Brands: IHC

The Manitoba Agricultural Museum collection features an IHC Titan Type D 45 that was donated to the Museum by the Lowe Brothers of Foxwarren, Manitoba.

The Type D 45 had its origin in the IHC Reliance Type D of 1910. IHC’s  Milwaukee plant began producing the 20 Horsepower Reliance Type D using IHC “Famous” engine design which was also used in IHC’s Type B 20 horsepower tractor. The Type D 25 horsepower tractor soon followed  and then the Reliance Type D 45 horsepower appeared. The Reliance Type D 45 featured a 2 cylinder engine that was the first engine specifically designed for use in a tractor by IHC. A distinctive rectangular tank type radiator was developed for the Reliance Type D 45. In 1911, the Reliance models were renamed Titan.

The Type D 45 featured a 2 cylinder horizontal engine running at 335 RPM with force feed oiling, make and break ignition, hit and miss governor and a tank type radiator with a pump. The  transmission offered one speed ahead and one speed in reverse. A spur gear drove onto the live  rear axle through a bull gear with a differential in the right rear wheel. The Type D 45 developed 45 horsepower on the belt and 27 horsepower at the drawbar. It was rated as being able to pull a 10 bottom plow.

The Type D 45 was replaced in 1914 by the Titan 30-60.  Between 1911 and 1914, 1319 Type D 45s were built.

The Titan tractors with multiple cylinders, in general, featured engine cylinders that laid side by side where as the Mogul designs featured opposed cylinder engine designs.

A long time resident of the Elton district recounts that the Vance family of the area possessed what he thinks was a Titan 45. However by the time he was old enough to remember this tractor, it was well into the 1930s and the tractor was badly worn. By that time, it was started by the expedient of wrapping a long rope around the belt pulley a number of times and then attaching the free end of the rope to a single tree with a horse harnessed to the single tree. The horse was then started forward at a trot. The engine then began revolving, hopefully firing up. On one occasion, the operator forgot to retard the ignition to start the tractor, the tractor then fired at the top of the piston stroke and ran backwards. The tractor was still powerful enough that it exerted enough pull to snatch the horse backwards, taking the animal off of its feet.  Needless to say this particular horse was never able to be used around the tractor after that experience! Even as part of team on a sheaf wagon at threshing.

1914 was a big year for IHC in regards to tractors. Along with the Titan 10-20 and Mogul 8-16 2 plow tractor designs, IHC also introduced the Titan 12-25 4 cylinder tractor. This design was  revised in 1915 with a more powerful over head valve engine and became the Titan 15-30.

The Manitoba Agricultural Museum’s collection contains a Titan 15-30. The serial number on this tractor is TS393, making this tractor built in 1916.

The Titan 15-30 presented a modern appearance with an automotive type radiator  and cooling fan along with a cab, abet one that was open to the air!  The tractor was equipped with a 4 cylinder overhead valve engine equipped with a mechanical oiler with feeds to all pistons and connecting rod bearings, a high tension magneto and a fuel / air mixer (carburetor) with four fuel needle valves and one water needle valve. The tractor was equipped with a spur gear transmission with two forward speeds and one speed in reverse. The rear axle was “dead” with a double chain drive  to the rear wheels. The Titan 10-20 used the same type of axle design.

1,814 of the Titan 15-30 were built before the name was changed to International 15-30 in 1918 as IHC phased out the Mogul and Titan names in that year.  3,911 International 15-30s were built before production of the design was ended in late 1921.

Oddly, some photos indicate that some Titan 15-30s were built with what appears to be a tank type radiator in place of the automotive radiator and cooling fan.

One of the early donations to the Manitoba Agricultural Museum is a 10-20 Mogul tractor built by the International Harvester Corporation. The tractor was purchased in 1918 for $800 in 1918 by A.A. Grobb. The tractor was donated to the Museum in 1953 and later rebuilt by Ed Grobb in 1953. While on the Grobb farm near Treherne, Manitoba, it was used to plow, thresh and for grain crushing.

The Mogul 10-20 was based upon the Mogul 8-16 which had been introduced in 1914. The Mogul 8-16 featured a single cylinder horizontal engine operating at 400 RPM, make and break ignition, a planetary gear transmission with one speed ahead and one speed reverse and a single chain final drive to a sprocket encircling a differential in the rear left wheel.

To produce the 10-20, IHC increased the engine bore of the 8-16 by 1/2 inch and also added a second forward speed to the transmission. 10-20 was built from 1916 to 1919 with 8,985 10-20s being built during the production run.

The Mogul 10-20 and 8-16 designs were very successful tractors for IHC given the number of these tractors that were sold. Their close cousin, the Titan 10-20, also sold in large numbers. IHC has certainly read the market right when the company developed the two plow tractor designs in the form of the Mogul 8-16 and Titan 10-20.

