Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Porsche-Diesel, Tractors? (Sal Fanelli)

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Porsche-Diesel, Tractors? (Sal Fanelli) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Break fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
• 0:04
  all over the auto sphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
• 0:09
  designers, and everything in between.
• 0:11
  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrol heads that wonder.
• 0:16
  How did they get that job or become that person?
• 0:19
  The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
• 0:27
  When you hear the phrases Porsche and diesel in the same sentence,
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  or some of you out there, you might be thinking cayenne diesel,
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  or maybe your mind jumps right to the diesel gate from recent years.
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  And for most of us, our imaginations most likely move right to the sports cars.
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  But what if I told you Porsche actually produced diesel tractors?
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  Yep, I had no clue either.
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  And if anyone at GTM knows about agricultural equipment, it's definitely
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  the one and only Mountain Man Dan.
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  So I welcome him tonight as my co host as we speak with Sal Fanelli,
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  President of Porsche diesel USA to talk to us about the lesser known history
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  of such a famous motorsports icon, the brand Porsche and their tractors.
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  So welcome to break fix, Sal.
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  Great to be here.
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  Thank you very much for the invite.
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  Absolutely.
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  So, you know, there's this craze going on right now.
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  A lot of petrol heads and their wives and significant others are all hooked on
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  Jeremy Clarkson's Clarkson's farm, right?
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  So suddenly farming is cool, but I think farming was cool a long time
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  ago, but this lesser known Porsche history makes it even more exciting.
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  So why don't we jump off with that?
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  What is the history of Porsche diesel?
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  So basically where it all starts is with Dr.
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  Porsche back in the early mid 30s.
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  He started developing what people refer to as the people's tractor, just
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  like the Volkswagen, the people's car.
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  So he started developing a tractor.
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  As he progresses along, of course, you know, war is imminent and all of that.
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  So he gets transitioned and he's told by, you know, his leadership, by Hitler.
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  that, you know, you need to go do something else.
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  So he started designing equipment for the German war machine.
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  So the stuff like the tractor and all of that pretty much, you know, got set aside.
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  So of course, you know, we have World War II, it ends.
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  And then at the end of the war, this is where it gets kind of interesting.
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  There's now this drive, this requirement, if you want to call it that, to get
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  Germany back up and running, you know, the farmers and all that stuff.
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  So Dr.
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  Porsche wants to go into production with his tractor, but the agreement
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  to end the war was that any facility that was building equipment for
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  the German war machine could not reopen and make something else.
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  Only people who were building farm equipment or cars or whatever were
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  allowed to go back into production.
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  So Dr.
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  Porsche teamed up with a tractor company then called Elgire.
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  So in 1950, they have an agreement.
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  They begin production of what they call the Elgire Porsche
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  tractors or as we call them AP.
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  So he goes into production in 1950 for the sales year 1951 and
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  you know off and running they go.
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  In fact within my workshop right now I have one of the earliest APs
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  on record that is still running.
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  We have seen other serial numbers get recorded but those people won't tell us
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  if those tractors are running or not.
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  But according to the American Porsche diesel registry, it is the oldest
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  known running Porsche diesel tractor in the U S probably in the world.
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  So to clarify, this is Dr.
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  Porsche senior, not Ferry Porsche, who designed the nine 11.
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  This is Porsche who designed the beetle.
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  Yes.
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  Beetle.
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  I mean, of course that's pretty good.
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  You know, in Porsche.
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  fashion, every vehicle has a type number.
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  So obviously the cars started with the 901.
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  Everybody thinks it's the 911, but there's the 901 and obviously the 356.
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  And you have all the other ones outside of that.
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  So did the tractors have a type number as well?
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  When Dr.
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  Porsche worked with Allgaier, again, you know, so their AP
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  Allgaier Porsches, they were AP.
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  So the first one was an AP 16.
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  It was then replaced or the subsequent one was the AP 17.
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  And then there was the AP 22.
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  So as the horsepower of the tractors increased, the type designation changed.
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  You knew what the difference was.
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  If you look at the AP 17 as an example, there was a Series 1 and a Series 2.
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  And there are differences between them, and you can see them if you
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  have both of them next to you.
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  But really what it came down to is the first ones were relatively
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  low on horsepower, 11 horsepower.
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  But as we know, as, as diesel owners, it's not horsepower that we're worried about.
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  We're worried about torque.
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  And these things produce a tremendous amount of torque.
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  So as the horsepower goes up, so does the torque.
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  So the 17 was a much more powerful engine.
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  Then when they went to the AP 22, 22 basically stood for
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  22 horsepower in their terms.
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  It was, it was a beast.
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  It was a very, very popular tractor.
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  Later in production, El Guyer went backwards and created a one cylinder,
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  which they called the P one 11.
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  I don't understand why they dropped the, A designation was to call the P
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  one 11, but then in the two cylinder, and now, now we're talking about a three
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  cylinder chart that they introduced.
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  They use just the A.
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  So it was an A 122, an A 133, then an A 144.
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  So the earlier delegations are really confusing.
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  And what I tell everybody, if you really want to learn, there's a book out there.
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  This is what I consider to be the Bible.
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  It's only in German, so you'll learn a little German.
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  It's technical German.
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  And a lot of the technical German words are the same in English.
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  You can read it, but that book by, um, Armin Bauer really gives you the
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  details of the years to makes the models.
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  So eventually I don't really understand, but I think Elgire wanted
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  to get out of the tractor business.
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  Or maybe do something on their own.
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  So, the Porsche part of it was sold to another company, Mansmann, okay, and
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  they're the ones that began Porsche diesel tractor manufacturing in Lake Constance.
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  And as soon as that transition took over, the AP designation was
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  dropped, and they just became P.
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  So, the first one was the P111.
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  And the interesting thing is that the way Porsche did it, one was a
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  designator for the number of cylinders.
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  Then they came out with the P217, the 218, two cylinders.
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  Then your three cylinders, you had the 308, the 318, the 319.
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  So you began to understand how easy it was to figure out, or how many cylinders
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  your tractor had, just by understanding the designation of the model numbers.
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  So now there's, there's no 901, there's no 902.
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  I kind of wish there was.
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  Living in this world, I can talk different nomenclatures all day long with people.
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  I bought the business close to 10 years ago.
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  It's almost becoming, You know, my second life just, you know,
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  living and breathing these things.
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  Brings up another really great question.
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  How long were Porsche diesel tractors made?
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  How many were made?
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  When did they come to the United States?
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  You know, let's talk about some of that history.
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  So we're talking about early production 1950 for the 1951 model year.
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  And I've never actually seen a number as to how many were
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  produced by Allgaier Porsche.
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  Now, in Mr.
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  Bauer's book, he talks about approximate numbers.
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  I just never got around the sitting down, writing all the
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  type numbers out and how many he thought was made to figure that out.
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  But now we fast forward to 1956 when the company was taken over,
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  became Porsche Diesel with the dash.
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  The dash is important.
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  We'll explain that in a minute.
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  So Porsche Diesel It spun up 1956 for production in 1957, and they
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  produced tractors until 1963.
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  In 1963, the owners of the company realized that at this point, there are
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  so many tractor companies out there that they really want to continue to
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  invest more modern designs and change things to fulfill their mission.
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  A saturated marketplace did make business sense.
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  They basically shut it down.
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  So whatever parts were left over in 1963, they continued production in 1964
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  for a while until they finally ran out of parts, you know, and shut the doors.
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  In that time frame, according to the books and the publications, About
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  125, 000 tractors were manufactured.
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  So, you know, mostly Europe up into the UK, Australia,
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  where they were sent out to.
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  There was a certain type of tractor that was sent down to Brazil with others.
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  But of those 125, 000, approximately 1, 000 tractors were imported into the U.
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  S.
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  through the American Porsche Diesel Corporation.
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  Which was originally based out of an office building in New York
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  City, but then they moved the entire operation to Pennsylvania.
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  So tractors were imported by the American Porsche Diesel Corporation
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  into Pennsylvania and then from there they were sent to their distributors.
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  What a lot of people understand or don't know is that the American
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  Porsche Diesel Corporation also imported them into the West Coast
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  via a single dealer distributor.
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  that received the tractors, a company called Viking Equipment.
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  They received Porsche diesel tractors and distributed them through Northern
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  California, Oregon, uh, Washington State.
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  Canada had its own import way, I don't really know much
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  about or how many tractors.
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  You mentioned the fact of how they initially were AP and then they
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  transitioned who was manufacturing them.
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  Were there issues with the older ones getting parts or were the, the individuals
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  took up manufacturing the newer version continue to make parts for the older ones?
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  So German law states that anything that you make that's in production
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  or concurrent production The company has to continue to supply
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  parts for a minimum of 10 years.
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  So the interesting thing about the engine itself, excuse me, the
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  engine and transmission were pretty much identical until the end, what,
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  what changed was bore and strokes.
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  You actually could take one of the older ones and put larger
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  pistons on it if you wanted to.
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  So you could go from.
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  A 90 millimeter, say, to a 95, a 95 to a 98, if you understood the books and
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  knew, you know, the right combinations.
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  Now, the one thing I did learn, when Porsche early on went from a
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  95 to a 98 millimeter system, the cranks really weren't strong enough.
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  So, those series tractors quickly went by the wayside, and that's why
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  Porsche changed the center number.
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  Talk about a three cylinder.
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  So you got a three cylinder truck that's called a 308.
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  Three cylinder, all three cylinders are the same, 95 millimeter piston.
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  Then there was a 309, bigger horsepower, more torque.
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  It had a 98 millimeter piston, but it used the same wrist So they were not reliable.
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  What Porsche did after that Is they changed that middle designation to a one.
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  So instead of a 308, it became a 318, a 319, a 328, a 329.
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  Because they reinforced all of that.
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  There were many, not many, but there was a series of tractors brought into the U.
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  S.
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  It was a four cylinder.
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  Called a 408.
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  According to the books are about 25 of them that were brought in.
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  I pretty much know are about 14 or 15 of them are, they
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  all have broken crankshafts.
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  It'd be one of those that it'd be really great if I could collect them all.
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  But the cheapest price I could get on duplicating a crankshaft is
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  somewhere between seven or 8, 000.
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  Good night.
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  So
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  is it worth it?
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  Yeah, you know, I mean, those tractors for the people are really collecting
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  tractors and when I have one of every size, then it might be worth it.
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  But this is a small business, so it'd be just too much of a gamble for me.
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  With Porsche, did they have like a color scheme, you know, such
• 12:08
  as the notorious John Deere?
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  Yeah, actually it's true.
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  Algyre is slightly different.
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  So there are algyre portions.
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  I've seen them in silver.
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  Generally, you see algyre tractors in what they call signal orange, which is a
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  very, very bright orange, you know, the body, the chassis, the fenders and that.
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  And then they did the seat and the rims and what they call tomato red.
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  So you have an orange tractor with tomato red rims, or you had a
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  green tractor with tomato red rims.
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  And from what I understand, the ones who were painted green because they
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  were supposed to stay within the eu, European Union, the ones that were orange,
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  were the so-called export tractors.
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  So in the US you'll see several elk air Porsches that were brought in
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  that were actually the signal orange.
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  This 1951 I was telling you guys about earlier, it's silver,
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  it is orange, it's green.
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  It's got all sorts of different colors on it.
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  Uh, we thought somebody had done that, but when you look at it, it's actually
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  the company kind of put it together.
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  So the owner recognizes the fact that the way Allgaier did
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  it, it should be signal orange.
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  So I'm in the process of making sure this tractor comes out signal
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  orange with tomato red rims.
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  Now when it comes to Porsche, Porsche in 1956 settled on two colors.
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  Primarily the red.
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  A lot of people think it's guardsman red, but it's not.
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  Not sure if you guys are familiar, but over the EU, they have colors
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  that they refer to as RALs.
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  I'm not sure what RAL stands for.
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  But it's a color chip that is recognized all over the world.
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  Porsche adopted RAL3002.
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  And depending on where you go, generally it's called Carmine Red.
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  It has a more orange tint to it.
• 13:53
  I don't want to say it's orange.
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  When you look at it compared to Guardsman Red that we're all familiar with, you
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  can see there's a bit more orange in it.
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  Okay, and that was the standard Porsche color until the end.
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  Now when it comes to the rims, the rims were paid in the RAL color,
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  and the number is 1014, 1014.
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  And depending on what website you read, it's either called Creamy Yellow.
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  Or mimosa.
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  I say creamy yellow because I feel like an idiot every time I say mimosa.
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  I'm sorry, I'm not getting drunk before I get in my truck and drinking a mimosa.
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  So it's, you know, it's creamy yellow.
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  So something interesting happened and I've had this discussion with people
• 14:35
  about what the color rim should be.
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  And this is where it gets a little confusing.
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  The America Porsche Diesel Corporation quickly realized that if they
• 14:43
  brought a tractor into the U.
• 14:45
  S.
• 14:45
  that wasn't finished, that it was a parts tractor or unfinished.
• 14:49
  The duties and fees were greatly reduced.
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  So the tractors would come into the port, and they would order rims
• 14:55
  and tires from somebody, which I've never been able to figure out who.
• 14:59
  They'd show up at the port and put them on.
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  Most of the time they showed up with rims that were painted creamy yellow.
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  But toward the end, all the rims came in that primer greenish type color.
• 15:12
  And I can't remember what it's called, but I think you know what I'm talking about.
• 15:15
  So they would show up in that zinc chromate type color and everybody
• 15:19
  said that's the factory color.
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  I disagree with them.
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  I think it's just that whoever America Force Ideas was ordering their, their
• 15:27
  rims from probably either it wasn't on their purchase order, they didn't get
• 15:31
  the memo, whatever, but they showed up with these zinc chromate colored rims.
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  It's not wrong, but in my book, it's not really right either.
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  So with all my customers, I tell them the rolling chassis
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  should be Carmine Red 3002.
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  The rims should be Creamy Yellow 1014.
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  This is the funny one.
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  When you get to the seat, the top of the seat's creamy
• 15:54
  yellow, the bottom of it is red.
• 15:57
  But not all the time.
• 15:58
  Depending on the tractor that you get, I would say 90 percent of the tractors
• 16:02
  I have received here Are the two colors, but I've had quite a few that were
• 16:07
  the seats all red or the seats all creamy yellow in that causes not really
• 16:12
  confusion, but the customer calls and they want that emblem or that detail.
• 16:17
  It goes on the back of the seat.
• 16:18
  I asked them.
• 16:19
  What color are you painting your seat?
• 16:21
  Because I'm either going to send you, if it's an older tractor, um, you're
• 16:26
  going to get a, a tan one if it's a true export tractor later on, they came
• 16:31
  out with a sticker that was kind of a bright yellow, and then for the tractors
• 16:36
  that came in with all creamy yellow seats, you had a red decal on there.
• 16:40
  So I get real specific about what my customers have to make sure.
• 16:45
  That they're putting their tractors back together as authentic as possible.
• 16:50
  It sounds like the primary market was the EU with a 10 percent export.
• 16:54
  Let's just call it that to the United States and probably to Australia.
• 16:57
  So majority of them are in Europe.
• 16:58
  And then I'm sure most of them have made their way over here.
• 17:01
  here via the gray market and other mechanisms, right?
• 17:04
  For collectors and things like that.
• 17:06
  But, you know, it kind of got me thinking I was doing a little bit of mental
• 17:08
  gymnastics and in my limited research on the Porsche tractors, I was, I saw that
• 17:12
  the average going price for one of these in 1950s dollars was about 3, 600 bucks.
• 17:18
  So I was like, well, let me see what the conversion rate
• 17:20
  would be in today's dollars.
• 17:21
  And it comes out to round about 41.
• 17:24
  1, 000 in today's money.
• 17:27
  So these things were not cheap, especially in post war Europe.
• 17:31
  This brings us to a conversation about competition.
• 17:34
  Porsche was not the only game in town, right?
• 17:37
  And I think there's some really funny stories out there about Lamborghini
• 17:40
  and their tractors and Ferrari and his Denso and his tractors and whatnot.
• 17:44
  So how did that all play out?
• 17:46
  Who else was making tractors?
• 17:48
  Who was Porsche competing against?
• 17:49
  Let's go back for a second.
