Dad is way prouder of you then you are of your Dexta.
Once again great job!!!

Hello guys!
Thanks again for all those compliments. It makes it all worth it. Stefan I don't actually have any decent pictures of the engine compartment but I can assure you that it's just like the rest of the tractor. And Mark these are indeed the holes I was talking about. This hood came of a later model Dexta because the original one had no hole because it was fitted with an underswept exhaust and the made a real ugly thing to make the exhaust go up on the side of the hood just like the do on the Major's. So I changed it to a vertical exhaust model. I filled up the holes like I said and now it looks great! I took her to the 'oldtimerdag Ruinerwold' on the 16'th of august together with my Deutz F1L514, my Dad's '63 Dexta, my cousins Ford 2000 and a Guldner and Same Pulero owned by friends. The weather was great and we drove around the area together with 250 other tractors and more than 1000 other vehicles. GREAT FUN!!!!! Right now the weather is great too, wich is pretty special this summer.... The forcast for next weeks is bad and corn harvest is going to start shortly after that wich is going to use up all my time for about 5 weeks, using my sunday for hard needed sleep! So guess what I'm going to do this afternoon... Dexta time!!
Next winter I'm probably going to start fixing my '58 model Dexta wich I bought 2 years ago and was actually my Grandfathers first tractor! I found it and bought it back from the second owner for 500 euro's and he actually bought it from my grandpa in '88 for 500 guilders. The engine is worn out to the last bit, but this tractor is more than worth fixing! I'm not going to give it the complete overhaul that the one got on top of this page because I like the 'standing in the back of the shed' look it has. If I'm ever going to repaint this tractor my dad will have to remove all the layers of old paint because he put it on there in the 60's!!
Well take care and greetings for now, Joris