American Bantam Plow - More of the story

Our last post introduced our search for more information on Ted’s American Bantam plow.  Over the past few weeks, we, along with a few Bantam, Newgren and Monroe experts have been searching for answers to our questions about where and when the plows were produced.

The first part of the Bantam Plow mystery has been solved by Cathy Cunningham of the American Bantam Car Club (www.austinbantamclub.com/).  She sent us a newspaper clipping from 9/20/48 announcing that the Butler plant would produce farm equipment.  In addition, she also provided the following:

 From the Bantam bankruptcy papers...."The management of Newgren as well as Bantam was entirely under the control of Monroe.  Of the various farm implements sold by Newgren, about 50% was manufactured by or purchased from Monroe, a small portion by Bantam and the remainder by unaffiliated companies."

4/19/1950.  The trustees found the activities of the Newgren Company, Bantam's wholly owned subsidiary, which had been engaged unsuccessfully in the sale of agriculture equipment manufactured by Monroe, Bantam and others, practically ceased.

Based on the above, we now know that Bantam was producing farm equipment, which most likely included plows, beginning in 1948.  It would appear that Newgren sales efforts had ceased by early 1950.  We would guess that Bantam replaced the Newgren tag sometime after mid-1950.  But we have just scratched the surface of how this plow came to be.

This has been a fun and rewarding undertaking.  We want to thank Ted for sending us the photos of the plows.  He uncovered an important (at least to some of us) piece of jeep history. We also wish to thank Clint Dixon, Lonnie Deweese, and Cathy for their help in getting the story this far.

Many stories remain to be told about Monroe, Newgren and Bantam.  It is our hope that this plow-find will kindle more research and published results. 

American Bantam Plow - an unknown chapter in Newgren Equipment history?

We received a note and pictures from Ted, who had purchased one of the two plows pictured. The plows are branded American Bantam, the same company that built the first WWII jeep prototype. The company located in Butler, PA is also known for its small cars. Some background information is provided here in this Newgren History.

Barry has been working with a few collectors and the American Austin Bantam Club to learn more about these plows. We are in agreement that the plows are re-branded Newgren models. But none of us had ever seen an American Bantam plow before. Both plows where found in northern VA. 

We are still researching a couple of questions. We would like to know when Bantam dropped the Newgren name and began branding the implements as American Bantam. We believe it to be in the 1948 to 1954 time range. Second we would like to know how many and what type of implements were sold under the Bantam label.

We will post more information here, as we uncover it.

Finally, a working Newgren Lift

A look down the radiator to the new pump

Newgren restoration – take 10

A while back, a Newgren lift frame appeared on e-Bay.  The seller’s description included a reference to farmjeep.com restoration information.  It has been over 10 years since we published our post on our Newgren lift restoration.  But it has been just a couple of months since we could finally say that it is truly restored to working condition.  How did it take 10 years you say? 

First – actually last – is what we didn’t know about hydraulics.  Even the simple Newgren system was a mystery to us.   We tried a number of pump configurations until we found an original pump and bracket.  That first pump was totally shot and we spent months trying to figure out a replacement.  Luckily our friend Lonnie, who knows all about Newgren lifts, told us that Newgren used the same pump that International used on their Farmall C tractor. 

We found one on e-Bay and spent a couple of more years trying to get the used pump to work.  Barry spent a number of weeks (maybe months) trying to determine why the lift wouldn’t work consistently.   He would be the first to admit that he didn’t want to believe what the experts were telling him.  The pump was showing signs of being worn out.  Especially when the pump worked perfectly at times.

Finally, the decision was made to change the Newgren pump with a NOS (new old stock) Monroe pump and bracket.  But before doing so, we took the “new” pump to a hydraulic shop for testing.  It turns out the only thing new about this pump was the shiny clean-up job on the case.  Inside, this pump was old and worn.

Even after hearing from our friends on the tractor-by-net forum that the pumps were worn out, we held onto the hope that the pump could be saved.  So we finally made the decision to buy a new pump and suddenly all those years of lift problems disappeared.

Plumb and Play

With a part number and the Web, we shopped for the best price on a new pump.  A few days after placing the order, the pump arrived and we were pleased to see it was an exact duplicate of the old pump.  Because it was an exact match, replacing the pump took only a few minutes.

The real test was when we hooked up to the new plow.   Perfect!  The lift worked as it should and for the first time, we have a properly working lift.