Porsche Diesel, Tractors?

• History of Porsche-Diesel
• Did they have a color scheme? Such as the notorious John Deere green?
• Did Porsche utilize any of their agricultural R&D and apply it to their cars or was there a definitive line between the 2 sections of the company?
• Porsche is not the only manufacturer to be involved in Agricultural equipment: Lamborghini Tractors, Ferrari Tractors, etc. Did they some-how compete?
• The different types of Porsche-Diesel tractors, models, engines, etc
• Apparently Porsche Tractors are very sought after – what does the market look like?

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the auto sphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrol heads that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Mountain Man Dan: When you hear the phrases Porsche and diesel in the same sentence, or some of you out there, you might be thinking cayenne diesel, or maybe your mind jumps right to the diesel gate from recent years. And for most of us, our imaginations most likely move right to the sports cars. But what if I told you Porsche actually produced diesel tractors?

Yep, I had no clue either.

Crew Chief Eric: And if anyone at GTM knows about agricultural equipment, it’s definitely the one and only Mountain Man Dan. So I welcome him tonight as my co host as we speak with Sal [00:01:00] Fanelli, President of Porsche diesel USA to talk to us about the lesser known history of such a famous motorsports icon, the brand Porsche and their tractors.

So welcome to break fix, Sal.

Sal Fanelli: Great to be here. Thank you very much for the invite.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. So, you know, there’s this craze going on right now. A lot of petrol heads and their wives and significant others are all hooked on Jeremy Clarkson’s Clarkson’s farm, right? So suddenly farming is cool, but I think farming was cool a long time ago, but this lesser known Porsche history makes it even more exciting.

So why don’t we jump off with that? What is the history of Porsche diesel?

Sal Fanelli: So basically where it all starts is with Dr. Porsche back in the early mid 30s. He started developing what people refer to as the people’s tractor, just like the Volkswagen, the people’s car. So he started developing a tractor. As he progresses along, of course, you know, war is imminent and all of that.

So he gets transitioned [00:02:00] and he’s told by, you know, his leadership, by Hitler. that, you know, you need to go do something else. So he started designing equipment for the German war machine. So the stuff like the tractor and all of that pretty much, you know, got set aside. So of course, you know, we have World War II, it ends.

And then at the end of the war, this is where it gets kind of interesting. There’s now this drive, this requirement, if you want to call it that, to get Germany back up and running, you know, the farmers and all that stuff. So Dr. Porsche wants to go into production with his tractor, but the agreement to end the war was that any facility that was building equipment for the German war machine could not reopen and make something else.

Only people who were building farm equipment or cars or whatever were allowed to go back into production. So Dr. Porsche teamed up with a tractor company then called Elgire. So in 1950, they have an agreement. They begin production of what they call the Elgire [00:03:00] Porsche tractors or as we call them AP. So he goes into production in 1950 for the sales year 1951 and you know off and running they go.

In fact within my workshop right now I have one of the earliest APs on record that is still running. We have seen other serial numbers get recorded but those people won’t tell us if those tractors are running or not. But according to the American Porsche diesel registry, it is the oldest known running Porsche diesel tractor in the U S probably in the world.

Crew Chief Eric: So to clarify, this is Dr. Porsche senior, not Ferry Porsche, who designed the nine 11. This is Porsche who designed the beetle.

Sal Fanelli: Yes. Beetle. I mean, of course that’s pretty good.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, in Porsche. fashion, every vehicle has a type number. So obviously the cars started with the 901. Everybody thinks it’s the 911, but there’s the 901 and obviously the [00:04:00] 356.

And you have all the other ones outside of that. So did the tractors have a type number as well?

Sal Fanelli: When Dr. Porsche worked with Allgaier, again, you know, so their AP Allgaier Porsches, they were AP. So the first one was an AP 16. It was then replaced or the subsequent one was the AP 17. And then there was the AP 22.

