Oliver 880 Twin Is A "Factory Original"

Oliver 880 Twin Is A "Factory Original" TRACTORS Conversions 26-1-33 If Harry Barrick's Oliver 880 Twin looks like it just came off the factory assembly line, there's a good reason for that. "Oliver actually produced the 880 Twin in the factory in the early 1960s, but they didn't make many. One source says there were six made and another says there were 12," he says. "I was fortunate to find pieces of one of them in a junkyard. The engines, hoods and nearly everything else were the same as those used on the regular 880's." Barrick, an Oliver collector from Newville, Pennsylvania, used the parts he found and two other 880 singles to put together his own 880 Twin. The parts he found from the original 880 Twin were the rear axle assembly and the pieces used to hold the two tractor front ends together. With those parts, he says putting the twin Oliver together was relatively easy. As it came from the factory, the 880 Twin had two Shuttle Shift transmissions, so that's what Barrick put in his. "I've heard that when Oliver showed the 880 Twin to its dealers, they drove it out onto a gymnasium floor in a high school somewhere and then put one transmission in reverse and the other in forward and let it run in donuts on the gym floor while they talked about it," he says. "The 880 Twins were sold for use in road construction," Barrick says. "I've been trying to track down any of the originals that still exist. I heard about one up in Saskatchewan. There was supposedly another in California that had been used to drag a horse race track. So far, I've not been able to find these two, or any of the others." He says he'd appreciate a call from anyone who knows where he could find any of the 880 Twins. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Harry Barrick, 455 Center Road, Newville, Penn. 17241 (ph 717 776-5762).

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