2004 - Volume #28, Issue #4, Page #19
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"Baby Steiger" Built From Odds And Ends
The tractor is painted Steiger green, and everything on it works. Power is supplied by a 4-cyl. gas engine and 5-speed manual transmission out of a Nissan pickup. Behind the 5-speed is a small 3-speed auxilliary transmission that's used to slow the engine down. It's followed by a homemade transfer case.
The rig rides on four 18.4 by 16.1 tires that mount on axles off the Nissan pickup. He used 5 1/2-in. dia. steel tubing to make a side-mounted muffler. A straight-through car muffler mounts inside the tubing to keep it from getting too hot and burning off the paint. The air cleaner is off an old street sweeper.
He made his own Cat. II 3-pt. hitch and quick coupler from scratch. The tractor has dual remote hydraulic outlets on back.
The dash inside the cab is out of a real Steiger tractor. The seat is out of a Deere combine. The fenders are homemade but the hood ornament is authentic Steiger.
"It took two years to build, but it was a fun project," says Agle. "I didn't scale it to anything. I just made the cab big enough to get in and made everything else proportionate to that, so that it looks right. I call it my Baby Steiger model ST125, because the Nissan engine has about half as much power as the engine in the Steiger Cougar ST250, which was one of my favorite tractors.
"I've taken it to a few different shows. It has both a foot accelerator, and a hand throttle, so when I'm driving it around I can use the foot throttle and shift it like I'd shift a pickup. In low gear it just creeps along, but in high gear it'll go up to 15 mph. I traded a 55-gal. barrel full of scrap steel for the engine and transmission."
He says he plans to cut a 14-ft. Deere disk in half so that it folds in the middle and hook it on behind the tractor.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, David Agle, 2915 Rt. 39, Collins, N.Y. 14034 (ph 716 532-1408; email: babysteigercool.com).
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