So as the horsepower of the tractors increased, the type designation changed. You knew what the difference was. If you look at the AP 17 as an example, there was a Series 1 and a Series 2. And there are differences between them, and you can see them if you have both of them next to you. But really what it came down to is the first ones were relatively low on horsepower, 11 horsepower.

But as we know, as, as diesel owners, it’s not horsepower that we’re worried about. We’re worried about torque. And these things produce a tremendous amount of torque. So as the horsepower goes up, so does the torque. So the 17 was a much more [00:05:00] powerful engine. Then when they went to the AP 22, 22 basically stood for 22 horsepower in their terms.

It was, it was a beast. It was a very, very popular tractor. Later in production, El Guyer went backwards and created a one cylinder, which they called the P one 11. I don’t understand why they dropped the, A designation was to call the P one 11, but then in the two cylinder, and now, now we’re talking about a three cylinder chart that they introduced.

They use just the A. So it was an A 122, an A 133, then an A 144. So the earlier delegations are really confusing. And what I tell everybody, if you really want to learn, there’s a book out there. This is what I consider to be the Bible. It’s only in German, so you’ll learn a little German. It’s technical German.

And a lot of the technical German words are the same in English. You can read it, but that book by, um, Armin Bauer really gives you the details of the years to makes the models. So [00:06:00] eventually I don’t really understand, but I think Elgire wanted to get out of the tractor business. Or maybe do something on their own.

So, the Porsche part of it was sold to another company, Mansmann, okay, and they’re the ones that began Porsche diesel tractor manufacturing in Lake Constance. And as soon as that transition took over, the AP designation was dropped, and they just became P. So, the first one was the P111. And the interesting thing is that the way Porsche did it, one was a designator for the number of cylinders.

Then they came out with the P217, the 218, two cylinders. Then your three cylinders, you had the 308, the 318, the 319. So you began to understand how easy it was to figure out, or how many cylinders your tractor had, just by understanding the designation of the model numbers. So now there’s, there’s no 901, there’s no 902.

I kind of wish there was. [00:07:00] Living in this world, I can talk different nomenclatures all day long with people. I bought the business close to 10 years ago. It’s almost becoming, You know, my second life just, you know, living and breathing these things.

Crew Chief Eric: Brings up another really great question. How long were Porsche diesel tractors made?

How many were made? When did they come to the United States? You know, let’s talk about some of that history.

Sal Fanelli: So we’re talking about early production 1950 for the 1951 model year. And I’ve never actually seen a number as to how many were produced by Allgaier Porsche. Now, in Mr. Bauer’s book, he talks about approximate numbers.

I just never got around the sitting down, writing all the type numbers out and how many he thought was made to figure that out. But now we fast forward to 1956 when the company was taken over, became Porsche Diesel with the dash. The dash is important. We’ll explain that in a minute. So Porsche Diesel It spun up 1956 for production in 1957, [00:08:00] and they produced tractors until 1963.

In 1963, the owners of the company realized that at this point, there are so many tractor companies out there that they really want to continue to invest more modern designs and change things to fulfill their mission. A saturated marketplace did make business sense. They basically shut it down. So whatever parts were left over in 1963, they continued production in 1964 for a while until they finally ran out of parts, you know, and shut the doors.

In that time frame, according to the books and the publications, About 125, 000 tractors were manufactured. So, you know, mostly Europe up into the UK, Australia, where they were sent out to. There was a certain type of tractor that was sent down to Brazil with others. But of those 125, 000, approximately 1, 000 tractors were imported into the U.

S. through the American [00:09:00] Porsche Diesel Corporation. Which was originally based out of an office building in New York City, but then they moved the entire operation to Pennsylvania. So tractors were imported by the American Porsche Diesel Corporation into Pennsylvania and then from there they were sent to their distributors.