• 17:50
  So the price you quoted, the 3, 600, that was for a three cylinder tractor.
• 17:55
  What Porsche quickly figured out in the U.
• 17:57
  S., the market was either for the one cylinder, the junior, which back then
• 18:02
  was about 1, 800, or the three cylinder.
• 18:05
  Okay.
• 18:05
  Like you said, at 3600, it was a tough sell because they were expensive for
• 18:11
  what they were, but it was hard to convince people that the price of
• 18:15
  those tractors, there were advantages.
• 18:17
  You got a diesel instead of a gas motor.
• 18:19
  You got something that's got a lot of torque, you know, a one cylinder junior
• 18:24
  can do a whole hell of a lot more work.
• 18:26
  Than a two or a three cylinder tiny gas engine, you know,
• 18:29
  we'll say in a farm all club.
• 18:30
  I'm not picking on cubs alone I have a cub I think everybody has one But anyway,
• 18:36
  so you could do a lot more with one cylinder diesel and when you get to the
• 18:40
  three cylinders Most things are beasts.
• 18:42
  They're unbelievable.
• 18:43
  It's just the traction You know and the weight you could put on
• 18:47
  them, but the other advantage Back then was that it was air cooled.
• 18:51
  So no water, all those parts you have to worry about the fan belt, the water
• 18:55
  pumps, overheating, blowing gaskets.
• 18:58
  None of that went away.
• 18:59
  Porsche advertised it as turbo air cooling.
• 19:02
  I always got a kick out of the name turbo air cooling.
• 19:04
  But when you look at the squirrel cage in the front, the way it was designed.
• 19:08
  You begin to understand, you know, the turbo flow.
• 19:11
  I honestly can tell you like a three cylinder when it's running right and
• 19:15
  everything's clean and that fan's doing its thing, that tractor never
• 19:19
  gets up to operating temperature.
• 19:21
  So all these tractors had an air blade.
• 19:24
  that you could throttle back, slow down that airflow.
• 19:28
  And if you looked at the temperature gauge, it had a white zone,
• 19:31
  which meant it was too cold, a green zone, perfect operating
• 19:34
  temperature range, and a red zone.
• 19:36
  The smart farmer would sit there and adjust his air control flow valve and get
• 19:41
  that tractor running in the green zone for maximum horsepower output and torque.
• 19:46
  People had to be taught to do that.
• 19:48
  It wasn't just automatic like, you know, a typical thermostat on a
• 19:51
  car, you get up to 160, it opens and it controls itself from there.
• 19:55
  So to add on to what you were mentioning, the Farm Wall Cub as a
• 19:58
  comparison being a gasoline engine, the farm Wall Cub, I'm a little bit
• 20:01
  familiar with some farm walls because I own a super ray myself and, okay.
• 20:04
  Yep.
• 20:05
  I grew up driving around on a farm wall cub that my grandfather owned,
• 20:08
  working in the fields and stuff.
• 20:10
  Farmwell cub was a four cylinder gasoline engine, which if I recall correctly.
• 20:13
  Around 13 horsepower, if that much, and exactly so you were saying
• 20:17
  that the single cylinder Porsche was roughly how many horsepower.
• 20:21
  So it was an early junior called the 111 that was 11 horsepower.
• 20:24
  But then the later one, the 108, which is the most popular one in the US.
• 20:29
  It was 14 horsepower.
• 20:30
  And then the later version, which was called a one Oh nine was 15 horsepower.
• 20:35
  What they did is the flywheel, the clutch pack and all of that
• 20:39
  kept getting heavier and heavier.
• 20:40
  I mean, when you look at a one Oh nine, I'd have to look at the books.
• 20:44
  But the flywheel and the clutch mechanism weighs probably 150 to 160 pounds.
• 20:50
  So you get that thing spinning up.
• 20:53
  Boy, it's got a lot of torque behind it.
• 20:54
  The master that i'm working on Of course, it's a hydro drive.
• 20:57
  We'll get into that later But that hydro drive mechanism, along with its vocal gain
• 21:03
  or the dual clutch is over 200 pounds.
• 21:06
  So when I have to take it apart, I have to take it apart piece by piece,
• 21:09
  by piece instead of one big chunk.
• 21:11
  Our listeners will be able to tell, like, even though you were saying
• 21:12
  the, the lowest horsepower, the single cylinder was 11 horsepower.
• 21:16
  The amount of torque the diesels put now was way more than a gasoline
• 21:19
  engine, especially back in the fifties.
• 21:21
  So for that's a little tracker without less power, but easily double the torque
• 21:25
  of what one of the small farmhalls would.
• 21:28
  I can see how that's a huge benefit to any farm.
• 21:30
  You'll love this.
• 21:31
  There's a 108 that I, I got out of Canada.
• 21:34
  It's now sitting in a museum.
• 21:36
  The original owner bought the tractor, understood the whole diesel
• 21:40
  thing, but hated it because it was loud and it vibrated too much.
• 21:45
  I got it.
• 21:46
  Okay.
• 21:47
  If you've got a properly tuned junior and you play with it and you
• 21:51
  slowly decrease it, You can get it to idle down around 375 to 400 rpm.
• 21:58
  Of course, you know, we're talking about a compression ignition engine.
• 22:00
  When that compression hits and it goes bang because of the rotation
• 22:05
  and all the mass, it almost lifts the left front tire off the ground.
• 22:09
  Wow.
• 22:10
  So this particular individual didn't like the tractor, didn't
• 22:14
  like the noise, the vibration.
• 22:16
  It sat for years.
• 22:17
  It's only got 10 hours on it.
• 22:19
  It's not sitting in a, in a museum with probably 12 hours
• 22:22
  on
• 22:23
  it.
• 22:23
  That's amazing that you were saying the RPMs were only down around 400 RPM.
• 22:27
  That's a very low RPM.
• 22:28
  If you knew how to play with the governor, you know, and all that, you could do that.
• 22:32
  Generally, it takes a long time to learn how to do that.
• 22:35
  I mean, these tractors like to idle at around, you know, 5, 550.
• 22:39
  Max RPM on any of them is 2100.
• 22:42
  I don't rev very high, but think about 2100 RPM and look at a master.
• 22:48
  They got 200 and some odd pounds swirling around.
• 22:51
  There's a lot of torque there competition back then, you know, I mean, there were
• 22:54
  a lot of different companies, you know, that competed the one thing that I've
• 22:57
  talked about to people for years, Porsche diesel in Germany, never understood,
• 23:02
  they couldn't figure out why they didn't get more traction in the U S and I told
• 23:06
  them, basically, there's, there's three reasons, you know, it was the cost
• 23:09
  because of the cost of them compared to the other stuff we're talking about.
• 23:13
  All the hardware is all metric.
• 23:15
  I mean, you know, you don't go into true value or whatever
• 23:18
  and go get yourself an M8 by 1.
• 23:21
  25 volt.
• 23:21
  People look at you and you want a what?
• 23:23
  There are stuff that's 516s in there.
• 23:25
  And then when you wanted parts, you had a right to the America Porsche Diesel
• 23:29
  Corporation at 808 Parker Street.
• 23:31
  And, uh, Wait for them to send you a quote and then you sent them a check
• 23:35
  and then he sent you your parts and for those of us in the farming business,
• 23:38
  like, you know, if your tractor is not running, you're not making money.
• 23:42
  I think that hurt him.
• 23:43
  But if you look at, you know, historically, and you told me this story
• 23:46
  not long ago about, you know, Enzo and Lamborghini, you know, going at it and
• 23:50
  the tractors and all that, but Lamborghini is still making tractors today.
• 23:54
  Which is kind of surprising.
• 23:55
  Porsche is not.
• 23:56
  I don't think Ferrari is either.
• 23:57
  Although I hear rumors that Fiat and Case New Holland are
• 24:01
  kind of in bed together, right?
• 24:03
  So there's still some agricultural stuff going on there with the European makers.
• 24:07
  Maybe not, you know, with their brand name right up front.
• 24:10
  So I think that's kind of interesting.
• 24:11
  Have you looked at some of maybe the Italian tractors
• 24:14
  that were at the same time?
• 24:15
  Are they better?
• 24:16
  They worse?
• 24:16
  They about the same?
• 24:17
  There's a Lamborghini tractor out there.
• 24:19
  I think the model is called an R1.
• 24:21
  I'm not sure if Porsche designed their tractor to compete
• 24:24
  against that or vice versa.
• 24:26
  But that was pretty much competition if you're looking at a, at a one cylinder.
• 24:30
  In fact, I think the Jay Leno race was a Porsche Junior against a Lamborghini.
• 24:36
  Again, I think it's called an R1, I'm not sure.
• 24:38
  You know, that's what that race was all about.
• 24:41
  But yeah, Lamborghini made very, very good tractors.
• 24:43
  I mean, most people don't know that.
• 24:45
  Lamborghini made tractors before he made cars.
• 24:48
  It was his meeting with Enzo Ferrari that led him to making race cars.
• 24:53
  Okay, we'll get into that in another story.
• 24:55
  You've got them, you've got Deutsche, I mean, there's, you know, there's
• 24:58
  the webpage I don't happen to have up, but it lists all the different tractor
• 25:02
  manufacturers back then and some of the designs and what they were doing.
• 25:07
  At that point Porsche just said, hey, there's so much competition out there.
• 25:11
  And I think they just gave up.
• 25:12
  I mean, their next generation tractor, of which I've heard different stories,
• 25:16
  there's either two or four of them that were made, or they took one of the four
• 25:20
  cylinders and made it four wheel drive, because they were the only company
• 25:24
  that didn't have a four wheel drive.
• 25:26
  Today, you pretty much have to have a four wheel drive tractor.
• 25:28
  So that's actually a really great segue.
• 25:30
  And one point of clarification as we do this, you've kind of mentioned some
• 25:34
  things that I hear either came from the automotive manufacturing side of
• 25:39
  the business, or maybe made its way into the automotive side of the house.
• 25:44
  So I guess my question is, you know, did any of their agricultural R and
• 25:47
  D apply to the cars and vice versa?
• 25:49
  And one of the things I heard Was air cooling, right?
• 25:52
  Obviously famous for that with the beetle, the flat engines, you know,
• 25:55
  leading all the way through the nine 11s up to the nineties, right?
• 25:58
  Air cooling was Porsche's signature thing.
• 26:01
  So that's one that four wheel drive system.
• 26:03
  You hear about the Audi Quattro that came from the Iltis, which was a world
• 26:07
  war two Jeep, where they took that technology and put it into road cars.
• 26:11
  It seems like there's a lot of back and forth between agricultural
• 26:14
  military and road vehicles.
• 26:16
  So how much Porsche technology went back and forth?
• 26:19
  When you look back, Dr.
• 26:21
  Porsche was designing a tractor and the engine was really, if you
• 26:25
  want to call it, it was modular.
• 26:27
  So, you have a one cylinder, which were the one series, then you had
• 26:30
  a two cylinder, which were the twos, then the three cylinder.
• 26:33
  All he did was stack cylinders on top of cylinders, next to each other.
• 26:37
  Except for the crankcase and the crankshaft.
• 26:40
  Everything else was identical.
• 26:41
  No matter what year, make, or model that you have, all the
• 26:44
  parts are interchangeable.
• 26:46
  So if you've got a tractor today, those cylinders are still made because
• 26:50
  they fit so many different tractors.
• 26:52
  Now, again, we're talking about air cooling.
• 26:54
  So what does he do?
• 26:55
  He just takes them.
• 26:56
  He stacks them.
• 26:57
  He orients the fins all the same way.
• 26:59
  There's a blower mechanism.
• 27:00
  It's over designed.
• 27:02
  And what he does is the sheet metal shroud Cools them, he just stretches
• 27:06
  it and makes it longer and longer and longer for two, three, or four cylinders.
• 27:10
  All the parts to hold it on, they're all the same.
• 27:12
  All the nuts and bolts are all the same.
• 27:14
  It's just modular.
• 27:16
  And when you think about it, what was the Volkswagen?
• 27:18
  That's a modular engine, right?
• 27:20
  You have a problem with the cylinder, you take that cylinder off, you throw
• 27:23
  the crap away and get another one.
• 27:25
  And that of course, you know, bled into the 356.
• 27:27
  So here's the really cool thing.
• 27:29
  And I tell people this and they think I'm nuts.
• 27:31
  Some of the parts in the one cylinder and the two cylinder tractors, you
• 27:35
  find the equivalents on the 356.
• 27:38
  Really?
• 27:38
  There's quite a few parts.
• 27:39
  I've told people, call me, go, Hey, I'm looking for a whatever.
• 27:42
  And I'm like, Hey, you know, go to any of the 356 guys and here's
• 27:46
  the part number that you buy.
• 27:47
  It's the same thing.
• 27:48
  Wow.
• 27:48
  Oh
• 27:48
  yeah.
• 27:49
  Battery holes are the same.
• 27:51
  A lot of the connectors are the same.
• 27:53
  Some of the lights are the same.
• 27:55
  It's really kind of funny when you get into it, that you see
• 27:57
  some of these similarities.
• 27:59
  I'm sure by doing that also after the war, because of coming out of, you
• 28:03
  know, lack of money, having it towards the parts could be interchanged,
• 28:06
  help them drastically get up off their feet and get things into
• 28:08
  production rather quickly compared to if everything is one good point.
• 28:13
  Yeah.
• 28:13
  Oh, yeah.
• 28:14
  But I mean, it's, it also goes to the cost of manufacturing, you
• 28:17
  know, you're gonna make 100, 000 or something, the price goes down.
• 28:20
  As compared to making a thousand or something.
• 28:23
  So you get that huge price break when the volume goes up.
• 28:26
  And once you set up the machines to do boring, the milling in the
• 28:30
  drilling and all of that, man, he did, they start cranking out parts.
• 28:33
  So going back, you mentioned several times, different models,
• 28:36
  the junior, the master, et cetera.
• 28:38
  So are those more colloquial names for the different types like the three Oh
• 28:42
  eight and the one 11 and things like that, or are they different sized tractors
• 28:46
  to actually answers both?
• 28:47
  So a one cylinder is known as a junior.
• 28:50
  It's always been called the junior.
• 28:52
  So the difference is they had a junior that was a model one 11, then they
• 28:56
  had a junior model one Oh eight, then they had a junior model one or nine.
• 29:00
  And then there were letter designators after that, that told you the
• 29:04
  way the tractor was configured.
• 29:06
  from the factory.
• 29:07
  You know, a V, a G.
• 29:09
  The special one that everybody wants is a 108S.
• 29:12
  The 108S was a junior, but it was narrowed.
• 29:16
  It's what they call a vineyard.
• 29:17
  So it could go up and down the vineyard rows without damaging the vines.
• 29:21
  There were 400 vineyards made between 1957 and 1960.
• 29:27
  14 in the U.
• 29:28
  S.
• 29:28
  right now.
• 29:29
  I'm not sure how many were actually imported because we
• 29:32
  don't have all the records.
• 29:33
  So the ones that are in the country, I've got them all, uh, recorded and tracked.
• 29:37
  Those are all originals that I know of, but there now are a couple that
• 29:41
  have come in, you know, from overseas.
• 29:43
  But the really cool thing about the Vineyard S, for 1960,
• 29:48
  they only made 20 of them.
• 29:49
  So serial numbers ran from one Through 400.
• 29:54
  So starting at serial number 381 and up, those were the 20
• 29:58
  vineyards that were made in 1960.
• 30:00
  And in my personal collection, I happen to have serial number 381.
• 30:04
  I just got lucky and found it and bought it.
• 30:06
  So then we transitioned to the two cylinders.
• 30:08
  And they have always been known as the standard, the standard tractor.
• 30:12
  Don't know where they came from, they just call it standard.
• 30:15
  But the thing is, it was pretty much the standard model for Europe.
• 30:18
  Everybody wanted two cylinders.
• 30:20
  Two cylinders seemed to be the best combination for them over there.
• 30:23
  So we're talking about two cylinders, and we're talking about like 208.
• 30:27
  After that's the 217, 218, 219.
• 30:30
  So all of those, uh, all those two cylinders were called standards.
• 30:34
  Some were called standard stars.
• 30:36
  Some were called standard exports.
