Oliver 88

History

So, Uncle Junior bought this tractor at an auction and drove it back to his farm. He didn't make it because the engine seized not to far from home so he went and got one of his other tractors, towed it to the tree row in his lane and left it there. Decades later, his Allis Chalmers WD45 needed an overhaul so my grandfather offered to do that in trade for the 88. "Hey, that's a deal," is what Grandpa said Uncle Junior thought of the transaction. As it sat, there was nothing really special about this tractor other than it's independent live PTO. Grandpa had plans though and went about setting it up exactly the way he'd always imagined having a big powerful tractor.

While overhauling the engine, Grandpa discovered that the front crank seal, which was cork, had cremated. The shop manual says to soak this for 24hrs in oil before installing and he assumed this wasn't done and that cause the engine to run out of oil and seize. He also discovered that it had been "super dupered" - someone installed sleeves and pistons that were well oversized (tractordata.com says the 88 had a bore of 3.5", and the super had a bore of 3.75". The installed pistons and sleeves must have been 4"), Grandpa replaced these with "super" pistons and sleeves. His main modification was to install a hydraulic system; Oliver had what they called a "Hydra-lectric" system, but Grandpa had head stories of these being unreliable and wasn't especially interested in maintaining the electrical components so he removed them.

The hydraulic system with it's two control valves allowed him to mount two essential pieces of technology, the front end loader he'd built himself, and an Oliver hydralic hitch from an 880 or 770. The front end loader had been mounted to the Oliver 77 known as "old smokey" ever since he'd acquired it as far as I know and before that on the Hart-Parr Oliver 70. On the 70, it'd been powered by a pump run from the pulley output, on the 77 it was powered by a pump run off the front of the engine. The Oliver standard hydraulic system ran from the PTO shaft as it passed through the inside of the transmission. Since that shaft was also used to run the mechanical lift system that had been on the tractor originally, an amount of it needed to be parted off on the lathe to make things fit.

The hitch would've come from the factory on a 770 or an 880 and would have included provisions for mounting 3-point tools. Grandpa only ever had a pallet fork that mounted to a tractor's 3-pt hitch and his Ford 9N managed that task very well so he elected not to even purchase these when he bought the hitch. He told me he paid $75 for the hitch, and the guy wanted another $5 for each 3-pt mount. I've seen these hitches sell for $975 and up on eBay these last few years. The 3-pt mounts were another $75 each.

After restoration/modification this became the main tractor on the farm, although Grandpa had long since retired and wasn't really doing much farming anyway. I remember in high school, spending a week with my grandparents one summer and grandpa was harvesting oats with this machine and a pull-behind combine. Years later, we were breaking the bead on a lawnmower tire and used the front-end loader and a block of wood to do so, when it came away with ease Grandpa remarked, "that tractor has been the handiest thing. Every time I have a job, it just does it."

At some point between those two events, my uncle purchased a power steering motor and pump for the tractor and this greatly improved handling with a heavy load on the loader. This necessitated swapping the AC Delco alternator for an original style 12V generator because they had a shaft that extended past the tail piece onto which the steering pump mounted.

Present

The tractor is largely unaltered since Grandpa completed his work on it. However, there have been some repairs and modifications:

Repairs

• The parking brake strap on the right side broke in half. This is the side most commonly used because it's opposite the clutch. A replacement was found on eBay but they don't match.
• Over the last few years, the exhaust note has been getting throatier and the flapper on the muffler has been less responsive to throttle increases. This is because of a common failure on Oliver tractors where the intake manifold disintegrates right below the muffler. This area is actually part of the exhaust; the intake and exhaust manifolds are bolted together with a "chest" wrapping the intake manifold so that heat from the exhaust can promote atomization of gasoline. This is probably unnecessary today with modern gasoline but no one has modified the manifolds to eliminate this point of failure. A replacement manifold set was sourced easily and my father and I installed it in a single afternoon.
• The air cleaner wasn't plumbed to the carburetor so I re-installed some radiator hose to get it breathing filtered air. I'd been seeing the tractor making a very light white/blue smoke at idle the last few years. There's probably at least one cylinder with scarred side walls now.

Modifications

• A brake equalizer pedal was installed to improve stopping. Grandpa didn't like these and most farmers disconnected/removed them. Most farmers were using their brakes for steering, I was trying to gingerly push things with the front-end loader while working uphill.

Images

• Oliver88 1.jpg

  Oliver 88 in summer 2021. Note blackened side panel from leaky exhaust