What a lot of people understand or don’t know is that the American Porsche Diesel Corporation also imported them into the West Coast via a single dealer distributor. that received the tractors, a company called Viking Equipment. They received Porsche diesel tractors and distributed them through Northern California, Oregon, uh, Washington State.

Canada had its own import way, I don’t really know much about or how many tractors.

Mountain Man Dan: You mentioned the fact of how they initially were AP and then they transitioned who was manufacturing them. Were there issues with the older ones getting parts or were the, the individuals took up manufacturing the newer version [00:10:00] continue to make parts for the older ones?

Sal Fanelli: So German law states that anything that you make that’s in production or concurrent production The company has to continue to supply parts for a minimum of 10 years. So the interesting thing about the engine itself, excuse me, the engine and transmission were pretty much identical until the end, what, what changed was bore and strokes.

You actually could take one of the older ones and put larger pistons on it if you wanted to. So you could go from. A 90 millimeter, say, to a 95, a 95 to a 98, if you understood the books and knew, you know, the right combinations. Now, the one thing I did learn, when Porsche early on went from a 95 to a 98 millimeter system, the cranks really weren’t strong enough.

So, those series tractors quickly went by the wayside, and that’s why Porsche changed the center number. Talk about a three cylinder. So you got a three cylinder truck that’s called a 308. Three [00:11:00] cylinder, all three cylinders are the same, 95 millimeter piston. Then there was a 309, bigger horsepower, more torque.

It had a 98 millimeter piston, but it used the same wrist So they were not reliable. What Porsche did after that Is they changed that middle designation to a one. So instead of a 308, it became a 318, a 319, a 328, a 329. Because they reinforced all of that. There were many, not many, but there was a series of tractors brought into the U.

S. It was a four cylinder. Called a 408. According to the books are about 25 of them that were brought in. I pretty much know are about 14 or 15 of them are, they all have broken crankshafts. It’d be one of those that it’d be really great if I could collect them all. But the cheapest price I could get on duplicating a crankshaft is somewhere between seven or 8, 000.

Good night. So

is it worth it? Yeah, you know, I mean, those tractors for the people are really collecting tractors and when I have one of every size, then [00:12:00] it might be worth it. But this is a small business, so it’d be just too much of a gamble for me.

Mountain Man Dan: With Porsche, did they have like a color scheme, you know, such as the notorious John Deere?

Sal Fanelli: Yeah, actually it’s true. Algyre is slightly different. So there are algyre portions. I’ve seen them in silver. Generally, you see algyre tractors in what they call signal orange, which is a very, very bright orange, you know, the body, the chassis, the fenders and that. And then they did the seat and the rims and what they call tomato red.

So you have an orange tractor with tomato red rims, or you had a green tractor with tomato red rims. And from what I understand, the ones who were painted green because they were supposed to stay within the eu, European Union, the ones that were orange, were the so-called export tractors. So in the US you’ll see several elk air Porsches that were brought in that were actually the signal orange.

This 1951 I was telling you guys about earlier, it’s silver, it is [00:13:00] orange, it’s green. It’s got all sorts of different colors on it. Uh, we thought somebody had done that, but when you look at it, it’s actually the company kind of put it together. So the owner recognizes the fact that the way Allgaier did it, it should be signal orange.

So I’m in the process of making sure this tractor comes out signal orange with tomato red rims. Now when it comes to Porsche, Porsche in 1956 settled on two colors. Primarily the red. A lot of people think it’s guardsman red, but it’s not. Not sure if you guys are familiar, but over the EU, they have colors that they refer to as RALs.

I’m not sure what RAL stands for. But it’s a color chip that is recognized all over the world. Porsche adopted RAL3002.

And depending on where you go, generally it’s called Carmine Red. It has a more orange tint to it. I don’t want to say it’s orange. When you look at it compared to Guardsman Red that we’re all familiar with, you can see there’s a bit more orange in it. [00:14:00] Okay, and that was the standard Porsche color until the end.

