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Digger Man

Digger Man Blog

by Nick Drew  |  Tue 16 Oct 2018

MF just keeps going down on the farm

Its often amazing what you find on farms up and down the country, especially in terms of old construction equipment which is still being put to good use. I recently visited William Lee who farms near Bristol to check out his 1964 MF 65R backhoe loader.

MF just keeps going down on the farm
Quite often when construction and plant hire companies have had what they consider to be the best years out of a machine, following trading in, they become available one way or another on the second-hand market. This is often a good time for a farmer to pick up a bargain with a machine that isn’t going to be used all the time, but is still more than capable of doing a good day’s work when needed. Its incredible to think that when this machine was rolling off the production line, I was just 3 years old! Now that is some longevity for a machine. William Lee picked up this Massey Ferguson 65R six years ago. The chap who owned it was at the time doing a job down in Cannington and they were parking their kit on a farm at night. They saw the old girl parked up and decided to buy it. Apparently it had originally been purchased brand new by the farmers son, so they could bring in extra income for the farm, an all too familiar tale and how many farmers have expanded into the plant hire game over the generations. It was once used to dig the foundations for a large block of flats in the Somerset town of Bridgwater. According to William, the venerable old machine never misses a beat to this day. It is used around the farm for a wide variety of work including clearing muck, scraping the yard and ditch cleaning jobs. The two-wheel drive MF 65R is powered by a British built 4-cylinder Perkins A4-203 diesel engine which has a power output rating of 45kw (61hp). Back in the day these machines were well received by loyal MF customers, but like many others from that era they lived in the shadow of models from JCB. This machine features manual adjustment of the back actor across the frame, to enable this four bolts need to be loosened, this example looks to have been used centrally mounted for some time. This photo from archive publicity material features a later model of the 65R which were built in Massey Fergusons facility in Santa Fe, Argentina. MF 65R SPECIFICATIONS Maximum dig depth with straight bottom: 4620 mm Maximum angle of arm rotation: 186 ° Maximum discharge height: 3020 mm Reach from the centre of the swivel motor: 5350 mm Reach from the rear axle line: 6570 mm

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