• 30:38
  Specific configuration that they exported.
• 30:41
  Then from there, we go to the three cylinder, which is called a super.
• 30:44
  You know, you're starting to get into a bigger, heavier, much beefier tractor.
• 30:49
  Horsepower's going up, torque's going way up, tires are getting a lot
• 30:53
  bigger, and I'll tell you, driving the three cylinder without front weights,
• 30:57
  yeah, you gotta be really careful.
• 30:58
  It's got so much torque, that front end will come up on you.
• 31:01
  Pretty much every three cylinder I've ever seen always has either three or
• 31:05
  four optional weights on the front.
• 31:07
  Again, it's just called a Super.
• 31:08
  Cool name.
• 31:09
  It's amazing how many people call me and go, they want to
• 31:11
  buy a Super because of the name.
• 31:13
  They don't want a standard because, well, that's just a standard truck.
• 31:15
  It's like, I don't want a standard car.
• 31:17
  I want, you know, I want a better version.
• 31:20
  And then, of course, you get to the four cylinder, which is called the Baster.
• 31:24
  The 419s, massive tractors, really heavy, lots of torque, lots of horsepower.
• 31:32
  You know, I wish you guys could be here to drive a Master.
• 31:35
  The one I currently have here, it's a Master.
• 31:38
  It's a four cylinder.
• 31:39
  It's got 14.
• 31:41
  9 inch wide tires on the rim, you know, on the rear, which is massive.
• 31:45
  And I tell everybody, when you fire that thing up, throw a little RPM
• 31:49
  to it, get up around a thousand RPM.
• 31:51
  Put it in gear, let the clutch out, you don't move.
• 31:54
  It rotates the earth up underneath you.
• 31:57
  That's so much better.
• 31:58
  And you gotta experience it.
• 32:00
  You really have to experience it.
• 32:02
  I mean, you get on this thing, you fire it up and you're like, it's a beast.
• 32:05
  They were designed to pull what they call a six gain plow.
• 32:09
  Have a customer that has a 318.
• 32:11
  So it's the same size as the Mazda, the transmission's the
• 32:14
  same, wheels are the same.
• 32:16
  before he got ahold of me.
• 32:17
  He goes, Hey, I think my clutch is slipping.
• 32:19
  Like, what do you mean?
• 32:20
  Your question is slipping because well, it doesn't seem to want to go anymore.
• 32:24
  So I went up, got on it, fired up, drove it around.
• 32:27
  So there's nothing wrong with this thing.
• 32:28
  He's like, are you sure?
• 32:29
  I said, yeah, you have to understand these are.
• 32:32
  Lower geared tractors.
• 32:33
  They're not going to be fast.
• 32:35
  They're not going to haul butt down road at, you know, 20, 25 miles an hour.
• 32:38
  I said, but, you know, this thing will pull a six gain plow at
• 32:42
  20 miles an hour all day long.
• 32:44
  You'll just never know.
• 32:46
  It's just, they're not designed to go fast.
• 32:48
  It's really funny.
• 32:49
  The speedometer, so it's of course in kilometers per hour.
• 32:51
  So thinking about owning a vehicle back in the late fifties, early sixties, that the
• 32:56
  speedometer was in kilometers per hour.
• 32:58
  Farmers are like, what?
• 32:59
  When you got a tractor and the maximum speed on it is 40 kilometers per hour.
• 33:04
  Well, we do the calculation.
• 33:05
  That's 24 miles an hour.
• 33:07
  That being said,
• 33:07
  a speedometer on a tractor is not a very common thing.
• 33:11
  So any of the older ones I've been around, I've never seen a speed at one.
• 33:14
  So that's very interesting.
• 33:15
  They came with that.
• 33:15
  This is
• 33:17
  a Porsche.
• 33:17
  You expect a cut above everything else.
• 33:20
  You know, we, we speak about this with cars all the time for the badging.
• 33:23
  And you were saying everybody wants to buy a super instead of a standard.
• 33:26
  It's good to see that happens in the tractor world as well.
• 33:29
  I would like a, a Porsche diesel turbo S thank you very much.
• 33:33
  Which actually is a great segue as we dive deeper into this
• 33:36
  technical part of the conversation.
• 33:39
  I guess my question, you know, in hearing all this, and it's actually really cool,
• 33:42
  even different sized tractors, motors, power output, and all that kind of stuff.
• 33:46
  Were they always naturally aspirated or did they venture into turbo charging?
• 33:50
  And I bring that up because Porsche senior is famous for being involved in
• 33:55
  the Mercedes SSK build, which was one of the early supercharged Mercedes, right?
• 33:59
  So I'm wondering if some of that technology made its way into the tractors.
• 34:03
  None that I know of.
• 34:05
  I'm like, I'm sure you guys are familiar with the famous tractor
• 34:08
  race at the last run sport.
• 34:10
  Kind of scary.
• 34:10
  They wanted me to go out there.
• 34:12
  I just refused because personally, I didn't think it was a controlled event.
• 34:16
  So you saw people out there trying to drive tractors and you probably heard
• 34:20
  all the gear grinds and stuff like that.
• 34:22
  Well, you know what?
• 34:23
  These don't have synchro transmissions.
• 34:25
  Nobody really understood how to really drive those tractors because From
• 34:29
  what I understand, it wasn't until the owners got there that they were told,
• 34:32
  well, you can't drive your tractor.
• 34:34
  A professional driver has to drive your tractor.
• 34:37
  Well, you know what?
• 34:38
  When you find that out, you begin to understand why Patrick Long won.
• 34:42
  He's a professional driver.
• 34:43
  He's got a Porsche diesel tractor.
• 34:45
  You got parts for me, you know, because he understood the tractor.
• 34:50
  Okay.
• 34:51
  And it's not as if the junior is the fastest thing out there.
• 34:54
  He just knew how to drive it.
• 34:56
  Um, and I can honestly tell you from that tractor race, I have sent
• 35:00
  clutches and shift forks and all sorts of parts to about eight different
• 35:05
  tractors so the guys could get their tractors back up and running again.
• 35:08
  The reason why I bring this up is that it's some of the juniors came
• 35:12
  of it, but the two, three, and four cylinders Came with, which was
• 35:16
  revolutionary back then, a hydro clutch.
• 35:20
  Think about that for a second.
• 35:21
  It's a hydro clutch.
• 35:22
  Today, we kind of call it a torque converter.
• 35:25
  So here you have Dr.
• 35:26
  Porsche designing this hydraulic coupler.
• 35:29
  Crankshaft's turning this big ass flywheel, attached to
• 35:32
  the flywheel is an impeller.
• 35:34
  Separate from that, there's another impeller attached to your clutch.
• 35:39
  So these parts are spinning in fluid.
• 35:41
  So it's got to spin and create fluid pressure to drive the other side.
• 35:45
  That in turn drives your clutch.
• 35:47
  So if you really know how to drive one of these tractors, again, we have to go back.
• 35:50
  They do not have synchro transmission.
• 35:52
  You do not shift on the fly.
• 35:53
  You take your tractor, you put in whatever gear you want, you let the
• 35:57
  clutch out, it's not going to stall.
• 35:58
  The engine will finally build up enough torque through fluid pressure and start
• 36:02
  driving the other side and off you go.
• 36:05
  So if there was anybody in that tractor race that understood that.
• 36:09
  I would have got on that tractor, gone wide open, put it in fourth
• 36:12
  gear and let the clutch out and just hauled butt down to the track.
• 36:16
  But these people are trying to leave in first gear and shift
• 36:18
  to second and shift to third.
• 36:19
  You know, all you hear was gear grinding and I mean, I sat there
• 36:23
  when I watched the video, I was like, Oh God, I don't want to hear this.
• 36:26
  So, you know, of course, you know, Patrick Long's got a 108 that
• 36:28
  doesn't have a hydro mechanism in it.
• 36:31
  So he just puts it in fourth gear and throttles it, you know, and off he's gone.
• 36:34
  So that is one of the really kind of the innovative things
• 36:37
  that was going on was that.
• 36:39
  Hydrostatic coupler that he created, which made a huge difference because you
• 36:44
  could start out in any gear you wanted.
• 36:45
  I don't know if it still goes on, but there's a competition in California every
• 36:50
  year as to who has the slowest tractor.
• 36:54
  The guys show up, they throttle, what are you going to laugh?
• 36:57
  They throttle their tractors down, they put it in gear, they
• 36:59
  let it out and they measure it.
• 37:01
  Uh, yeah, yours is going like, you know, one and a half miles an hour.
• 37:04
  There's an option for all the Porsche diesel tractors, but basically it
• 37:09
  lowers the gear ratio even more.
• 37:10
  So you take your tractor, you go out there in first gear.
• 37:14
  I take that back.
• 37:15
  You don't go up first, you go out in fourth gear.
• 37:16
  So you get maximum slow pitch.
• 37:17
  You put it in fourth gear, creep, it's called the creeper gear.
• 37:20
  You put the creeper gear in it, you throttle it down and you let
• 37:24
  the clutch out, not enough RPM to really build up enough pressure.
• 37:27
  They get this thing to move forward since it's in fourth year, but
• 37:31
  it will finally start to move.
• 37:34
  And it crawls along at about a quarter of a mile an hour.
• 37:37
  Oh my God.
• 37:39
  He's got all these trophies.
• 37:40
  He does the same thing every year.
• 37:42
  And I just laughed.
• 37:43
  He figured it out.
• 37:44
  You
• 37:44
  mentioned the hydro coupler.
• 37:46
  Did they experiment with any like hydrostatic transmissions that were
• 37:49
  starting to be innovated at that time?
• 37:50
  Are they all just manual or the hydra?
• 37:52
  Not that I'm aware of.
• 37:53
  They had that.
• 37:53
  And of course they had a separate hydraulic system
• 37:56
  for your three point hitch.
• 37:58
  What was nice about the hydraulic system is there were ports in different
• 38:02
  places, if you wanted to tap off to it.
• 38:04
  To run another hydraulic mechanism for your planter, your
• 38:08
  seeder, you know, whatever those things are that people buy you
• 38:11
  did Porsche themselves manufacture a lot of the implements for them
• 38:13
  or did they have third party companies that people would buy them
• 38:17
  from third party companies do that.
• 38:19
  I don't know who the companies were over in the EU.
• 38:22
  But in the U.
• 38:23
  S., they teamed up with a company called F& W, and the gentleman's
• 38:28
  name, his last name was Funk, and the other gentleman's last name W, I
• 38:32
  believe it was Williams, Williamson.
• 38:34
  You could order a Porsche diesel tractor, and if you wanted a bucket,
• 38:38
  a backhoe or something like that.
• 38:39
  Porsche would get it to H& W, which was in Connecticut, and they would
• 38:44
  configure it with your bucket, whatever you wanted on it, and then
• 38:48
  transport it to whoever the buyer was.
• 38:51
  But H& W was the only authorized
• 38:54
  company to do that.
• 38:55
  For the hydraulic systems they had, was it all Hydraulic fluid or did
• 38:58
  they use any sort of pneumatic systems like some of the old farmhalls did?
• 39:01
  That was all hydraulic fluid.
• 39:02
  The way the systems were designed, pump up in the front, and you could
• 39:06
  change the pump 5 liter, 10 liter, or 20 liter per minute, I think.
• 39:10
  But depending on what you were doing, if you needed more flow, two screws, take it
• 39:15
  off, pop the new one in place, exact same hose connections, and you went from a A
• 39:19
  10 liter to a 20 liter per minute pump.
• 39:22
  And then you mentioned for like some of the attachments, most of the Porsche
• 39:26
  tractors, most commonly with like two point or three point hitches on the
• 39:29
  rear, three point hitch for everything.
• 39:30
  Yeah.
• 39:30
  Yeah.
• 39:31
  No, during that time of the fifties, like a lot of the tractors and still
• 39:34
  had two points and the three point was the new thing at that time.
• 39:38
  That was so much greater three point implement.
• 39:40
  It's so much better than a two point.
• 39:42
  It's, it's amazing, much better control.
• 39:43
  Yeah, no, the only thing that I know of that you could order.
• 39:47
  From the factory to get delivered into the U.
• 39:49
  S.
• 39:49
  was a sickle bar mower.
• 39:51
  So the factory over in Germany would attach a sickle bar mower for you
• 39:55
  before it got shipped to the U.
• 39:57
  S.
• 39:57
  Was the sickle bar mower that they would provide, was it one that sat on the
• 40:00
  back of the three point or was it one that tied onto the side of the tractor?
• 40:03
  Side of the tractor ran off a pulley, so in other words, a center mounted pulley.
• 40:08
  So all the tractors came with a shaft in the middle that
• 40:12
  you could mount a pulley on.
• 40:13
  So they didn't have to do like the farmhouse where you had to run off
• 40:15
  the PTO with all the pulleys drawn up underneath for a belly component.
• 40:19
  No, no,
• 40:20
  I wasn't going
• 40:21
  to buy one of those for mine.
• 40:22
  I'm like, uh, no.
• 40:25
  I mean they did it, got it.
• 40:26
  That's really awesome.
• 40:27
  But I'm like, I really don't need this.
• 40:29
  So kind of the interesting thing about horses is that depending on your make
• 40:34
  and model, you know, the juniors had one PTO off the rear, the two cylinders
• 40:39
  had one out the rear, one in the middle.
• 40:41
  When you get to the three cylinders and the four cylinders, and some
• 40:44
  of them had two PTOs out the rear.
• 40:46
  One in the middle and then one out the front, you could actually get
• 40:49
  attracted with four PTO outlets, all individually controlled by,
• 40:55
  you know, levers in key positions.
• 40:57
  What style were they, were they live PTOs?
• 40:59
  I mean, you mentioned they were individually controlled, but I was
• 41:01
  just curious what style PTOs they work.
• 41:03
  So I know there's like three or four different types.
• 41:05
  So the front PTO ran off the crankshaft, whatever the engine RPM was, that
• 41:10
  was the RPM going out the front.
• 41:12
  The cinema PTO and the rear top PTO were driven off the clutch.
• 41:19
  So basically in which clutch was out, they engaged.
• 41:21
  And then the other one in the rear was engine RPM all the time.
• 41:27
  So
• 41:27
  a
• 41:27
  lot of
• 41:27
  the engine RPM is it went straight off the back.
• 41:29
  It's amazing
• 41:30
  how different PTOs work and everything.
• 41:32
  Cause I've got.
• 41:33
  Other than my old Farmall, which of course, if you want the PTO to
• 41:37
  run, you have to have the clutch out because that's a clutch PTO.
• 41:39
  More modern tractor, I have a newer tractor, it's a couple
• 41:41
  years old, it's a Mahindra.
• 41:43
  Instead of just one to engage the PTO, it actually has its own clutch
• 41:46
  that doesn't run off the transmission.
• 41:48
  So I engage it to turn it on and then engage the clutch by hand
• 41:51
  for it to run to where I can have the clutch in moving and the PTO
• 41:55
  works.
• 41:55
  So the later generation tractors, like I'm working on a 318 now, it's
• 42:00
  still, it's a double clutch, so when you Let the clutch out the initial
• 42:04
  bite is for the PTO and that last bite is for the transmission to move it.
• 42:08
  So you always engage the PTO first before you move the tractor
• 42:11
  electronics on them.
• 42:12
  So like I mentioned for gauge, why they came with attack on them, what other sort
• 42:16
  of like gauges did they have as well as their charging system, stuff like that?
• 42:19
  Like, were they six volts, 12 volts, 24 volts?
• 42:22
  So all the tractors were global.
• 42:24
  The early ones were.
• 42:26
  Two 6 volt batteries, and then eventually they went to a single 12 volt battery.
• 42:31
  Yes, and that's only because the availability of 6 volt batteries
• 42:34
  was more common over there 12s.
• 42:37
  Totally no, but you know, so they have two batteries that are nested together.
• 42:40
  So you open the cover, you slide out of the tray, and there's your two
• 42:44
  batteries, you know, to service them.
• 42:45
  90 percent of the tractors, that slide out tray is long gone, and everybody
• 42:49
  just puts a 12 volt battery in there.
• 42:51
  Which I completely understand.