Now when it comes to the rims, the rims were paid in the RAL color, and the number is 1014, 1014. And depending on what website you read, it’s either called Creamy Yellow. Or mimosa. I say creamy yellow because I feel like an idiot every time I say mimosa. I’m sorry, I’m not getting drunk before I get in my truck and drinking a mimosa.

So it’s, you know, it’s creamy yellow. So something interesting happened and I’ve had this discussion with people about what the color rim should be. And this is where it gets a little confusing. The America Porsche Diesel Corporation quickly realized that if they brought a tractor into the U. S. that wasn’t finished, that it was a parts tractor or unfinished.

The duties and fees were greatly reduced. So the tractors would come into the port, and they would order rims and tires from somebody, which I’ve never been able to figure out who. They’d [00:15:00] show up at the port and put them on. Most of the time they showed up with rims that were painted creamy yellow. But toward the end, all the rims came in that primer greenish type color.

And I can’t remember what it’s called, but I think you know what I’m talking about. So they would show up in that zinc chromate type color and everybody said that’s the factory color. I disagree with them. I think it’s just that whoever America Force Ideas was ordering their, their rims from probably either it wasn’t on their purchase order, they didn’t get the memo, whatever, but they showed up with these zinc chromate colored rims.

It’s not wrong, but in my book, it’s not really right either. So with all my customers, I tell them the rolling chassis should be Carmine Red 3002. The rims should be Creamy Yellow 1014. This is the funny one. When you get to the seat, the top of the seat’s creamy yellow, the bottom of it is red. But not all the time.

Depending on the tractor that you [00:16:00] get, I would say 90 percent of the tractors I have received here Are the two colors, but I’ve had quite a few that were the seats all red or the seats all creamy yellow in that causes not really confusion, but the customer calls and they want that emblem or that detail.

It goes on the back of the seat. I asked them. What color are you painting your seat? Because I’m either going to send you, if it’s an older tractor, um, you’re going to get a, a tan one if it’s a true export tractor later on, they came out with a sticker that was kind of a bright yellow, and then for the tractors that came in with all creamy yellow seats, you had a red decal on there.

So I get real specific about what my customers have to make sure. That they’re putting their tractors back together as authentic as possible.

Crew Chief Eric: It sounds like the primary market was the EU with a 10 percent export. Let’s just call it that to the United States and probably to Australia. So majority of them are in Europe.

And then I’m sure most of [00:17:00] them have made their way over here. here via the gray market and other mechanisms, right? For collectors and things like that. But, you know, it kind of got me thinking I was doing a little bit of mental gymnastics and in my limited research on the Porsche tractors, I was, I saw that the average going price for one of these in 1950s dollars was about 3, 600 bucks.

So I was like, well, let me see what the conversion rate would be in today’s dollars. And it comes out to round about 41. 1, 000 in today’s money. So these things were not cheap, especially in post war Europe. This brings us to a conversation about competition. Porsche was not the only game in town, right?

And I think there’s some really funny stories out there about Lamborghini and their tractors and Ferrari and his Denso and his tractors and whatnot. So how did that all play out? Who else was making tractors? Who was Porsche competing against?

Sal Fanelli: Let’s go back for a second. So the price you quoted, the 3, 600, that was for a three cylinder tractor.

What Porsche quickly figured out in the U. S., the market was either for the [00:18:00] one cylinder, the junior, which back then was about 1, 800, or the three cylinder. Okay. Like you said, at 3600, it was a tough sell because they were expensive for what they were, but it was hard to convince people that the price of those tractors, there were advantages.

You got a diesel instead of a gas motor. You got something that’s got a lot of torque, you know, a one cylinder junior can do a whole hell of a lot more work. Than a two or a three cylinder tiny gas engine, you know, we’ll say in a farm all club. I’m not picking on cubs alone I have a cub I think everybody has one But anyway, so you could do a lot more with one cylinder diesel and when you get to the three cylinders Most things are beasts.