IHC built these designs in two separate tractor plants. The Mogul line of tractors was built in IHC’s Chicago plant and the Titan line was built in IHC’s Milwaukee plant.

The International Harvester Corporation (IHC) developed two small 2 plow tractors in 1914. The Mogul 8-16 tractor using a single cylinder engine and the 10-20 Titan. These tractors were a major departure in design philosophy from the large Prairie style tractors that IHC had previously manufactured. The 2 plow tractors were significantly smaller and lighter.

The 1914 Titan used a twin cylinder kerosene burning engine operating at 500 RPM to generate 20 horsepower on the belt and 10 horsepower at the drawbar. The engine utilized a K-W high tension magneto, lubrication by a six feed mechanical oiler and thermosyphon cooling. The carburetor automatically supplied water to the the fuel mixture in response to the fuel being used in order to prevent pre-detonation of the fuel mixture in the cylinders. The tractor featured a transmission offering two speeds ahead and a one speed reverse. The transmission drove the rear wheels through a chain drive and the rear wheels turned on a dead axle.

The Manitoba Agricultural Museum holds an International Harvester Company (IHC) Mogul Type C 25 Horsepower engine in its collection.

The International Harvester Co. was formed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1902 by a merger of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co., the Deering Harvester Co. and a number of smaller companies.  While both McCormick and Deering produced successful binders, they decided that rather than continue to compete with each other, they were better off merging. In this process a number of smaller manufacturers were also folded into the emerging company. The result was IHC which rapidly transformed the farm machinery business as this company offered an almost complete line of farm machinery for sale through their dealers.  This was revolutionary as it meant that a farmer could, if the farmer wanted, deal with only one dealer. Previous to this point manufacturers built a small number of types of equipment and sold this equipment through dealers who also sold equipment from other manufacturers. Sometimes the same dealer handled competing lines. To complicate matters, some manufacturers entered into agreements with other manufacturers to handle their equipment. Sometime times these arrangements extended across all of the geographic areas serviced by the manufacturer. In other agreements, the agreement just covered one area. It was rare that one dealer handled all equipment that a farmer may need resulting in the farmer having to visit another dealer and perhaps being “stolen” away. Having a dealership which offered all the equipment that a farmer needed would avoid this issue.

As well having an almost complete line of equipment to sell resulted in IHC being less exposed to downturns in the equipment market. Usually some portion of IHC’s equipment line was selling, generating revenue for IHC and the dealer.

IHC was relatively well financed and was in a better position to offer financing to farmers wanting to purchase IHC equipment.  Other manufacturers were not in this position and were prone to encountering serious financial difficulties if and when the agricultural markets downturned resulting in farmers not being able to meet their debt obligations.  It should be noted that banks at this time were very conservative and often did not engage in farm lending. If a farm machinery company wanted to sell equipment, it often had to be prepared to finance this equipment

Other manufacturers realized that they had to match IHC and so also began to merge or acquire other companies in order to obtain a full line of equipment.

IHC did not manufacture a line of steam engines and stayed out of this segment of the farm machinery business. However IHC did enter into stationary gasoline engine manufacture and sales.  IHC got into the business of manufacturing tractors in 1906. The first IHC tractor consisted of an IHC “Famous” single-cylinder stationary engine mounted on a Morton power chassis and featured friction drive to the wheels. As the IHC “Famous” engine came in different sizes – 10, 12, 15 and 20 horsepower, the first IHC tractors also came in these sizes.

The Morton power chassis was produced by Samuel Morton and was a four wheeled chassis with a power train and steering to which someone could add an internal combustion engine to make a tractor. Morton chassis were used by a number of early experimenters with tractors.

The friction drive used in the Morton chassis proved unsuitable under heavy load, and so was replaced by gear drive in the 1907 Type A model. The Type B superseded the Type A in 1908. Numerous modifications were made to the Morton chassis for the Type C tractor of 1909. “Mogul” name was applied to this tractor and was available in 20 and 25 horsepower versions.

IHC, by 1910, had two lines of tractors, the Mogul and the Titan, both built to completely different designs. In general the Mogul designs used a two cylinder opposed cylinder design while the Titan designs used an inline cylinder engine with the cylinders lying on their side.  The Mogul tractors were built in IHC’s Chicago plant while Titans were built in IHC Milwaukee plant.

The Mogul line was sold the McCormick Dealers while the Titan was sold by the Deering dealers.  Even through the two companies had amalgamated, IHC felt that many farmers were so loyal to one company or the other that IHC should maintain the two dealer networks. This lasted until 1920 when IHC realized that maintaining two lines of equipment was expensive and that sometimes the McCormick and Deering dealers were in competition for the same sale. The dealership network was amalgamated. In towns with both dealers, the strongest of the McCormick or Deering dealer in a town was chosen to be retained. The equipment lines were amalgamated as well and the McCormick-Deering line was born.