• 42:53
  So for some of my customers, they want authenticity boy, I play health finding
• 42:57
  one of those trays, but I've got a lot of outlets around the world, a lot of
• 43:00
  individuals that I can go to and, you know, when you find the parts that I need.
• 43:04
  Now, when it comes to gauges, they were very basic.
• 43:07
  You could get a tractor that had no gauges at all, except for it
• 43:11
  had a device that they call the.
• 43:13
  Four function control lamp.
• 43:15
  What you and I would refer to as idiot lights on a dashboard of a car.
• 43:18
  Okay.
• 43:19
  One for oil pressure, one for you generating, make sure it was charging.
• 43:23
  There was another one that would illuminate when you got low on fuel.
• 43:27
  And then the fourth one, it was where differently sometimes it illuminated
• 43:32
  when you had your high beams on other times it was a blinker because the EU
• 43:37
  is when they make a, a safety change.
• 43:40
  They don't care if you've got a 2021 tractor or a 1954 tractor on road.
• 43:45
  You have to go and update it.
• 43:47
  So that fourth bulb a lot of times was used to indicate that you have
• 43:51
  a directional light on someplace.
• 43:53
  So that was the basic dashboard.
• 43:55
  The next thing is pretty much everybody was smart.
• 43:58
  They put an engine temperature gauge in it.
• 44:00
  Standard mechanical temperature gauge, you know, the pitot tube type.
• 44:03
  Screws into the head, monitors the head temperature.
• 44:06
  You know, that's cool.
• 44:07
  Then from there, on some tractors, have a speedometer with the odometer on it.
• 44:12
  So you know how fast you were going and how many kilometers
• 44:15
  you put on your tractor.
• 44:16
  Kind of cool.
• 44:17
  There's another option for an hour meter.
• 44:19
  See how many hours were on your tractor.
• 44:21
  What I've learned from my diesel tractor is more about
• 44:25
  how many hours you've got on it.
• 44:26
  When you do for service, not how far you've driven it.
• 44:29
  So like that, the bigger tractor, like the four cylinder, you could actually
• 44:33
  drill a hole and put a clock on it if you want to know what time of the day it was.
• 44:36
  Right in the center of the dashboard, when you look at a picture of
• 44:40
  one, you'll see this chrome cover.
• 44:42
  It'll look like a pepper shaker.
• 44:44
  Okay, and that's your glow indicator.
• 44:46
  So before you start the tractor, right, you put the key in, you initiate a
• 44:49
  switch, And you look through the pepper shaker, and in there there's a wire.
• 44:54
  As that wire changes color, as it gets brighter and brighter orange, that
• 44:58
  tells you how hot your glow plug is.
• 45:01
  So once it starts to glow orange, you wait a few extra seconds and you pull the
• 45:05
  starter, So your fuel is getting injected on that and helps attract your start.
• 45:09
  There's an interesting thing about this.
• 45:11
  It's got a really, really cool feature.
• 45:12
  So this glow indicator you put in the dashboard and it's got, I think it's an
• 45:16
  inch and a 16 nut that tightens it down.
• 45:18
  And then the chrome cap comes off separately.
• 45:22
  And I thought for the longest time, why did they do that?
• 45:24
  So what you're telling me, Sal, is They had a built in
• 45:27
  cigarette lighter on this thing.
• 45:29
  Bingo.
• 45:30
  Exactly.
• 45:30
  So you can take the cap off and when it glows, you can stick your
• 45:34
  cigarette in there and light it.
• 45:35
  I haven't told myself like, oh, this can't be.
• 45:37
  I came across a tractor once and I pulled the cap off and looked down inside
• 45:42
  and there were cigarette ashes in it.
• 45:43
  I'm like, I'll be damned.
• 45:44
  Yeah.
• 45:45
  And then next to the cigarette lighter, they had a power outlet.
• 45:48
  Which today we would call a cigarette lighter plug, but it
• 45:51
  was a completely different size so that you could pull power to run.
• 45:55
  I don't know what that probably, you know, a work light or something like that.
• 45:58
  All those gauges, knob switches were all very common in many cases,
• 46:02
  but we're talking about Bosch.
• 46:04
  We're talking about Hella.
• 46:05
  They still make the exact ones today.
• 46:07
  So when somebody wants to restore their tractor, the authenticity,
• 46:10
  once I know the year, make and model.
• 46:12
  I know what horn they're supposed to have, what kind of switches they
• 46:16
  should have, you know, what is your temperature gate supposed to look like?
• 46:19
  So you can do all of it.
• 46:20
  Speaking of the glow plug thing, I'm familiar with what you're speaking
• 46:23
  of because some of the older military equipment that I ran when I was
• 46:26
  in the military had the same thing where you had to manually turn on the
• 46:28
  glow plug before you could start it.
• 46:30
  I wasn't familiar with that.
• 46:31
  They go out there and have the engine cranking over for 10 minutes
• 46:33
  straight with it not starting and you have to go back, look.
• 46:35
  flip this switch to turn a glow plug on, and they finally get it started.
• 46:38
  To your point, Sal, about parts availability still being a
• 46:41
  thing today, 60, 70 years later on some of these tractors.
• 46:46
  I mean, that's, that's awesome.
• 46:48
  And if you think about it, it's also probably due to the fact that they
• 46:51
  actually made quite a A lot of these in a short amount of time, 125,
• 46:55
  000 tractors is not a small order by any stretch of the imagination,
• 47:00
  especially over slightly over a decade.
• 47:02
  So we talked about parts scarcity before in sports cars where
• 47:06
  you're in low numbers, you know, they only built 1500 of them.
• 47:09
  And even in the classic car world, it's really, really hard to get parts, but
• 47:12
  it almost seems like for the Porsche tractors, even though they're not.
• 47:16
  As famous as a Farmall or an international or John Deere, like
• 47:19
  we're accustomed to here in the States.
• 47:21
  It's actually pretty popular tractor in, in, in the reality of things.
• 47:24
  So this is, this has been good, obviously for business and it's
• 47:27
  good for the longevity of the brand.
• 47:29
  It's actually really cool.
• 47:30
  And to your point, there's a lot of really in very Porsche style,
• 47:34
  innovative features on a tractor.
• 47:36
  That's 60 plus years old.
• 47:38
  Again, you know, we talked about commonality of all these parts, cylinders,
• 47:42
  pistons, all this stuff is available.
• 47:44
  Cool.
• 47:44
  Heads aren't, but I've got my own process where even if I get one that's correct,
• 47:49
  I can save it and put it back together.
• 47:51
  So those aren't a problem.
• 47:53
  But here's a really interesting thing.
• 47:54
  If somebody calls and wants a wiring harness, I can get
• 47:58
  them a new NOS wiring harness.
• 48:01
  They go, what?
• 48:02
  I go, yeah.
• 48:02
  The reason why I say that is because the same gentleman that made them for Porsche
• 48:08
  Diesel, In Europe, Phil makes them today.
• 48:11
  He has turned the business over to his son.
• 48:13
  Which you can call him.
• 48:15
  He has, you know, the boards.
• 48:17
  So you put the wire up to a certain length and you cut it off here.
• 48:19
  You know that?
• 48:20
  To me, it's a factory wiring harness.
• 48:22
  Yeah,
• 48:23
  absolutely.
• 48:23
  I've located the gentleman who used to cast the emblems.
• 48:28
  So the emblems that I sell people, the, on the side come from the same gentleman.
• 48:33
  He's in his eighties.
• 48:34
  The gentleman that makes all the trim work still makes it today.
• 48:37
  He's in his eighties.
• 48:38
  It's kind of cool because I tell people, so why are you selling reproduction parts?
• 48:42
  I mean, to me, if it comes from the exact same person and the same
• 48:46
  vendor, it's not reproduction.
• 48:49
  It's continuous production.
• 48:50
  Absolutely.
• 48:51
  Now there are people out there that are selling, you know,
• 48:53
  repops, you know, as we call them.
• 48:55
  And I've seen some stuff come in from China.
• 48:58
  I've ordered some of these things just to look at them.
• 49:00
  And I kid you not, I, I got a switch in a few months ago.
• 49:04
  That was a copy of the Bosch switch, you know, obviously made in China.
• 49:07
  I got that thing.
• 49:08
  I stuck a key in it, started playing with it.
• 49:10
  Like I threw it in the garbage.
• 49:11
  Like I'll never sell something like this to my customer.
• 49:14
  It was half price, but you know what?
• 49:16
  They're not going to be happy with it.
• 49:17
  So in the garbage, it went.
• 49:19
  I was I heard you mention the generator on them for these tractors.
• 49:23
  Was it a standalone generator or was it a generator starter combination?
• 49:27
  Standalone generator.
• 49:28
  I had an old main amp, a small one when I was younger, that the generator
• 49:31
  and the starter were one component.
• 49:33
  Most people don't know is that if you take a generator and you put
• 49:37
  power across the field and all of that, it starts turning as a motor.
• 49:40
  So that's really how you check them.
• 49:42
  I get a tractor in, I'll pull it off.
• 49:44
  I'll do that quick little check and go, yep, it's good.
• 49:46
  I mean, most of the times I still pull them down, clean them, check
• 49:49
  the brushes, you know, do all that, stick it back together.
• 49:51
  But people are always saying, is it hard to get a generator?
• 49:54
  Actually, it's pretty easy.
• 49:56
  They go, you get it from Germany?
• 49:58
  Like, nah, just go down to your local Napa store and ask for
• 50:01
  a 12 volt generator for a 356.
• 50:03
  It's the same damn thing.
• 50:05
  Like some of the filters, it took me hours and hours and hours, but
• 50:08
  I researched the original size, the micron rating, the height, all of
• 50:14
  that for the original Porsche tractor.
• 50:16
  And I spent hours on the WICS site finding the equivalents to
• 50:20
  those, and I converted them to U.
• 50:22
  S.
• 50:22
  standards.
• 50:23
  So if somebody calls and says, hey, they need a fuel filter, well, you know what?
• 50:27
  Go down to NAPA and tell them you need this part number, and you're good to go.
• 50:30
  Same thing with oil filters.
• 50:31
  So there's really no reason to bring them in from overseas.
• 50:35
  In fact, actually, the oil filters that I sell to people have better capacity than
• 50:40
  the factory and a lower micron level.
• 50:43
  What's being filtered What's going back in the engine is significantly
• 50:47
  cleaner than the factory filters.
• 50:50
  And, you know, that brings up a really good question, Sal, because we've just
• 50:53
  done some episodes recently about oil and oil analysis and things like that.
• 50:57
  We've had, you know, Liqui Moly on, we've had Blackstone on, and it brings
• 51:00
  up a good question because the oils that were used in the motors and a
• 51:03
  lot of the petroleum products 70 years ago are different than they are today.
• 51:06
  Leaded fuels, how.
• 51:08
  Are you evolving or modifying the tractors to deal with low sulfur diesels?
• 51:13
  And what type of motor oil are you running in these tractors in today's modern times?
• 51:18
  When it comes to engine oil, do not use synthetic.
• 51:21
  Don't use a synthetic blend.
• 51:23
  I call it, I jokingly refer to it as dinosaur oil.
• 51:26
  Go get dinosaur oil.
• 51:27
  Ford, Motocraft.
• 51:29
  Ford has a phenomenal diesel oil that's old school.
• 51:34
  And what's nice about it, when you do the research on it, it has a
• 51:38
  higher level of zinc in it, which is what these tractors really want.
• 51:42
  Synthetic, all that stuff, you know, they're taking all the zinc out of it.
• 51:45
  So you want the older, you know, again, I call it dinosaur oil.
• 51:49
  You know, you want that.
• 51:50
  The base Rotella works just fine.
• 51:53
  You know, multi grade.
• 51:54
  These tractors are actually designed for straight 30.
• 51:57
  Yeah, you know, that's fine.
• 51:59
  You can, if you can find it, use it, but your standard out the
• 52:02
  door rotility, that's a 10w30.
• 52:06
  Go for it, you know, and don't worry about it.
• 52:08
  Hydraulic fluid, again, nothing special.
• 52:11
  Actually, these tractors, when it comes to hydraulic fluid, They were
• 52:15
  actually designed to either use a thicker hydraulic fluid or SAE 10.
• 52:20
  If you can find straight SAE 10, just use that.
• 52:23
  Now, when it comes to diesel, if you look at the original emblems that the
• 52:28
  American Porsche Diesel Corporation put on the fuel tanks, It says
• 52:32
  specifically that these engines were designed to run a number two fuel oil.
• 52:37
  What's number two?
• 52:38
  Home heating oil.
• 52:39
  So if you get home heating oil, run it on that.
• 52:42
  And the reason why is because it's not that it has more additives in
• 52:46
  it, but the way it's processed, there's things that are left behind.
• 52:50
  They run great on them.
• 52:51
  If you do have to use, pump diesel.
• 52:53
  See if you can find the station that has non road use diesel.
• 52:58
  That's the way to go.
• 52:59
  I mean,
• 52:59
  that's, that's amazing.
• 53:00
  I mean, to keep these things going after so many years is
• 53:03
  just absolutely incredible.
• 53:05
  But I think Dan has maybe other technical questions about the tractors.
• 53:09
  Earlier, you'd mentioned that Porsche created the narrow
• 53:12
  model for in the vineyards.
• 53:13
  I was curious if they did.
• 53:15
  I'm all having like a hot proper designs and things like that as well.
• 53:18
  Or if that was like the one, like off design that they built,
• 53:21
  I'm going to cover three different ones.
• 53:22
  So they made a vineyard model and they made the vineyards in
• 53:26
  the one, two and three cylinders.
• 53:27
  So the three Oh nine that I mentioned, I have here earlier, the three
• 53:31
  Oh nine was made as a vineyard.
• 53:33
  So you've got this 98 millimeter monster motor in this somewhat lighter tractor.
• 53:40
  And it's really narrow.
• 53:41
  It's scary to drive because it's fast, and it's got that narrow word base.
• 53:47
  And if you turn a little too quick, you're like, whoa.
• 53:50
  So you have to back off.
• 53:51
  And again, it's a 98 millimeter.
• 53:53
  So it's a bear.
• 53:54
  So they did that.
• 53:55
  So they had a vineyard.
• 53:56
  Now, the 3 cylinders and the 4 cylinders, so the Supers and the
• 54:01
  Masters, you could order in what they call the high crop version.
• 54:05
  So you went from the standard tire size, I know it basically back then was 26, you
• 54:10
  would go from a 26 to a 36 inch tall tire.
• 54:14
  So very, very tall tire, but narrow, not really wide.
• 54:18
  And your front rims, instead of being 16 inch, would go to 20 inch.
• 54:21
  This way the tractor would sit, you know, somewhat level.
• 54:24
  So yeah, they were called High Crops.
• 54:26
  They had their own special fender configuration.
• 54:29
  Again, tall, narrow tires.
• 54:32
  There's one for sale right now, like for example, in California.
• 54:35
  I know there's one in New York.
• 54:37
  There's not that many high crops around, but it's, it's
• 54:40
  a really neat configuration.
• 54:42
  An interesting thing about the high crop is if it's a factory high crop,
• 54:46
  it actually has like a little baby step ladder that comes off the side of it.
• 54:50
  So for short people like me, I got something to step on so I can get up in
• 54:53
  the tractor, get up there and drive it.
• 54:55
  But without that, It'd be like one of those running, leaping
• 54:59
  things for me, you know.
• 55:00
  But that leads me into the neatest tractor that they ever built.
• 55:04
  And it was called a P312.
• 55:07
  They only made 200 of them.
• 55:08
  They made them specifically for the coffee bean fields, the mountains, the
• 55:13
  coffee bean areas in South America.
• 55:15
  So they're all in Brazil.
• 55:16
  Every one of them.
• 55:17
  Rarest hen's teeth.
• 55:19
  There's at least two or three in the U.
• 55:20
  S., you know, that I know of that have been professionally restored.
• 55:24
  It's a really unique tractor.
• 55:25
  You'd have to pull it up online, but it has this cowling that just continues
• 55:30
  along, you know, and sweeps over.
• 55:32
  Because they didn't want to damage the coffee bean plants.
• 55:36
  So it was designed to take the branches and kind of gently, you
• 55:39
  know, move them out of the side.
• 55:41
  Couple interesting things about that tractor.