They’re unbelievable. It’s just the traction You know and the weight you could put on them, but the other advantage Back then was that it was air cooled. So no water, all those parts you have to worry about the fan belt, the water pumps, overheating, blowing gaskets. None of that went away. [00:19:00] Porsche advertised it as turbo air cooling.

I always got a kick out of the name turbo air cooling. But when you look at the squirrel cage in the front, the way it was designed. You begin to understand, you know, the turbo flow. I honestly can tell you like a three cylinder when it’s running right and everything’s clean and that fan’s doing its thing, that tractor never gets up to operating temperature.

So all these tractors had an air blade. that you could throttle back, slow down that airflow. And if you looked at the temperature gauge, it had a white zone, which meant it was too cold, a green zone, perfect operating temperature range, and a red zone. The smart farmer would sit there and adjust his air control flow valve and get that tractor running in the green zone for maximum horsepower output and torque.

People had to be taught to do that. It wasn’t just automatic like, you know, a typical thermostat on a car, you get up to 160, it opens and it controls itself from there.

Mountain Man Dan: So to add on to what you were mentioning, the Farm Wall Cub as a comparison being a [00:20:00] gasoline engine, the farm Wall Cub, I’m a little bit familiar with some farm walls because I own a super ray myself and, okay.

Yep. I grew up driving around on a farm wall cub that my grandfather owned, working in the fields and stuff. Farmwell cub was a four cylinder gasoline engine, which if I recall correctly. Around 13 horsepower, if that much, and exactly so you were saying that the single cylinder Porsche was roughly how many horsepower.

Sal Fanelli: So it was an early junior called the 111 that was 11 horsepower. But then the later one, the 108, which is the most popular one in the US. It was 14 horsepower. And then the later version, which was called a one Oh nine was 15 horsepower. What they did is the flywheel, the clutch pack and all of that kept getting heavier and heavier.

I mean, when you look at a one Oh nine, I’d have to look at the books. But the flywheel and the clutch mechanism weighs probably 150 to 160 pounds. So you get that thing spinning up. Boy, it’s got a lot of torque behind it. The master that i’m working on Of course, it’s a hydro drive. We’ll get into that later But that [00:21:00] hydro drive mechanism, along with its vocal gain or the dual clutch is over 200 pounds.

So when I have to take it apart, I have to take it apart piece by piece, by piece instead of one big chunk.

Mountain Man Dan: Our listeners will be able to tell, like, even though you were saying the, the lowest horsepower, the single cylinder was 11 horsepower. The amount of torque the diesels put now was way more than a gasoline engine, especially back in the fifties.

So for that’s a little tracker without less power, but easily double the torque of what one of the small farmhalls would. I can see how that’s a huge benefit to any farm.

Sal Fanelli: You’ll love this. There’s a 108 that I, I got out of Canada. It’s now sitting in a museum. The original owner bought the tractor, understood the whole diesel thing, but hated it because it was loud and it vibrated too much.

I got it. Okay. If you’ve got a properly tuned junior and you play with it and you slowly decrease it, You can get it to idle down around 375 to 400 rpm. Of course, you know, we’re talking about a compression [00:22:00] ignition engine. When that compression hits and it goes bang because of the rotation and all the mass, it almost lifts the left front tire off the ground.

Wow. So this particular individual didn’t like the tractor, didn’t like the noise, the vibration. It sat for years. It’s only got 10 hours on it. It’s not sitting in a, in a museum with probably 12 hours

Mountain Man Dan: on

Sal Fanelli: it.

Mountain Man Dan: That’s amazing that you were saying the RPMs were only down around 400 RPM. That’s a very low RPM.

Sal Fanelli: If you knew how to play with the governor, you know, and all that, you could do that. Generally, it takes a long time to learn how to do that. I mean, these tractors like to idle at around, you know, 5, 550. Max RPM on any of them is 2100. I don’t rev very high, but think about 2100 RPM and look at a master.

