True colors: Allis-Chalmers’ shift from green to orange

PENFIELD, Ill. — The green tractor in the doorway of the Historic Farm Days’ Featured Brand Building looked out of place with seemingly the wrong color.

The I&I Antique Tractor & Gas Engine Club’s annual four-day event included the Allis-Chalmers Gathering of the Orange national show in conjunction with it being the featured brand for the show.

Steve Fritsch, of Cobb in southwestern Wisconsin, stood beside his Allis-Chalmers 1927 20-35 tractor to answer such questions as, “Green?”

“It’s called a 20-35 because it’s 20 horsepower on the drawbar and 35 horsepower on the pulley. People don’t realize that Allis-Chalmers was painting everything green up until about the middle of production in 1930. That’s when they changed to orange,” Fritsch said.

As the story goes, Harry Merrit, Allis-Chalmers Tractor Division director, was touring California in 1929 when he saw large fields of orange California poppy blossoms.

He brought a flower back to the company in Milwaukee, ordered a sample of the color in paint and in a short time the tractors coming off the assembly lines were all “Persian Orange.”

Restoration

Fritsch first saw the green 1927 tractor when it was purchased by the owner of the Allis-Chalmers dealership that he worked at for 50 years.

“He bought this tractor in Madison, Wisconsin, got it home and I think they maybe brought it to a parade once or whatever, but then he put it out in front of the dealership,” Fritsch said.

“It sat there for many years. Of course, rain went down into the exhaust and it was stuck. So, he finally decided to move it, put it in a shed and a little while later he decided to sell it.

“I bought it and started tearing it apart. Its engine was stuck tight and I had to air-chisel the pistons out of it. I was able to save the block and everything like that.

“One thing I learned right away in restoration of this old stuff is it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. I was able to get ahold of some people. There was a guy in in Ohio that was making gaskets for this tractor. He did a lot of work for me.

“He redid my heads for me, water pump and that kind of stuff. He was a machinist himself. I never met the guy personally, but I did enough business over the phone.”

Fritsch got the tractor back together, but didn’t have enough time to finish up. That’s when he met Lee Sackett, of Waltham, Minnesota, at the Upper Midwest Allis-Chalmers Club’s Orange Spectacular in Hutchinson in south-central Minnesota.

“His company took the tractor apart to make sure everything was good. There was a bearing going bad and they fixed that. It was all sand-blasted, primed and painted. He has about 12, 14 working for him. I liked the quality of his work. I had just made up my mind that if I was going to get things done, Lee was going to be the guy to do it,” Fritsch said.

The Allis-Chalmers 20-35 is a standard-tread farm tractor produced in West Allis, Wisconsin, between 1922 and 1930. It features a 7.6L four-cylinder liquid-cooled gasoline engine and a transmission with two forward speeds and one reverse gear.

In Nebraska Tractor Test 151, the model achieved a tested maximum belt power of 44.29 horsepower and a maximum drawbar pull of 4,400 pounds, according to Tractor Spy.

The sticker price in 1927 for the Model E 20-35 was $1,495.

Fritsch has several Allis-Chalmers tractors in his collection.

“I just bought one at an auction less than a month ago from the Arland Leppper collection in Iowa. I bought an Allis-Chalmers 1950 U tractor at that sale. I have a B that will be at upcoming Hutchinson show. I’m redoing another B, and I’ve got a G, too,” he said.

“I’ve been kind of collecting right along, whatever I can afford and whatever I find.”

First Time

This was his first time exhibiting a tractor at Historic Farm Days. He attended last year’s Half Century of Progress in Rantoul in east-central Illinois, but didn’t bring a tractor.

“For the Gathering of the Orange national show, they put on two shows every year in different spots. They move around all over, out east or out west to Nebraska, you name it, they find places to have set ups like this,” he said.

“The Gathering of the Orange was in Baraboo, Wisconsin, three years ago or so. That’s when I picked the 20-35 tractor up and brought it to Baraboo.

“We did go down to Florida two years ago where they featured Allis-Chalmers for the Florida Flywheelers Antique Engine Club. Lee Sackett has a semi and he loaded this 20-35 up with a couple more tractors, and I flew down to Florida for the show.”

Preserving Past

Fritsch’s grandfather was an Oliver dealer and had a plaque on the wall that stated, “We need to preserve the old for the young people.”

“We need to preserve some of this stuff. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, and you can’t just reproduce it or whatever. We have a lot of nice people doing a lot of great work on these tractors,” Fritsch said.