• 55:43
  So when you think of tractors, we think about the weight of a tractor.
• 55:46
  Is it 4, 000, 5, 000, 6, 000 pounds?
• 55:49
  This coffee bean tractor had magnesium rims on it.
• 55:52
  Why they were keeping them light, I have no idea.
• 55:55
  It's got little funny 10 inch magnesium rims on it.
• 55:59
  Yeah, they look just like something that came out of the original Coopers.
• 56:03
  I like mini Cooper rims, or Austin Cooper, I should say.
• 56:06
  So it's kind of funny.
• 56:07
  So you've got this big shroud.
• 56:09
  I mean, it's very artistically designed.
• 56:11
  I mean, you know, You kind of look at it and you go, gee, it's got, it kind
• 56:14
  of got the lines of a three 56 and years ago I was traveling over in the UK and we
• 56:20
  got an email from a lady over there that had purchased one of these and wanted
• 56:24
  me to go look at it, figure out what was there, what was missing and all that.
• 56:27
  I meet up with her husband and her son, you know, and we go out and we
• 56:30
  look at this tractor and there it is.
• 56:31
  It's pretty much all there and I get on it.
• 56:34
  And what you quickly find out is that there are 312s around for sale, but most
• 56:38
  of them, all that sheet metal is missing.
• 56:40
  So it's like, what do you do with it?
• 56:41
  I couldn't understand why until I got on the tractor and started it up.
• 56:44
  Again, right?
• 56:45
  We're talking air cool.
• 56:46
  All the heat from that engine blows right on your face.
• 56:50
  It is horrible.
• 56:51
  No wonder they took the shrouds off for this thing.
• 56:54
  You had to get rid of the heat someplace.
• 56:55
  Of course.
• 56:56
  You know, so finding one that's all intact with all the pieces,
• 56:59
  you know, it's really amazing.
• 57:00
  But here's the cool feature about the 312.
• 57:02
  The engine came with a whole box of parts and you could convert
• 57:06
  it from diesel to gasoline to kerosene to whatever else happened
• 57:10
  to have around that you could burn.
• 57:12
  Wow.
• 57:12
  It's like a tri
• 57:13
  fuel.
• 57:13
  Yeah.
• 57:14
  I really haven't studied them all that much, but the way it was
• 57:17
  designed, you started it on gasoline because they only had like eight
• 57:20
  and a half to one compression ratio.
• 57:22
  And once it got up and running and hot, You could switch it over to diesel.
• 57:26
  It would continue to run.
• 57:27
  There's a model or a farm.
• 57:28
  All that's very similar to, I can't remember the model of it, but you
• 57:30
  started on gasoline and converter.
• 57:32
  You switch it over the diesel.
• 57:34
  We're talking the same thing.
• 57:35
  How does that work without a spark plug though?
• 57:37
  I don't know.
• 57:38
  I've never researched them.
• 57:39
  Of course, you know, I keep telling my wife I'm getting an airplane
• 57:42
  and go down and go buy one.
• 57:43
  But talk about one of the most dangerous things in the world you could ever do.
• 57:47
  Cause everybody down there, they like to deal in cash.
• 57:50
  Uh, yeah, I'm not going to walk around with 20, 30, 000 of a pocket.
• 57:53
  Because they don't even know where my body went.
• 57:56
  Right.
• 57:59
  Well, you mentioned it now, the three 12 was multi fuel all of the other
• 58:03
  ones diesel, or did they also have some gasoline engines or experiment?
• 58:08
  Only the three 12 was the multi fuel one.
• 58:10
  So they never experimented with gasoline or anything else.
• 58:14
  You know, early on, I mean, you know, diesels weren't really well known back
• 58:18
  then, you know, people didn't really talk about diesel engines and, you know,
• 58:22
  like everything else, he was just out there to perfect it and make it work.
• 58:25
  Probably buddies with Rudolf Diesel, right?
• 58:27
  I mean, he's got to get, he's got to market his new engine somehow, right?
• 58:30
  If you think about the time.
• 58:31
  Well, yeah.
• 58:32
  But it
• 58:33
  actually begs an interesting question that we didn't cover
• 58:36
  earlier in Porsche fashion, right?
• 58:38
  Kind of looking at those motors back then, this would have been a pushrod
• 58:42
  engine or was it an overhead cam?
• 58:45
  These are all pushrod engines
• 58:46
  with the collapsible tubes, just like on the flat fours.
• 58:49
  Yep, exactly.
• 58:50
  Yeah, so the
• 58:51
  difference is instead of it being a collapsible tube, the way it's
• 58:54
  designed, the base of the tube has a long spring with a spot
• 58:59
  washer and then a sealing washer.
• 59:01
  So what you do is you kind of put it in place and they have a special tool that
• 59:05
  compresses and holds it all together.
• 59:07
  You get it where you want it, you line it up, you make sure it's lined up, and
• 59:10
  then you just quickly pull this special tool out of the way, it pops in place.
• 59:14
  The first time I went to use it, I thought, what the hell is this?
• 59:18
  I couldn't get it to seated right and all that.
• 59:20
  So I probably took some time, step back and look at it and figure out how I write.
• 59:24
  This is how this really works.
• 59:26
  I've been using it the wrong way.
• 59:27
  And once I figured that all out and stuck it in there, I have never had one leak.
• 59:33
  Get another carryover, let's say from the beetle and any of those flat fours.
• 59:36
  Cause all the way through the nine 14, the big block four cylinder,
• 59:40
  they use that same technology, right?
• 59:42
  Yeah.
• 59:42
  The same thing that, you know, it said the company started here in the U.
• 59:45
  S.
• 59:45
  in 1956.
• 59:47
  And these special tools we're talking about, I have them all in my inventory
• 59:51
  and I use them almost on a daily basis to work on customers tractors.
• 59:54
  It's like the Schwaben tools for the modern Volkswagen.
• 59:57
  You got to have all this specialty stuff to work on these cars, you know?
• 1:00:01
  You were talking earlier about the fact with the Vineyard model, how it
• 1:00:04
  was kind of scary for the fact that you turn it, want to try to lean over.
• 1:00:08
  Porsche tractors, were they made as tricycle front Or were they
• 1:00:11
  all wider front end tractors?
• 1:00:13
  So no tricycle front ends at all.
• 1:00:15
  The junior, one of them came with a fixed width front end.
• 1:00:19
  The others all came with adjustable.
• 1:00:22
  And the reason why is you can take your back tires.
• 1:00:25
  You've got the center sections that would go this way or this way.
• 1:00:27
  And then you can take the tires and flip them.
• 1:00:29
  So you can have, you know, various different widths and you
• 1:00:32
  could adjust the width of your.
• 1:00:34
  Front track can be the same as the rear.
• 1:00:36
  Do threes and fours all have adjustable front ends.
• 1:00:39
  Did they offer any door rear wheel setup or was all single
• 1:00:41
  rear wheel on those tractors?
• 1:00:43
  That's an interesting question.
• 1:00:44
  There is one photo out there where there's a junior vineyard with dual rear wheels.
• 1:00:52
  And I looked at that photo for the longest time and I'm like.
• 1:00:54
  That's had to be special rims.
• 1:00:56
  Being an engineer, I pulled mine out and experimented with it.
• 1:01:00
  With the factory rims, you could actually take and put one hub on this
• 1:01:04
  way, put the other one on this way and line it up and it works and the studs
• 1:01:08
  coming out of it are exactly the same.
• 1:01:11
  Pure Sterling went out and found another set of rims and I'm
• 1:01:14
  currently creating a dually vineyard.
• 1:01:17
  That's awesome.
• 1:01:18
  Just because there's one out there.
• 1:01:20
  David, I want to have the other one.
• 1:01:23
  So I assume when you're saying that the center hub of the wheel came out
• 1:01:27
  much like many of the older tractors did to where the center hub could come
• 1:01:30
  out to swap it to which direction and then the outer rim would actually bolt.
• 1:01:34
  Exactly.
• 1:01:34
  So that's exactly what it is.
• 1:01:36
  So you take the center.
• 1:01:37
  Okay.
• 1:01:37
  That, you know, basically it looks like this and you take one and you reverse it.
• 1:01:41
  The vineyard they took and they reversed both of them, but tuck
• 1:01:43
  it in as closely as could be.
• 1:01:45
  Well, then you take another one of those and you flip it this way.
• 1:01:49
  So you've got this configuration.
• 1:01:51
  Then again, the rims, because of the location of the lug, and where
• 1:01:56
  it is, because it's offset, you could put it on, you know, and
• 1:01:59
  change the stance of the tractor.
• 1:02:01
  So you take the inside flange, bolt it on this way.
• 1:02:05
  Take the rim and put it on so it protrudes into the tractor.
• 1:02:08
  Then you do the opposite for the other side and you have this dual rear vineyard,
• 1:02:13
  which I laugh at because I thought the configuration of the vineyard,
• 1:02:16
  so it could be as narrow as possible.
• 1:02:18
  But again, these things have so much torque, you know,
• 1:02:20
  who knows what they're doing.
• 1:02:21
  So I decided I'm recreating that one.
• 1:02:24
  I went out and found a set of fenders for it.
• 1:02:26
  So it's going to have dual wheel rears.
• 1:02:30
  That's pretty cool.
• 1:02:31
  A little hot rod.
• 1:02:31
  So
• 1:02:34
  let's transition into our third section where we talk a little bit more about
• 1:02:38
  how you came into this business.
• 1:02:40
  Right.
• 1:02:41
  You've mentioned a couple of times, former engineer and things like that.
• 1:02:43
  So tell us about the origin here, how you got into it.
• 1:02:46
  And you've told me in passing, there's actually an interesting story about.
• 1:02:51
  This is the legitimate Porsche Diesel USA.
• 1:02:54
  And so let's get into all that.
• 1:02:55
  Let's talk about the business
• 1:02:56
  again.
• 1:02:57
  So the folks overseas decided they wanted to try to sell Porsche diesel
• 1:03:01
  tractors in the U S in 1956, they create the American Porsche diesel corporation
• 1:03:06
  originally out of New York city, you know, and then they moved it to Pennsylvania.
• 1:03:10
  They were in operation until about, I believe about 1970, because although
• 1:03:16
  they went out of production in 64, they still had to continue to supply parts
• 1:03:23
  for the tractors that were out there.
• 1:03:25
  And then sometime, I don't know when, they shut their doors down.
• 1:03:29
  The last thing that they did is they went to all their dealers
• 1:03:31
  and distributors around the U.
• 1:03:32
  S., borrowed all the parts back, and they sat in a warehouse,
• 1:03:36
  You mentioned that they've moved from New York to Pennsylvania.
• 1:03:38
  Where in Pennsylvania were they at?
• 1:03:40
  It was 808 Carker Street, Eastern Pennsylvania.
• 1:03:42
  I was up that way a few months ago and I wanted to go back to the
• 1:03:46
  original site, so I pulled it up on Google Maps and did the map view.
• 1:03:50
  It's a parking lot.
• 1:03:52
  Oh, well, so the original Porsche Diesel Corporation's been flattened.
• 1:03:57
  Oh, well, that's okay.
• 1:03:59
  Employee number one of the American Porsche Diesel
• 1:04:01
  Corporation, name is Roland.
• 1:04:03
  Roland's now out near Colorado Springs.
• 1:04:06
  He finds the parts.
• 1:04:08
  He buys them from, I don't know who the hell he bought them from.
• 1:04:11
  He buys them, give them to him, whatever.
• 1:04:14
  And this is about 1990 ish.
• 1:04:17
  He starts selling parts to keep these tractors up and running.
• 1:04:21
  Or for the people who wanted to restore them to try to sell,
• 1:04:24
  you know, parts to restore them.
• 1:04:26
  I'm out in Yuma, Arizona.
• 1:04:28
  I'm doing some work with the Marine Corps, and a friend of mine
• 1:04:32
  is taking me to see this World War II Jeep that he's restoring.
• 1:04:36
  And as we pull into the area where the Jeep is, about 40 acres, and there's
• 1:04:41
  just farm tractors all over the place.
• 1:04:42
  Well, the gentleman's primary business was repairing farm tractors,
• 1:04:47
  but then also restoring them.
• 1:04:49
  Which is kind of cool.
• 1:04:50
  Well as he pulled I just happened to glance off my left shoulder
• 1:04:53
  and I see this unique looking red tractor parked up underneath the
• 1:04:57
  tree with this interesting nose.
• 1:05:00
  So I'm like, man, what is that?
• 1:05:01
  So we're looking at the jeep and his name was Bill.
• 1:05:03
  I happened to mention to Bill, I said, what's that red tractor up there?
• 1:05:07
  Oh, that's a Porsche tractor.
• 1:05:08
  I said, oh, very funny.
• 1:05:09
  He goes, Oh, really?
• 1:05:10
  It's a Porsche diesel farm tractor.
• 1:05:12
  What?
• 1:05:12
  Porsche never made farm tractors.
• 1:05:14
  He goes, oh yeah, they did.
• 1:05:15
  Go look at it.
• 1:05:16
  So I walked over and here's this junior.
• 1:05:19
  It's a 108.
• 1:05:20
  It's a G model, which means it came from the factory without any hydraulics on it.
• 1:05:24
  Oh, I'll be damned.
• 1:05:25
  My locus is made in Germany.
• 1:05:26
  It's got Porsche diesel on it.
• 1:05:28
  So I walked back.
• 1:05:29
  That's amazing.
• 1:05:30
  Is it for sale?
• 1:05:30
  No, it's my mom's.
• 1:05:31
  Oh, okay.
• 1:05:32
  Years go by, his dad passes away, mom wants to reduce the inventory of this
• 1:05:37
  truck that goes up on the auction block, and I bid on it, and one, it comes here.
• 1:05:41
  And that's when I find, then it was called Porsche Diesel.
• 1:05:44
  So I get a hold of Roland, call him what I have, give him the serial
• 1:05:47
  number, he validates that it's one of the original ones that came into
• 1:05:50
  the country, and I start buying parts from him to slowly do the restoration.
• 1:05:54
  He happens to mention to me in passing in 2009, that this is getting to
• 1:05:59
  be a lot more work than he thought.
• 1:06:01
  You know, he was getting on in age, you know, he really wanted
• 1:06:03
  to try to sell the business.
• 1:06:05
  He had mentioned it to people, and they all talked, but nothing ever happened.
• 1:06:07
  So we got into this great conversation, pretty quickly got the
• 1:06:10
  inventory, I see the price and all that, I'm like, the hell with it.
• 1:06:14
  I'm buying Porsche diesel.
• 1:06:16
  My wife and I go out to Colorado.
• 1:06:17
  We do the inventory.
• 1:06:18
  We stick them all in U Haul and we drive back across country.
• 1:06:22
  And I set up Porsche diesel here and we named it Porsche dash diesel USA LLC.
• 1:06:28
  The significance of the dash is because the name Porsche is controlled by Porsche.
• 1:06:34
  You can't use Porsche by itself.
• 1:06:36
  So by having Porsche dash diesel.
• 1:06:39
  I'm legal.
• 1:06:39
  I don't have to really worry about them, you know, and they don't
• 1:06:42
  really give me any trouble anyway.
• 1:06:44
  So we started Porsche Diesel USA.
• 1:06:46
  Then happened to be talking to a friend of mine who's good friends with a
• 1:06:50
  lawyer who looks at trademark stuff.
• 1:06:52
  And I went, could you have him check and see what happened to the
• 1:06:56
  original company name, which was the America Porsche Diesel Corporation.
• 1:07:00
  And they check.
• 1:07:01
  And when they shut down the operation, they vacated the name.
• 1:07:04
  It was never trademarked, never registered.
• 1:07:06
  So we have applied.
• 1:07:08
  For that name.
• 1:07:10
  Oh, that's awesome.
• 1:07:11
  Yeah.
• 1:07:11
  So the paperwork's in.
• 1:07:12
  So as I understand it, it won't be long.
• 1:07:15
  And I can actually call myself the America Porsche Diesel Truck Corporation.
• 1:07:18
  Just like they did in Eastern Pennsylvania back in the 60s.
• 1:07:22
  You mentioned at the top of the conversation, there was something
• 1:07:25
  important to remind you about, about the AP and the AP changing.