They got 200 and some odd pounds swirling around. There’s a lot of torque there competition back then, you know, I mean, there were a lot of different companies, you know, that competed the one thing that I’ve talked about to people for years, [00:23:00] Porsche diesel in Germany, never understood, they couldn’t figure out why they didn’t get more traction in the U S and I told them, basically, there’s, there’s three reasons, you know, it was the cost because of the cost of them compared to the other stuff we’re talking about.

All the hardware is all metric. I mean, you know, you don’t go into true value or whatever and go get yourself an M8 by 1. 25 volt. People look at you and you want a what? There are stuff that’s 516s in there. And then when you wanted parts, you had a right to the America Porsche Diesel Corporation at 808 Parker Street.

And, uh, Wait for them to send you a quote and then you sent them a check and then he sent you your parts and for those of us in the farming business, like, you know, if your tractor is not running, you’re not making money. I think that hurt him.

Crew Chief Eric: But if you look at, you know, historically, and you told me this story not long ago about, you know, Enzo and Lamborghini, you know, going at it and the tractors and all that, but Lamborghini is still making tractors today.

Which is kind of surprising. Porsche is not. I don’t think Ferrari is either. Although I hear rumors that Fiat [00:24:00] and Case New Holland are kind of in bed together, right? So there’s still some agricultural stuff going on there with the European makers. Maybe not, you know, with their brand name right up front.

So I think that’s kind of interesting. Have you looked at some of maybe the Italian tractors that were at the same time? Are they better? They worse? They about the same?

Sal Fanelli: There’s a Lamborghini tractor out there. I think the model is called an R1. I’m not sure if Porsche designed their tractor to compete against that or vice versa.

But that was pretty much competition if you’re looking at a, at a one cylinder. In fact, I think the Jay Leno race was a Porsche Junior against a Lamborghini. Again, I think it’s called an R1, I’m not sure. You know, that’s what that race was all about. But yeah, Lamborghini made very, very good tractors. I mean, most people don’t know that.

Lamborghini made tractors before he made cars. It was his meeting with Enzo Ferrari that led him to making race cars. Okay, we’ll get into that in another story. You’ve got them, you’ve got Deutsche, I mean, there’s, you know, there’s the webpage I don’t [00:25:00] happen to have up, but it lists all the different tractor manufacturers back then and some of the designs and what they were doing.

At that point Porsche just said, hey, there’s so much competition out there. And I think they just gave up. I mean, their next generation tractor, of which I’ve heard different stories, there’s either two or four of them that were made, or they took one of the four cylinders and made it four wheel drive, because they were the only company that didn’t have a four wheel drive.

Today, you pretty much have to have a four wheel drive tractor.

Crew Chief Eric: So that’s actually a really great segue. And one point of clarification as we do this, you’ve kind of mentioned some things that I hear either came from the automotive manufacturing side of the business, or maybe made its way into the automotive side of the house.

So I guess my question is, you know, did any of their agricultural R and D apply to the cars and vice versa? And one of the things I heard Was air cooling, right? Obviously famous for that with the beetle, the flat engines, you know, leading all the way through the nine 11s up to the nineties, right? Air cooling was Porsche’s [00:26:00] signature thing.

So that’s one that four wheel drive system. You hear about the Audi Quattro that came from the Iltis, which was a world war two Jeep, where they took that technology and put it into road cars. It seems like there’s a lot of back and forth between agricultural military and road vehicles. So how much Porsche technology went back and forth?

Sal Fanelli: When you look back, Dr. Porsche was designing a tractor and the engine was really, if you want to call it, it was modular. So, you have a one cylinder, which were the one series, then you had a two cylinder, which were the twos, then the three cylinder. All he did was stack cylinders on top of cylinders, next to each other.

