Obtaining and Restoring A Ransome Crawler

(Page 2 of 2)

September/October 1987
Brian Cooney 
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About the Company and Machine

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The first commercially successful Ransome tractor was the MG2, announced in 1936, the first of a series of MG Mini-crawlers which held a small specialized share of the tractor market for thirty (30) years.

Total production of MG tractors amounted to approximately 15,000, or an average of 500 a year, including the War Years when production was temporarily halted and the Post-War period when Ransome made 1,000 tractors a year at the peak of the MG's popularity.

The little tractors were highly unconventional in design. For example, the flywheel incorporated a centrifugal clutch which disengaged when the engine speed fell below 500 RPM. The drive from the clutch is taken through reduction gears to the two crownwheels and differential gearing. One crownwheel produced a forward gear, while the second gave reverse.

Power from the differential is transmitted by spur gears to the front track sprockets. The tractor is steered by a pair of levers, each acting as a brake on one side of the tracks, so that the differential acts to speed up the unbraked track. The tracks can be adjusted to send varying row widths and are rubber joined.

In its original form the MG2 was powered by a Sturmey Archer 6 HP engine, which was an air-cooled, single-cylinder unit. In the MG5, which replaced the MG2 in 1949, the power was raised to 7.25 HP at 2100 RPM, which produced 4.5 HP at the drawbar. The final version, the MG40 was equipped with a 10 HP diesel engine.

With its light weight-1,400 pounds for the MG5, and seventy-four (74) inch length most demand for Ransome Tractors came from nurserymen and market gardeners. The ploughing rate for the MG5 was about one acre per eight hour day, which would have been unacceptable on a larger acreage. There were some other markets for the MG's including Tanzania, where they were used to scrape salt from the surface of inland salt pans, and also Holland, where the tractors were popular in some areas because they were small enough to be ferried across drainage dykes in small boats.

Today the tractor sits in our indoor showroom where it gives us much pleasure and creates a great deal of interest. Hardly a day goes by without someone coming in just to see what it is. We hope to show it in the future at local farm fairs and machinery shows.

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