• 1:07:29
  And it has something to do with the company history.
• 1:07:30
  Yes,
• 1:07:30
  yes, yes.
• 1:07:31
  Thank you for reminding me about that.
• 1:07:32
  So if you remember in the early days, it was Elgar Porsche.
• 1:07:35
  Well, Porsche Diesel decided that.
• 1:07:38
  There were a couple of model extractors they wanted to keep
• 1:07:41
  that were the same as the Elgar's.
• 1:07:43
  So the AP, they changed to mean aluminum Porsche.
• 1:07:47
  Oh.
• 1:07:47
  Because there were, there's a series of the, only the two cylinders or
• 1:07:52
  the crankcase is made out of aluminum instead of cast iron or cast steel.
• 1:07:56
  So whenever, yeah.
• 1:07:58
  So whenever somebody says, I have an AP, I go, do you have an Elk eye
• 1:08:02
  or do you have an aluminum portion?
• 1:08:04
  You have to know because, so the differentiation is between up to
• 1:08:07
  1956 and then 57 on out, any of those tractors that they call the
• 1:08:13
  P218s are also known as an AP.
• 1:08:16
  Which it means aluminum Porsche.
• 1:08:18
  So I gotta ask, did they let you join PCA with one of the many
• 1:08:22
  tractors that you have, or do you own a Porsche road car as well?
• 1:08:26
  So the answer is I own a Porsche road car.
• 1:08:28
  I own a 2016 GT4.
• 1:08:30
  Oh wow,
• 1:08:31
  congratulations.
• 1:08:32
  Yeah, it's something I've wanted for years.
• 1:08:34
  You know, I kept waiting for them to come out in 17, then 18, then 19.
• 1:08:38
  I'm like, okay, they're never going to reintroduce this car.
• 1:08:41
  So I started looking around for a used one, found one
• 1:08:43
  at one of the auction sites.
• 1:08:44
  I bought it really right because I submitted my bid
• 1:08:47
  and the auction site froze up.
• 1:08:49
  So all the other people were bidding on it.
• 1:08:50
  Their bids were never accepted.
• 1:08:52
  It's the only reason why I have the cards.
• 1:08:53
  I got really lucky.
• 1:08:54
  Anyway, the guy that owned it before me, we still keep in touch.
• 1:08:58
  He just bought a 2021 and the standard joke with him is It's like, okay, 2021.
• 1:09:03
  So in 2024, I'll call you so I can buy your used GT4 and I'll sell mine.
• 1:09:10
  We just laughed about it.
• 1:09:11
  He's a great guy.
• 1:09:12
  He's a, he's a pilot for United.
• 1:09:14
  Just a super guy.
• 1:09:15
  Been a member of the Porsche club for years.
• 1:09:18
  Cause my original Porsche.
• 1:09:20
  I bought an 87, nine 11 target.
• 1:09:23
  So it wasn't until, you know, just recently when I got the GT four,
• 1:09:27
  cause my membership had lapsed.
• 1:09:29
  And when I put in for it again, they agreed to let me keep my same
• 1:09:34
  Porsche club number and all that.
• 1:09:36
  I can't think of her name right now, but the lady that runs the Porsche
• 1:09:40
  hospitality tents at the various races, for example, like VAR, she has asked
• 1:09:45
  me to bring a tractor to the next VAR.
• 1:09:47
  So I'm hoping that.
• 1:09:49
  The master I'm working on is going to be done in time for that.
• 1:09:52
  It's October, you know, and I'll bring that down, show people, teach
• 1:09:56
  them about Porsche diesel, Porsche diesel truckers, you know, because
• 1:09:59
  what they do in the hospitality tent is they have presentations by
• 1:10:03
  different people, you know, 20 minutes.
• 1:10:05
  Um, you know, in between races and stuff, and maybe she'll give me a spot
• 1:10:08
  to do a presentation on the tractors.
• 1:10:10
  I'd ask and wonder if your GT4 is Carmine Red with Mimosa colored wheels,
• 1:10:15
  you know, because we have these, these fancy terms, but, uh Racing
• 1:10:18
  yellow.
• 1:10:19
  It's racing yellow.
• 1:10:21
  I did my damnedest because I did not want a white or a black or a gray one.
• 1:10:26
  There you go.
• 1:10:26
  When you eliminate those three colors, you're down to red.
• 1:10:30
  There is a green one out there.
• 1:10:31
  Like there's a guy in Arizona that owns a Brewster Green one, which is really kind
• 1:10:36
  of awesome because it's the same color that they use in the 3 56 for one year.
• 1:10:40
  I think it was like 1962 or something.
• 1:10:42
  Yeah, one those made, and there's been a few that have shown up that are red,
• 1:10:47
  but when this yellow one popped and it was in, in Staten Island and New York.
• 1:10:51
  I just got really lucky that I was able to buy it
• 1:10:54
  earlier in the conversation.
• 1:10:55
  We talked about what it would cost in today's dollars to buy a Porsche tractor.
• 1:11:00
  And obviously there's more in the country now than there was ever before.
• 1:11:06
  And I've heard many a time that the Porsche tractors are actually quite
• 1:11:09
  sought after as collector's items in your opinion, as a professional and
• 1:11:13
  being at the, kind of the top of this.
• 1:11:15
  What does the aftermarket look like for somebody that would want to get
• 1:11:20
  into a Porsche tractor, and what does it cost to, you know, maybe
• 1:11:23
  restore one or in terms of like price to maintain and things like that.
• 1:11:27
  So why don't we unpack that a little bit?
• 1:11:29
  Yeah.
• 1:11:29
  Please.
• 1:11:30
  Also, to add that for someone who's looking to get into it, is there a
• 1:11:33
  particular model you would recommend over the others for someone to seek out
• 1:11:37
  Good questions When it comes to the tractors.
• 1:11:39
  Most of your collectors want to buy juniors, and the reason why, they're
• 1:11:43
  lightweight, they don't take up a lot of room, they're easy to maneuver, you
• 1:11:47
  want to bring it someplace you don't need a big trailer, okay, and those
• 1:11:50
  are probably the most popular ones, and you see prices on those all over
• 1:11:54
  the map, seeing them as low as 5, I've seen them sell as high as 71, 000.
• 1:12:01
  Only on break in trailers, though.
• 1:12:03
  Don't get me going on your 71, 000 tractor.
• 1:12:06
  But anyway, an unrestored running Pantene tractor should be between 10, 000.
• 1:12:13
  That's about what there were.
• 1:12:14
  Some people will tell you they're worth more than that.
• 1:12:16
  Some people will tell you, no, it's not that much.
• 1:12:18
  But you have to look at the individual tractor.
• 1:12:20
  What's there?
• 1:12:21
  What's missing?
• 1:12:21
  What kind of damage is there?
• 1:12:23
  How well does the engine run?
• 1:12:25
  I've come across juniors, you know, for three and four thousand dollars,
• 1:12:29
  but the problem with those is that they've got four or five thousand
• 1:12:32
  dollars worth of parts that are missing.
• 1:12:34
  If you've got a damaged hood, if your hood can't be fixed, you're out of luck
• 1:12:38
  because you can't find the hood anywhere.
• 1:12:40
  Fenders, somebody can probably duplicate hoods, really, really difficult.
• 1:12:44
  All the engine parts available, electric, all the gauges we talked about, the
• 1:12:47
  wiring, all that stuff is there.
• 1:12:48
  So if you've got one that's running, You're talking at least 5, 000.
• 1:12:52
  Now, a junior restored depends on, you know, your make and model again, because
• 1:12:57
  some of them were very basic, a very basic restored tractor should go for probably
• 1:13:03
  20, say basic, I mean, another frills, no hydraulics, you know, and all that.
• 1:13:08
  And then you get into the opposite end of the spectrum.
• 1:13:10
  Uh, as an example of vineyard, a professionally restored concourse level
• 1:13:14
  vineyard is worth, you know, like 65, 000.
• 1:13:17
  Because again, there's not that many of them, especially if you have
• 1:13:19
  like one of mine, which was a 1960.
• 1:13:22
  The later versions, the 109 vineyards, I've never seen one because again, there
• 1:13:26
  were only maybe 50 or 75 of those made.
• 1:13:30
  I have to pull out the Bible and get you the real number.
• 1:13:34
  Okay.
• 1:13:34
  That's why I have that book, you know, by my wayside all the time.
• 1:13:37
  So if you were to find a decent running one cylinder tractor in junior, And buy
• 1:13:43
  it for in the 8, maybe 11, 000 range.
• 1:13:46
  Depending on what you wanted to do with it, if you wanted a real true
• 1:13:50
  restoration, now to me a restoration is where you completely pull it apart,
• 1:13:54
  clean up everything, rebuild stuff as necessary, and replace the clutch
• 1:13:58
  and you'll put it back together.
• 1:13:59
  You're putting 10, 000, 12, 000, 15, 000 in it.
• 1:14:03
  There are people out there that just do repaints.
• 1:14:06
  They leave the wiring harness alone, you know, they just throw some paint on it.
• 1:14:09
  They still look good.
• 1:14:11
  But to me, that's not really a restoration.
• 1:14:13
  Now, what I'm coming across now is something in between.
• 1:14:17
  They've done the homework and they've done a really, really good paint job on it.
• 1:14:21
  And they've gone through and they've done some work on the engine and
• 1:14:23
  maybe it still has the original wiring harness, some other stuff.
• 1:14:26
  So I referred, um, I came up with a term.
• 1:14:28
  I call them repurposed.
• 1:14:29
  It's a repurposed tractor.
• 1:14:31
  It may or may not go out into the field.
• 1:14:33
  It may or may not be sitting in somebody's showroom, but all
• 1:14:36
  those repurposed tractors show up.
• 1:14:39
  On the 4th of July at a parade someplace and it's really cool to see.
• 1:14:42
  A lot of the folks that I'm working with, you know, my age or older, they
• 1:14:45
  just love taking them to parades.
• 1:14:47
  They just think it's really cool.
• 1:14:48
  The two silver tractors, I mean, they've gone up in value, but
• 1:14:51
  not as much as you would think.
• 1:14:53
  And I think the reason for that is the name.
• 1:14:55
  It's It's called the standard and everybody thinks,
• 1:14:56
  well, it's just a standard.
• 1:14:58
  Yeah.
• 1:14:58
  It's just, it's a nomenclature thing.
• 1:15:00
  Then you get to the three cylinders.
• 1:15:01
  The real collectors are starting to get into the three cylinders because it's
• 1:15:05
  a super, you know, I've got a couple of guys I'm working with, they finally
• 1:15:09
  understand, you know, they're buying two summers, but the three cylinder tractors,
• 1:15:12
  you know, they're 20, 30, 40, 000.
• 1:15:15
  Now there's a tractor for sale right now.
• 1:15:18
  I'm not pimping this tractor, but.
• 1:15:19
  Here's an interesting one.
• 1:15:20
  Here's a tractor that Porsche Diesel sent to F& W to have a bucket loader
• 1:15:26
  and stuff like that put on it as a demonstrator, which they did.
• 1:15:29
  And they demonstrated the tractor.
• 1:15:31
  It's never been sold.
• 1:15:32
  So it's still on my records as an unsold tractor.
• 1:15:36
  So I tell everybody who's called me about it.
• 1:15:38
  It's like, hey, If you're interested in that tractor, and you buy it, F& W
• 1:15:43
  will give you a sales receipt, and I will write you a receipt to prove that
• 1:15:47
  that tractor was never sold to anybody.
• 1:15:50
  Think of that.
• 1:15:51
  That's a 50 some odd year old tractor that's never been sold.
• 1:15:54
  Still on the American portion of the U.
• 1:15:56
  S.
• 1:15:56
  Registry as an unsold tractor.
• 1:15:58
  I think that sets the record for Brad's lost and found on the drive
• 1:16:02
  thru of the oldest thing that you can still buy new off a dealer lot.
• 1:16:08
  This is it.
• 1:16:09
  That tractor is currently sitting right here.
• 1:16:12
  So it's got, it's got some leaks.
• 1:16:14
  I'm going to turn the leaks for it.
• 1:16:15
  I tell people it's like, it'll be sold to you and you'll be the
• 1:16:18
  original owner, factory certified.
• 1:16:20
  That's awesome.
• 1:16:21
  Because the one thing that's nice about having the American Porsche
• 1:16:23
  Fusel Corporation, I've got the listings of all the serial numbers
• 1:16:27
  of the tractors that came into the U.
• 1:16:29
  S.
• 1:16:29
  And you know how Porsche Cars North America will give you a, well they
• 1:16:33
  used to call it a Certificate of Authenticity, they keep changing the name.
• 1:16:36
  I can do that now for your tractor.
• 1:16:38
  I just finished tracing one that came from Europe, got shipped to the West Coast,
• 1:16:43
  was sold from the West Coast distributor.
• 1:16:45
  I found the original receipt to the original owner, who never sold a tractor.
• 1:16:49
  His son's restoring it.
• 1:16:51
  So I'm putting together a letter for him that says, this is what it was made.
• 1:16:55
  This is what it was shipped.
• 1:16:56
  Boom, boom, boom, boom.
• 1:16:57
  You're the original owner was passed down to you from your dad.
• 1:17:00
  I think that's pretty cool.
• 1:17:02
  So the three servers, you know, three servers are getting upwards,
• 1:17:06
  you know, into the low forties.
• 1:17:07
  Now that we come to the master, if you can find the running master for
• 1:17:11
  less than 65, 000, you need to buy a couple out there that are really,
• 1:17:15
  really rough can buy them for less.
• 1:17:18
  But.
• 1:17:18
  When you look at them, you know, the engines need to be rebuilt.
• 1:17:21
  Hoods and fenders are in rough shape.
• 1:17:23
  It doesn't have the correct wheels and tires on it.
• 1:17:26
  Okay.
• 1:17:27
  It's a master.
• 1:17:28
  It's running everything else you can fix.
• 1:17:30
  There was one recently that the guy advertised as a 419.
• 1:17:35
  And in the Porsche world, I have a 418, which was a 95 millimeter system.
• 1:17:40
  The 419 was a 98 millimeter.
• 1:17:43
  They only built 50 of them, I believe it was.
• 1:17:46
  Okay, this guy claims to have one.
• 1:17:48
  So I saw the data tag.
• 1:17:49
  The data tag is correct.
• 1:17:51
  There's a tractor.
• 1:17:52
  It looks correct.
• 1:17:53
  But I asked him if he could validate the fact that it had 98 millimeter pistons.
• 1:17:58
  I never got an answer.
• 1:17:59
  So I was talking to people who are thinking about why and I said,
• 1:18:01
  look, if you look at the data tag, you can see those are not, the
• 1:18:04
  factory never used hollow rivets.
• 1:18:07
  They used what they call dry block rivets.
• 1:18:09
  Those are hollow rivets.
• 1:18:10
  That data plate's been off and back on.
• 1:18:13
  Unless I see the engine number with the born on date.
• 1:18:17
  Did I explain?
• 1:18:19
  I'm going to give you guys a lesson on born on date.
• 1:18:21
  Um, with the born on date and the same thing with the
• 1:18:23
  transmission with its born on date.
• 1:18:26
  I can't validate that it's a 419.
• 1:18:28
  Well, it didn't sell, but the bidding only got up to half of what they
• 1:18:31
  thought they were going to get out of
• 1:18:33
  it.
• 1:18:33
  And what were they thinking they were going to get?
• 1:18:35
  I'm just curious.
• 1:18:35
  The guy was hoping to get two hundred and some odd thousand dollars out of it.
• 1:18:39
  Whoa.
• 1:18:40
  He claimed he had sold one recently, another one.
• 1:18:43
  So wait, wait, wait.
• 1:18:44
  The rarest hen teeth and how'd you end up with two of them?
• 1:18:47
  Apparently claim to be sold another one for right at 200, 000.
• 1:18:51
  Good night.
• 1:18:52
  I'm not sure what it got up to, but they finally, you know, pulled
• 1:18:55
  the blinds open and said, well, the minimum bid was 185, 000.
• 1:18:58
  Never got that.
• 1:18:59
  So what's the elusive 312 go for since they're pretty rare as well.