Except for the crankcase and the crankshaft. Everything else was identical. No matter what year, make, or model that you have, all the parts are interchangeable. So if you’ve got a tractor today, those cylinders are still made because they fit so many different tractors. Now, again, we’re talking about air cooling.

So what does he do? He just takes them. He stacks them. He orients the fins all the same way. There’s a blower [00:27:00] mechanism. It’s over designed. And what he does is the sheet metal shroud Cools them, he just stretches it and makes it longer and longer and longer for two, three, or four cylinders. All the parts to hold it on, they’re all the same.

All the nuts and bolts are all the same. It’s just modular. And when you think about it, what was the Volkswagen? That’s a modular engine, right? You have a problem with the cylinder, you take that cylinder off, you throw the crap away and get another one. And that of course, you know, bled into the 356. So here’s the really cool thing.

And I tell people this and they think I’m nuts. Some of the parts in the one cylinder and the two cylinder tractors, you find the equivalents on the 356.

Crew Chief Eric: Really?

Sal Fanelli: There’s quite a few parts. I’ve told people, call me, go, Hey, I’m looking for a whatever. And I’m like, Hey, you know, go to any of the 356 guys and here’s the part number that you buy.

It’s the same thing.

Wow. Oh

yeah. Battery holes are the same. A lot of the connectors are the same. Some of the lights are the same. It’s really kind of funny when you get into it, that you see some of these similarities.

Mountain Man Dan: I’m sure [00:28:00] by doing that also after the war, because of coming out of, you know, lack of money, having it towards the parts could be interchanged, help them drastically get up off their feet and get things into production rather quickly compared to if everything is one good point.

Sal Fanelli: Yeah. Oh, yeah. But I mean, it’s, it also goes to the cost of manufacturing, you know, you’re gonna make 100, 000 or something, the price goes down. As compared to making a thousand or something. So you get that huge price break when the volume goes up. And once you set up the machines to do boring, the milling in the drilling and all of that, man, he did, they start cranking out parts.

Crew Chief Eric: So going back, you mentioned several times, different models, the junior, the master, et cetera. So are those more colloquial names for the different types like the three Oh eight and the one 11 and things like that, or are they different sized tractors

Sal Fanelli: to actually answers both? So a one cylinder is known as a junior.

It’s always been called the junior. So the difference is they had a junior that was a model one 11, then they had a junior model one Oh eight, then they had a junior model one or [00:29:00] nine. And then there were letter designators after that, that told you the way the tractor was configured. from the factory.

You know, a V, a G. The special one that everybody wants is a 108S. The 108S was a junior, but it was narrowed. It’s what they call a vineyard. So it could go up and down the vineyard rows without damaging the vines. There were 400 vineyards made between 1957 and 1960. 14 in the U. S. right now. I’m not sure how many were actually imported because we don’t have all the records.

So the ones that are in the country, I’ve got them all, uh, recorded and tracked. Those are all originals that I know of, but there now are a couple that have come in, you know, from overseas. But the really cool thing about the Vineyard S, for 1960, they only made 20 of them. So serial numbers ran from one Through 400.

So starting at serial number 381 and up, those were the 20 vineyards that were made in [00:30:00] 1960. And in my personal collection, I happen to have serial number 381. I just got lucky and found it and bought it. So then we transitioned to the two cylinders. And they have always been known as the standard, the standard tractor.

Don’t know where they came from, they just call it standard. But the thing is, it was pretty much the standard model for Europe. Everybody wanted two cylinders. Two cylinders seemed to be the best combination for them over there. So we’re talking about two cylinders, and we’re talking about like 208. After that’s the 217, 218, 219.

So all of those, uh, all those two cylinders were called standards. Some were called standard stars. Some were called standard exports. Specific configuration that they exported. Then from there, we go to the three cylinder, which is called a super. You know, you’re starting to get into a bigger, heavier, much beefier tractor.

