Allis A

I wasn’t there so I can only speculate but there was problems with the early ones with the transmission and those kinds of things can easily doom a tractor even if it gets fixed, the 560 IHC is an example of this. The first ones had problems but the bad mark lived with it to the end. The late A transmission was a tremendous improvement as anyone who has seen the internals side by side can attest. Another problem that was never addressed was the brakes. One cannot fully appreciate individual brakes until he runs a tractor without them. Another big problem that was not mechanical was the fact that it was meant to be a hi-speed (for the times) tractor and people who could not get past the mind set of pulling as much as you can in the lowest gear could easily tear one up. even the late ones. This is the same mind set that tore up the rear ends in model 185 and 190XT tractors many years later. The A in any kind of shape motor wise will pull 4-14 or 16s in any ground in 2nd and in most cases 3rd which is close to 5MPH, unheard of plowing speed in 1937 unless a swarm of bees was after the team, or a car back fired.  Another problem was the motor was easily hot rodded with parts that A-C was glad to sell. Our #2 A which has internals not a whole lot different that the 5 1/4" LP fuel pistons and sleeves that A-C sold for power units will pull 80 HP all day long on the dyno and has approached 90 HP on a cool day with low humidity.  Stick 5-16 behind that and shift her down into low gear in a gumbo pot hole and see what grenades behind the clutch housing??? So many As were fitted with over bores that it is hard to find one these days still 4 3/4". All that being said you really cannot introduce a tractor along with a list of excuses. Allis was not committed to the large tractor market in the late 30s and their effort with the "A" shows it