• 1:19:04
  Oh, in the U S they can fetch up to a quarter of a million dollars.
• 1:19:08
  Wow.
• 1:19:09
  But it has to be all there.
• 1:19:10
  So when I say all there It has to have all the shrouding and this
• 1:19:14
  and everything else, the magnesium rims, not the steel rims and all
• 1:19:17
  the parts that you can convert it.
• 1:19:19
  If you wanted to permanently convert it from one field to
• 1:19:22
  another, to another, all of that stuff is almost impossible to find.
• 1:19:26
  There's actually a website in Brazil, but there's a guy down there that
• 1:19:29
  has a couple for sale and they're 75, 80, 000, which is a pretty decent
• 1:19:35
  price, but you're looking at picture.
• 1:19:37
  You had no idea what it looks like underneath because nobody ever, you know,
• 1:19:41
  Lifts the skirts and shows you what's up underneath there, you know, and you
• 1:19:44
  know, as well as I do Bondo does wonders for like six or eight months, right?
• 1:19:48
  A hundred percent.
• 1:19:49
  So typically if you're looking at a master, you're looking at somewhere
• 1:19:53
  in the 70 to 125, 000 range.
• 1:19:57
  And that's stripped.
• 1:19:58
  So in the case of mine, I've got the front weights, the rear weights, I've got, you
• 1:20:03
  know, all the PTOs, all the PTO covers.
• 1:20:05
  The three point mechanism in the back had a bazillion pieces.
• 1:20:09
  I've got 'em all.
• 1:20:10
  There's a seat that goes between the fenders.
• 1:20:12
  'cause you have to remember, back in Germany, some people
• 1:20:14
  bought tractors instead of cars.
• 1:20:16
  So they would have a seat so they could put the family on
• 1:20:18
  and go to church on Sundays.
• 1:20:20
  Mine's got the original seat on it.
• 1:20:22
  Wow.
• 1:20:22
  You know, so all of that just starts adding and adding
• 1:20:24
  and adding to the features.
• 1:20:26
  And then I have a full dashboard, so I've got this pedometer, you
• 1:20:30
  know, I've got all the gauges and everything on it, and now it'll work.
• 1:20:33
  So that drives the price up.
• 1:20:35
  So you mentioned a couple times now, tractors in use, and so I'm wondering,
• 1:20:39
  are people still using these tractors for what they're intended for?
• 1:20:43
  Are they mostly museum pieces or collector pieces sitting in storage somewhere?
• 1:20:47
  Or is it kind of a mix of everything?
• 1:20:49
  It's a mix of everything.
• 1:20:50
  So I have tractors that I've done for collectors that sit inside
• 1:20:54
  museums and air conditioned, perfect environmental conditions.
• 1:20:57
  You know, that's really cool.
• 1:20:58
  The last two I just delivered were tractors that were used on
• 1:21:01
  farms that the people sent here.
• 1:21:04
  One came from North Carolina.
• 1:21:06
  The other one came from Virginia for service.
• 1:21:08
  They hadn't been serviced in years.
• 1:21:10
  So I did a complete service on them.
• 1:21:12
  There's one gentleman that he really wanted his tractor back before the July.
• 1:21:16
  I'm thinking, hey, I got it.
• 1:21:17
  He's a farmer.
• 1:21:18
  Is there a crop that's got again or something?
• 1:21:20
  Does he really need it?
• 1:21:21
  So hurry up and got it done.
• 1:21:23
  No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:21:24
  He wanted to put it in the 4th of July parade, which is cool.
• 1:21:28
  So, I mean, he took this tractor home to North Carolina and he sent me this awesome
• 1:21:32
  photo of him in the 4th of July parade.
• 1:21:34
  There's another one that I delivered back to its owner this past weekend.
• 1:21:38
  Same thing, service.
• 1:21:39
  It just needed to be completely serviced.
• 1:21:41
  It had some lakes where it really wasn't quite running right.
• 1:21:44
  Took care of all of that.
• 1:21:45
  He has a 200 acre farm that he uses his Porsche diesel tractor on.
• 1:21:49
  So, yeah, I've got customers, you know, that do all sorts of things with it.
• 1:21:53
  But yeah, there's quite a few in the U.
• 1:21:56
  S.
• 1:21:56
  that are still This 1951 that I was telling you about, until
• 1:21:59
  the guy brought it here a couple years ago, he was still using it.
• 1:22:02
  He had a mower that he was pulling behind it.
• 1:22:05
  He had seven or eight acres of grass that he was mowing with it.
• 1:22:08
  Unbelievable.
• 1:22:09
  I was like, dude, you got a 1951 Porsche diesel.
• 1:22:12
  You got an Elgar Porsche.
• 1:22:13
  It's the oldest one in the world that's still running.
• 1:22:15
  You're doing what with it?
• 1:22:18
  The limited research I did prior to this for Porsche tractors,
• 1:22:21
  the one thing you mentioned about them having a seat on them.
• 1:22:24
  That was one of the biggest things that popped out to me because all the years
• 1:22:26
  I spent riding one offender that was hard as could be bouncing up and down.
• 1:22:30
  I would have loved to have had a pack.
• 1:22:32
  Sit on while riding along on a tractor.
• 1:22:34
  Well, the interesting thing about the seats, so of course you've got your
• 1:22:37
  driver's seat and they had different configurations of seats you could
• 1:22:41
  put on top of each of the fenders.
• 1:22:43
  Now, when it came to the junior, it was just this light tubular
• 1:22:46
  one because the fenders weren't really structurally designed for
• 1:22:50
  average 150, 160 pound person.
• 1:22:53
  It was really for like, you know, the kids or the grandkids, you know, to go
• 1:22:56
  for a ride, but two threes and fours, they had real seats, structural steel,
• 1:23:01
  wood slats that you could actually sit on and go for a ride or go to church.
• 1:23:05
  But the really cool thing is that one of the options that came along
• 1:23:09
  late was a cushion for those seats.
• 1:23:12
  So you could actually put cushions on the seats as you drove around
• 1:23:15
  on them, which is kind of neat.
• 1:23:17
  I'll tell you again, if you guys ever want to come down
• 1:23:20
  and drive one of these around.
• 1:23:22
  I'll tell you, driving a Porsche diesel tractor without a cushion, it hurts.
• 1:23:28
  They have no suspension.
• 1:23:32
  You said you're doing research.
• 1:23:33
  Take a good look at the design of the seat, the bump.
• 1:23:37
  Biggest bump in the world and it's in the worst possible place.
• 1:23:40
  It's a
• 1:23:41
  horribly designed bicycle seat.
• 1:23:43
  That's for sure.
• 1:23:43
  Exactly.
• 1:23:45
  So Dan, I think you have some wrap up questions.
• 1:23:47
  You wanted to ask
• 1:23:48
  Sal with your restoration work as you were talking about the different
• 1:23:52
  levels of restorations or anything.
• 1:23:53
  I was curious about a couple of things.
• 1:23:55
  One is for the collectors.
• 1:23:56
  How are they with authenticity?
• 1:23:58
  Are they very picky about that?
• 1:24:00
  And I'm sure that those are more complete, definitely are
• 1:24:03
  what draw the bigger numbers.
• 1:24:05
  But then like for your website, you claim New old stock or
• 1:24:08
  reproduction parts for the stock.
• 1:24:10
  What sort of parts commonly go bad?
• 1:24:12
  Like what is one of the biggest parts that you sell?
• 1:24:14
  Two good questions.
• 1:24:14
  Let's get to the restoration thing.
• 1:24:16
  First, if a customer sends me a tractor, asked me to find the tractor
• 1:24:20
  to do a restoration on, we sit down and I go through the tractor,
• 1:24:25
  top to bottom, front to rear.
• 1:24:26
  What do you want me to do?
• 1:24:28
  And I tell them, I say, you know, are you looking for a true up restoration?
• 1:24:32
  Or I'm going to go completely through the engine and rebuild it.
• 1:24:35
  Or are you looking for a repurposed tractor where I'm going to
• 1:24:39
  replace what I have to replace and leave everything alone?
• 1:24:42
  Do you want a wiring harness?
• 1:24:44
  I painstakingly go through all of this stuff, all these different pieces and
• 1:24:48
  parts, and I give them an estimate for what the cost is going to be.
• 1:24:51
  They also estimate my labor hours because when it comes to parts, last
• 1:24:56
  October, November, the exchange rate was.
• 1:24:59
  1.
• 1:24:59
  05.
• 1:24:59
  So it was 1.
• 1:25:00
  05 to the euro.
• 1:25:02
  Today, with our economy, it's up to almost 1.
• 1:25:05
  25.
• 1:25:05
  So the price of parts has gone up 20 percent ever since the election.
• 1:25:09
  This is why I tell everybody, I will estimate it for you
• 1:25:12
  because I have no idea.
• 1:25:14
  what the exchange rate is going to be tomorrow.
• 1:25:16
  So what I encourage folks to do is that if you want me to do a
• 1:25:19
  restoration, let me buy the parts now.
• 1:25:22
  Fork over this major chunk of change now so that we've got the parts here
• 1:25:27
  and we're fixed on the exchange rate.
• 1:25:29
  It may go down.
• 1:25:30
  It may go the other way.
• 1:25:31
  You never know.
• 1:25:32
  You just have to hope for the best.
• 1:25:34
  So the killer right now is wiring harnesses because the
• 1:25:36
  exchange rate has gone from 105 to, like I said, you know, 125.
• 1:25:41
  The cost of shipping to get one here has gone up, and the
• 1:25:44
  cost of copper has gone up.
• 1:25:45
  I used to be able to sell, for example, like a junior wiring
• 1:25:49
  harness for about 410, 415.
• 1:25:52
  That same wearing harness today is over 500.
• 1:25:55
  Jeez.
• 1:25:55
  There's somebody in the U.
• 1:25:56
  S.
• 1:25:56
  that makes them at charges of 1, 000, so it's still cheaper.
• 1:25:59
  So I tell people, it's like, you know, I don't know what the cost is going to be.
• 1:26:03
  Now I've got somebody that I just got done quoting a clutch
• 1:26:06
  kit for, for his three cylinder.
• 1:26:08
  Today, it's gonna cost you right at around 1, 200, the longer you wait.
• 1:26:12
  I have no idea where it's gonna go.
• 1:26:14
  I sit down, ask them exactly what they're looking for, tell
• 1:26:18
  them the levels that I do.
• 1:26:19
  For example, like my trackers, anything that I can disassemble and take off of it.
• 1:26:24
  I have a friend of mine that runs a powder coating facility.
• 1:26:27
  Funny as this sounds, R A L 3 is a standard color powder coat.
• 1:26:32
  He takes my stuff, he blasts it, he acid s washes it, puts everything together,
• 1:26:37
  and I get it back powder coated.
• 1:26:39
  And what's nice about powder coating, Mike Jr.
• 1:26:41
  I take it to shows.
• 1:26:43
  I really don't care if people climb on it.
• 1:26:44
  You're not going to hurt it.
• 1:26:45
  Armor
• 1:26:45
  code is extremely durable, which is much better than paint.
• 1:26:48
  Exactly.
• 1:26:49
  What's really cool is to see the glow in some little boy or little girl's
• 1:26:54
  eyes when they know they can sit on this really, really cool tractor
• 1:26:57
  and have mom and dad take a picture.
• 1:26:59
  I mean, it just makes my day.
• 1:27:00
  So that's why I do that.
• 1:27:01
  When it comes to the restoration, I detail the hell out of everything.
• 1:27:05
  So these customers are exactly.
• 1:27:07
  I signed a document.
• 1:27:08
  They sent a document.
• 1:27:10
  They know exactly what they're going to get when time comes.
• 1:27:12
  You know, this is not a mass process shop.
• 1:27:15
  I don't do one a week.
• 1:27:16
  It takes me anywhere from 18 to 24 months to do a tractor.
• 1:27:20
  Honestly, I won't do more than one at one time.
• 1:27:22
  I'm going to focus on that tractor.
• 1:27:23
  The last one I did when it was quote unquote done, I sat back.
• 1:27:28
  I looked at that tractor for three weeks and kept changing stuff
• 1:27:31
  because it wasn't good enough for me.
• 1:27:33
  When I delivered it to the owner, he had other restoration
• 1:27:37
  experts come in and look at it.
• 1:27:38
  There's not a one of them.
• 1:27:39
  Had a single complaint about the tractor.
• 1:27:41
  Not really proud about that.
• 1:27:42
  Yeah, so what you're gonna find with these tractors is the ignition
• 1:27:47
  switch is the biggest pain.
• 1:27:48
  And the reason why is it sits there on the dashboard.
• 1:27:50
  It's at 45 degrees and it's an open hole.
• 1:27:53
  So later on, Porsche came up with a little flip over cap.
• 1:27:57
  So you have to lift the cap, put the key in it.
• 1:27:58
  When you pull the key out, it closes it.
• 1:28:00
  Ignition keys, you know, aren't really a problem anymore.
• 1:28:02
  You know, the little glow indicator, you get dust and dirt
• 1:28:05
  down there, it's not too bad.
• 1:28:06
  The early wiring harnesses were actually a little too undersized, so you did
• 1:28:10
  have a problem with wires getting hot, so you have to watch for that.
• 1:28:13
  I tell all my customers, like, I'm not trying to sell you something,
• 1:28:17
  but you ought to replace the wiring harness and reason why, and
• 1:28:20
  this is, here's all your reasons.
• 1:28:22
  And I can send you pictures of tractors that have caught fire
• 1:28:25
  because of wearing heart problems.
• 1:28:26
  Other than that, really what you get down to is the early tractors, the valves
• 1:28:32
  that were designed, the materials that were designed, were really substandard.
• 1:28:36
  What happens after a while, you'll have, you know, today's valve spring
• 1:28:40
  pressures are real high, right?
• 1:28:41
  We're talking about valve spring pressures of like 25, maybe 30 pounds, that's it.
• 1:28:47
  But the valves eventually, because of the heat and all of that and material
• 1:28:51
  that's selected, they actually have a tendency of rounding over and
• 1:28:55
  getting pulled up into the head.
• 1:28:57
  And what happens after a while is they break and they drop down
• 1:29:01
  a cylinder and then you're done.
• 1:29:03
  I tell my customers, it's actually cheaper for me to sell you a cylinder
• 1:29:07
  kit, which is a cylinder The pistons, a new wrist pin, and piston rings.
• 1:29:12
  As compared to you sending your cylinder, I have to bore it.
• 1:29:16
  I have to order a custom sized piston and put it back together.
• 1:29:19
  The difference is a few dollars and you have it in a few
• 1:29:22
  days as compared to months.
• 1:29:24
  Usually it seems to last forever.
• 1:29:26
  Of course, you know, 50, 60, 70 year old tractors, you're going to get leaks
• 1:29:30
  from various seals and all of that.
• 1:29:32
  Over the years, as I've had to replace a seal on a tractor, I've done the research
• 1:29:38
  and converted that European seal to a U.
• 1:29:41
  S.
• 1:29:41
  equivalent.
• 1:29:42
  You call and go, hey, I need a crankshaft seal.
• 1:29:44
  I tell you, hey, go get a, um, a CR and I give you the number and
• 1:29:48
  it's, it's the same damn thing.
• 1:29:50
  But the other thing that I've done is I've also converted them from a single lip.
• 1:29:55
  They'll be good for a hundred years from now.
• 1:29:56
  And then you mentioned telling your customers, it's sometimes easier to order
• 1:29:59
  the piston wrist pin and all of that for any of the cylinder heads on those.
• 1:30:03
  Do you have them re sleeved?
• 1:30:04
  Is there still production of those where we can get new ones?
• 1:30:07
  Now cylinders, new production today, they're available.
• 1:30:10
  Really what I do is I just, I order a single part number and
• 1:30:14
  you get a new cylinder, you know, and everything that you need.
• 1:30:17
  And then what I do, I think you guys are familiar with this, but
• 1:30:20
  when you put the cylinder on.
• 1:30:21
  There's a critical height that you have to maintain for a diesel.
• 1:30:24
  So you get the right compression ratio.
• 1:30:26
  Well, there's a stack of shims that goes up underneath that.
• 1:30:28
  So what I do is I, there's four different sizes.
