The first one that hit our lot was met by farmers looking at the new styling like a calf looking at a new gate.  There were quite a few updates to the units while becoming 7040 and 7060's .  The biggest difference was a different style oil cooler, fuel setting, better remote hook ups and later a heavier torque limiter.   Power shifts didn't come along til 1976.

Dad never liked the looks of the 7000 series, especially the maroon ones. He thought the sloped hood looked too much like a 4020. I like my 7050. It does have some duplicate gears but still a great selection compared to a 190. It does need a 6 mph speed but I get along. The 7030 duplicates the 6.8 mph three times while my 7050 duplicates the same gears, they are at 7 mph instead. Mine has been a good tractor for me with no more than a remote cable, range cable, light switch, temp gauge, alternator and one injector line needed in the 20 plus years I've owned it. My brother's 7030 had a couple scored sleeves when he bought it and has been recently overhauled and ed rebuilt the injector pump. Ran great for a while but I'm suspecting a scored sleeve again. The shop my brother took it to to get overhauled used an A & I kit even though he requested an AGCO kit. They normally work on Deere because they used to be a Deere dealer and when working on Deere engines they use only Deere parts but they wouldn't use an AGCO kit for the 7030 and Deere supposedly owns A & I. Kinda disappointing after all the expense. I'll be working on it myself hopefully over winter.

The 7030 doesn't have piston oil cooling jets..... I can't remember if the 7040 did or didn't.

The previous owner of my 7050 bought it new. It was hard to get a new tractor in 1974 and he bought that 7050 sight unseen and it had to be transferred from a dealer out of Iowa. Before that, from what I'm told, the farmer got to drive the new tractor on the lot before he bought it, maybe even got to try one on the farm first.

My old parts manager boss, when I worked at the CaseIH dealership, told me his father bought a 7060 because at the time he couldn't get a 4630. He was a Deere man at the time and no one had a Deere to sell let alone try at the farm at the time.... I think this was sometime in '75 or '76. Marzolf Implement brought out a 7060 for him to try on the farm so that's what he bought.

I don't remember what he said they had for a combine but by the late '70s he was on the ropes and lost it all in the '80s. Today that farmer is 87 years old, has about 1/4 the farm he had back then, has an old 1086 or 1586, a 3020, a 175 and a 190XT Series III (til my brother bought the XT a couple years ago), and he just traded his F2 off for an R40 last year.

BTW he really liked that 7060 and it was a power shift model.

    I will say this, watching that 7030 roll through that corn field blowing black smoke is part of the reason that 30 years later, I had to buy a 70xx tractor. 

    I enjoy chopping stalks with my 7020 pd  or scraping dirt with my 7060 pd as much as I like to plant with the 8050 ps or field cultivate with the 8070.

    The 7030 and 50 were ahead of there times.

    My 2 cents.

Leon B MO

    

    

It was hard to get any farm machinery new or used back in the mid 1970s.  One day when I was about 4 years old so this would have been circa 1976 I was riding in the cab with dad cutting beans in his 1965 Oliver 525 that was so wore out it was basically scrap on wheels, and some guy in an IH Scout stopped on the road and came out in the field and offered to buy it on the spot.  Said he needed a combine and couldn't find one anywhere. Dad told him it was not for sale.   After Dad closed the cab door and the guy walked away he said: "Buddy if I didn't have 200 more acres of beans to cut this piece of junk would be on the way to your farm."

A year or so later the Chrysler engine in that Oliver got so worn out it didn't have enough compression to run so dad went to the AC dealer to buy a new F2.  They didn't have any F2s and said they didn't know when they could get one but they had a slightly used Deere 4400 diesel that some guy had just traded so he brought it home.    Dad advertised that old Oliver in the newspaper classifieds and said "will not run, needs overhaul" and the phone in our house was ringing off the hook with farmers wanting to buy that combine because you just couldn't find one anywhere back then.

The looks are kind of a "Love it or hate it" design, but simple things that make the machine work better will make me okay with almost any styling. I remember the first time I saw a 7000 series- that cab just looked hideous to me. But, over the years, it's grown on me. Who knows- we might have one in our yard in the not too distant future....

Just think, with 4 batteries, you'll always have one bad one somewhere lol!