• 1:30:31
  I send my customers a complete kit and I charge them for four shim.
• 1:30:36
  I said, but you know, if you don't need them.
• 1:30:38
  If you don't want them, send the ones back and I'll refund your money.
• 1:30:42
  The ship kits are like 28.
• 1:30:44
  So, you know, it's like, you're going to use one.
• 1:30:46
  What are you going to do with the, you know, the other three, you don't
• 1:30:49
  need to be wasting that 17, 18, whatever it comes out to, you know,
• 1:30:53
  other than doing the restores yourself and everything.
• 1:30:55
  Do you offer parts to say someone like myself, who's a DIYer that works on
• 1:31:00
  my own equipment and things like that?
• 1:31:02
  Yeah,
• 1:31:02
  absolutely.
• 1:31:03
  I primarily started out the business to supply spare and repair parts.
• 1:31:07
  The net transitioned into repairing cylinder heads because the issue
• 1:31:10
  with these tractors, if you run them too hot aluminum head, it'll crack.
• 1:31:14
  Sometimes they'll crack by where the fuel injection port is it's inside.
• 1:31:19
  It doesn't make it, it doesn't make any difference, but if you run them too long.
• 1:31:22
  Hot.
• 1:31:23
  They'll crack in between the intake and exhaust valves.
• 1:31:26
  And if the crack goes deep enough, you'll have cross flow.
• 1:31:29
  I've got a process set up now with a friend of mine that runs a machine shop.
• 1:31:33
  Heat the heads up, pop the valve seats out of them, cut it down, heli arc it, rig it.
• 1:31:37
  We got a CNC machine.
• 1:31:39
  We re cut everything, put it all back together.
• 1:31:42
  You can't tell it's ever been done.
• 1:31:43
  So I save the heads.
• 1:31:44
  That's awesome.
• 1:31:44
  Okay, I do all that.
• 1:31:45
  I do that for customers.
• 1:31:46
  I have four reconditioned heads sitting, you know, on the shelf.
• 1:31:50
  So if somebody sends one in, I just take one off the shelf,
• 1:31:53
  you know, and ship it to them.
• 1:31:54
  So their tractor's not down for months at a time.
• 1:31:56
  It's down for just a couple of weeks.
• 1:31:58
  But everything else is available for folks.
• 1:32:00
  If the wiring harnesses, as an example, are custom ordered, I don't keep them
• 1:32:04
  on the shelf because, you know, I have to know the year, make, and model.
• 1:32:08
  You know, did it come with directional lights from the factory?
• 1:32:11
  Did it have four way flashers?
• 1:32:13
  Did it have The trailer socket on the left fender, the right fender on the
• 1:32:18
  outside of the fender or on the inside.
• 1:32:20
  Those are all significant changes to get the specific wiring harness
• 1:32:25
  that you need for your tractor.
• 1:32:26
  But getting the wire harnesses four or five ways.
• 1:32:28
  Very impressed with the fact that the wire harnesses are half if you order
• 1:32:32
  them from Europe than if the gentleman that builds them here in the U.
• 1:32:35
  S.
• 1:32:35
  That's an amazing thing.
• 1:32:37
  Finding in the U S is cheaper, but for the people that you mentioned,
• 1:32:41
  the gentlemen that wanted his tractor back for 4th of July for the parade,
• 1:32:45
  other than things like that, because I know recently in the past week or
• 1:32:48
  two, there was a Jack town tractor show up in banger PA, which is primarily
• 1:32:52
  for gas and steam engine tractors.
• 1:32:53
  But I've myself, uh, tractor shows I've been to.
• 1:32:58
  I don't think I've ever seen a Porsche tractor in person.
• 1:33:01
  Is it a common thing to where they go out to these other shows or do
• 1:33:05
  Porsche tractor shows tend to have only the Porsche tractors at them?
• 1:33:07
  Well, there's only ever been one Porsche only tractor show, and that
• 1:33:11
  was held Hilton Hut Island, South Carolina, about eight, 10 years ago.
• 1:33:17
  And my junior wasn't ready, but it was for Porsche tractors only.
• 1:33:21
  I have no idea how many showed up, but I believe it was about 50 or 60 of them.
• 1:33:24
  Here's the amazing thing is that the majority of the Porsche diesel
• 1:33:27
  tractors are sold in Pennsylvania.
• 1:33:29
  So you would think that they would show up and it shows up there, but they don't.
• 1:33:33
  What we find out is that most of them are out in the field.
• 1:33:35
  Some place just got stuck over in the corn because it didn't run anymore.
• 1:33:39
  There's a gentleman up there right now.
• 1:33:40
  That's got a master.
• 1:33:41
  He goes, are you interested in buying my master?
• 1:33:43
  I'm like, yeah.
• 1:33:43
  Well sure, send me some pictures about how much you want for it.
• 1:33:46
  He goes, well, you can have it for 500.
• 1:33:48
  I went 500.
• 1:33:49
  Send me pictures right away.
• 1:33:50
  It's just the chassis.
• 1:33:51
  Everything else has been taken off of it.
• 1:33:53
  There's no wheels.
• 1:33:54
  There's no tires.
• 1:33:55
  There's no front suspension.
• 1:33:57
  The engine's gone except for the block.
• 1:33:59
  I'm like, I can't do anything with this.
• 1:34:01
  It's really.
• 1:34:02
  And I said, wait a minute.
• 1:34:03
  I said, is this a 408?
• 1:34:05
  He goes, yeah.
• 1:34:05
  I said, oh, it's got a broken crank.
• 1:34:06
  He goes, how'd you know that?
• 1:34:08
  Like, I know, but you can't do anything with it.
• 1:34:10
  Okay.
• 1:34:11
  The transmission's good, but what do I do with just the transmission?
• 1:34:14
  You know, I, you know, who knows if something's ever needed, but I
• 1:34:17
  was just surprised that you don't see more of them in Pennsylvania
• 1:34:20
  since they were so popular.
• 1:34:22
  But going back to what you said, I took my tractor.
• 1:34:25
  You're going to love this story.
• 1:34:26
  Once a year in the area, they have a concourse, the elegance
• 1:34:30
  for German vehicles only.
• 1:34:32
  So it's Porsche, BMW, Mercedes.
• 1:34:36
  They won't let Volkswagen in.
• 1:34:37
  They won't let Audi in.
• 1:34:38
  I have no idea why, like, wait a minute.
• 1:34:40
  So I find out about this show and I submit an application, 1960, Porsche.
• 1:34:46
  Model 108.
• 1:34:48
  I just leave it at that.
• 1:34:49
  I thought they're gonna lock me out of this thing.
• 1:34:51
  10 15 minutes later This guy said, hey, congratulations.
• 1:34:54
  We'd love to have you come and bring your Porsche.
• 1:34:55
  He goes da da da da I show up the guy at the gate is like, uh, sir.
• 1:35:00
  This is an attractor show I said no, this is the concourse the
• 1:35:03
  elegance for german vehicles.
• 1:35:05
  Here's my application.
• 1:35:06
  Here's my approval to be here He looks at me and goes I have no idea
• 1:35:10
  What they're going to do with you, but just go to the top of the hill.
• 1:35:13
  So I drove up to the top of the hill and the guy that ran the,
• 1:35:16
  um, the Porsche stuff, he's like, Whoa, what did I improve this?
• 1:35:21
  I said, yes, you did.
• 1:35:22
  He looked at me.
• 1:35:23
  I went, I know you didn't really read it.
• 1:35:24
  Did you?
• 1:35:25
  He goes, no, he goes, tell you what you unloaded here, park it over there.
• 1:35:28
  So I loaded it and parked it.
• 1:35:29
  Well, he had.
• 1:35:30
  Put me way the hell out where nobody was going to be.
• 1:35:33
  Like, uh, no, I'm not playing this game.
• 1:35:35
  So I fire the tractor up and I roll it up to the top of the hill
• 1:35:38
  right at the beginning of where the, um, all the Porsche cars are.
• 1:35:43
  And of course, a lot of attention.
• 1:35:45
  People loved it.
• 1:35:46
  And, um, you know, they shut the show down and it's time for awards
• 1:35:48
  and I'm going to fire the tractor up and put it on the trailer.
• 1:35:51
  He goes, where are you going?
• 1:35:52
  So I'm going to go home.
• 1:35:53
  He goes, no, you need to go to the award ceremony.
• 1:35:56
  They gave me this giant plaque for the most unique portion in the show.
• 1:36:02
  So I got this big, beautiful award, you know, it's see through.
• 1:36:04
  So I, so, you know, so I hold it and you can.
• 1:36:07
  You can see what it says.
• 1:36:08
  You see the red tractor in the background and you know, they present it to me
• 1:36:12
  and everybody's, I'm really happy.
• 1:36:13
  I got, this is really cool.
• 1:36:14
  I got my first award with a tractor.
• 1:36:16
  And as I walk away, the guy follows him and he goes, don't come back.
• 1:36:20
  He did not let me come back.
• 1:36:21
  That's awesome.
• 1:36:22
  I
• 1:36:23
  got my tractor award.
• 1:36:24
  I don't care.
• 1:36:25
  Life is good.
• 1:36:26
  Yeah.
• 1:36:26
  I take my tractors to, you know, as many shows as I possibly, you know, when I
• 1:36:30
  have one, I brought my junior to a tractor show is called the father's day car show
• 1:36:37
  in Manassas, and they allow tractors.
• 1:36:39
  So I register, I go up there.
• 1:36:41
  I got there early, but really not.
• 1:36:43
  And people are coming by and I'm answering questions and, and there's a couple of
• 1:36:46
  gentlemen that are walking, you know, down the street and they had these clipboards,
• 1:36:50
  which I didn't quite figure out initially.
• 1:36:53
  I see one of them point to my tractor and start laughing.
• 1:36:56
  And he's like kind of tapping his butt, he's laughing at it, you know, and
• 1:36:58
  all of it, and joking back and forth.
• 1:37:00
  And as they get closer and closer, this laughter goes away.
• 1:37:03
  My wife is like, what's going on?
• 1:37:05
  I'm like, I'm not really sure.
• 1:37:07
  I'm going to meet him at the tractor.
• 1:37:08
  So bright sun, shiny day, we were hiding under a tree.
• 1:37:10
  So I walk out and I meet him.
• 1:37:12
  And I said, do you have any questions?
• 1:37:14
  And then he looks at me and goes, is this really a Porsche deals with tractors?
• 1:37:16
  I said, yes, sir, it is.
• 1:37:17
  I didn't know Porsche made tractors.
• 1:37:19
  So I gave him the whole story.
• 1:37:20
  He goes, this is amazing.
• 1:37:22
  I didn't, you know, I didn't even know this existed.
• 1:37:24
  He goes, I'll be back.
• 1:37:25
  And he takes off.
• 1:37:26
  Didn't think much of it.
• 1:37:27
  Another gentleman shows up who's a Porsche technician.
• 1:37:30
  Been working for Porsche for years.
• 1:37:32
  And I'd only heard about the tractors.
• 1:37:34
  Didn't think they actually existed.
• 1:37:35
  And here was one.
• 1:37:36
  He'd never seen one in his life.
• 1:37:37
  I'm like, look at it.
• 1:37:38
  Get on it.
• 1:37:39
  Play with it, you know, enjoy it.
• 1:37:40
  Well, the guy that was the clipboard, next thing I look down, he's got like 10
• 1:37:44
  people from all the clipboards blends up, be in the evaluation committee and they're
• 1:37:48
  all looking at my tractor and they're asking questions and can I open the hood?
• 1:37:52
  And what's this doing?
• 1:37:53
  What about this?
• 1:37:54
  And can you start it?
• 1:37:55
  I'm just having a great time with these guys.
• 1:37:58
  Of course, I walk out with first place, but it's nice to have the
• 1:38:02
  trophy, but just the education to teach people as to what these things are.
• 1:38:06
  And that, you know, and Dr.
• 1:38:08
  Porsche actually did the tractor when the production of a tractor before he
• 1:38:11
  did the three 56 just blows people away.
• 1:38:14
  Absolutely.
• 1:38:15
  I could not agree more.
• 1:38:16
  And you know, Sal, as we close out here, I want to give you an opportunity,
• 1:38:20
  if at all, are there any shout outs, any promotions, anything you want to
• 1:38:23
  tell the audience, anything coming up that we should be aware of?
• 1:38:26
  I'm doing my best to get the master done so I can bring it
• 1:38:29
  down to the VIR in October.
• 1:38:31
  I kind of want to go down there.
• 1:38:33
  I actually, two years ago, I delivered a two cylinder to one
• 1:38:38
  of the race teams down there.
• 1:38:40
  One of the owners wanted a Porsche diesel tractor.
• 1:38:42
  So I brought it down to V.
• 1:38:44
  I.
• 1:38:44
  R.
• 1:38:44
  I delivered it and he was driving it around V.
• 1:38:47
  I.
• 1:38:47
  R.
• 1:38:47
  over there.
• 1:38:48
  That's kind of cool.
• 1:38:49
  I tried to convince him that we needed to take his tow vehicle, you know,
• 1:38:53
  to pull the car onto the racetrack and then hook up a strap and pull
• 1:38:56
  it with a Porsche diesel tractor.
• 1:38:58
  But he's like, but that'd be a really good idea.
• 1:39:00
  There's only one problem.
• 1:39:01
  I said, yeah, I know it's too slow.
• 1:39:02
  He goes, yeah, exactly.
• 1:39:03
  The other thing that I tell people is yes, I run the business.
• 1:39:06
  Yes, I own it.
• 1:39:07
  But if you want to call and get technical information, it doesn't matter if you're
• 1:39:11
  buying parts or not for me, I don't care.
• 1:39:13
  I just want to see as many of these tractors.
• 1:39:15
  Up and running and people enjoying them as possible.
• 1:39:18
  Just reach out.
• 1:39:19
  If, if I don't know the answer, I've got sources all over the place.
• 1:39:23
  I've got rolling out in Colorado point number one for the America
• 1:39:27
  Porsche diesel corporation.
• 1:39:28
  Just a great guy.
• 1:39:29
  What I do when it comes to parts, I give everybody the lowest possible price.
• 1:39:33
  And again, it's all based on.
• 1:39:36
  What I have in stock and, uh, what the exchange rate is.
• 1:39:40
  Sal, you know, I think this might not have been the episode everybody was
• 1:39:45
  expecting when they read the intro paragraph, but I tell you what, I
• 1:39:49
  think we all got an education tonight.
• 1:39:51
  This is a corner of the motorsport and or sports car adjacent world that now
• 1:39:57
  we all have a different outlook on.
• 1:39:59
  I mean, incredible that brands like Porsche, like Ferrari, like Lamborghini
• 1:40:03
  I'm going to say the Porsche tractor truly gives new meaning to grassroots.
• 1:40:09
  All that being said, Porsche Diesel USA is a full service provider of parts
• 1:40:15
  and support for your Porsche diesel tractor, whether you own one or now
• 1:40:19
  you're thinking or considering one.
• 1:40:21
  For more details on Porsche diesel, be sure to reach out.
• 1:40:25
  To Sal at Porsche Diesel usa@gmail.com or check out www.porschedieselusa.com
• 1:40:34
  and use the contact us there form there, or just reach out to Sal directly.
• 1:40:38
  Like he said, he's a wealth of information.
• 1:40:40
  He's very well connected and you know.
• 1:40:42
  Maybe further your education on these absolutely phenomenal tractors.
• 1:40:46
  So, Sal, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show.
• 1:40:49
  This has been awesome.
• 1:40:50
  Dan, I thank you for coming on and sharing your expertise in this arena.
• 1:40:54
  So thank you both.
• 1:40:55
  And this has been awesome.
• 1:40:56
  Great talking to you guys.
• 1:40:58
  And hopefully, you know, the next time we have our poets thing, maybe
• 1:41:03
  I'll bring a tractor up to it.
• 1:41:04
  There you go.
• 1:41:10
  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check
• 1:41:13
  us out on www dot gt motorsports dot org.
• 1:41:17
  You can also find us on instagram at grand touring motorsports.
• 1:41:20
  Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call
• 1:41:24
  or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
• 1:41:32
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• 1:41:32
  We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:41:34
  Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:41:37
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• 1:41:40
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