Horsepower’s going up, torque’s going way up, tires are getting a lot bigger, and I’ll tell you, driving the three cylinder without front weights, yeah, you gotta be really careful. It’s got so much torque, [00:31:00] that front end will come up on you. Pretty much every three cylinder I’ve ever seen always has either three or four optional weights on the front.

Again, it’s just called a Super. Cool name. It’s amazing how many people call me and go, they want to buy a Super because of the name. They don’t want a standard because, well, that’s just a standard truck. It’s like, I don’t want a standard car. I want, you know, I want a better version. And then, of course, you get to the four cylinder, which is called the Baster.

The 419s, massive tractors, really heavy, lots of torque, lots of horsepower. You know, I wish you guys could be here to drive a Master. The one I currently have here, it’s a Master. It’s a four cylinder. It’s got 14. 9 inch wide tires on the rim, you know, on the rear, which is massive. And I tell everybody, when you fire that thing up, throw a little RPM to it, get up around a thousand RPM.

Put it in gear, let the clutch out, you don’t move. It rotates the earth up underneath you. That’s so much better. And you gotta [00:32:00] experience it. You really have to experience it. I mean, you get on this thing, you fire it up and you’re like, it’s a beast. They were designed to pull what they call a six gain plow.

Have a customer that has a 318. So it’s the same size as the Mazda, the transmission’s the same, wheels are the same. before he got ahold of me. He goes, Hey, I think my clutch is slipping. Like, what do you mean? Your question is slipping because well, it doesn’t seem to want to go anymore. So I went up, got on it, fired up, drove it around.

So there’s nothing wrong with this thing. He’s like, are you sure? I said, yeah, you have to understand these are. Lower geared tractors. They’re not going to be fast. They’re not going to haul butt down road at, you know, 20, 25 miles an hour. I said, but, you know, this thing will pull a six gain plow at 20 miles an hour all day long.

You’ll just never know. It’s just, they’re not designed to go fast. It’s really funny. The speedometer, so it’s of course in kilometers per hour. So thinking about owning a vehicle back in the late fifties, early sixties, that the speedometer was in kilometers per hour. Farmers are like, what? [00:33:00] When you got a tractor and the maximum speed on it is 40 kilometers per hour.

Well, we do the calculation. That’s 24 miles an hour. That being said,

Mountain Man Dan: a speedometer on a tractor is not a very common thing. So any of the older ones I’ve been around, I’ve never seen a speed at one. So that’s very interesting. They came with that.

Crew Chief Eric: This is

Mountain Man Dan: a Porsche. You expect a cut above everything else.

You know, we, we speak about this with cars all the time for the badging. And you were saying everybody wants to buy a super instead of a standard. It’s good to see that happens in the tractor world as well.

Crew Chief Eric: I would like a, a Porsche diesel turbo S thank you very much. Which actually is a great segue as we dive deeper into this technical part of the conversation.

I guess my question, you know, in hearing all this, and it’s actually really cool, even different sized tractors, motors, power output, and all that kind of stuff. Were they always naturally aspirated or did they venture into turbo charging? And I bring that up because Porsche senior is famous for being involved in the Mercedes SSK build, which was one of the early supercharged Mercedes, right?

So I’m [00:34:00] wondering if some of that technology made its way into the tractors.

Sal Fanelli: None that I know of. I’m like, I’m sure you guys are familiar with the famous tractor race at the last run sport. Kind of scary. They wanted me to go out there. I just refused because personally, I didn’t think it was a controlled event.

So you saw people out there trying to drive tractors and you probably heard all the gear grinds and stuff like that. Well, you know what? These don’t have synchro transmissions. Nobody really understood how to really drive those tractors because From what I understand, it wasn’t until the owners got there that they were told, well, you can’t drive your tractor.

A professional driver has to drive your tractor. Well, you know what? When you find that out, you begin to understand why Patrick Long won. He’s a professional driver. He’s got a Porsche diesel tractor. You got parts for me, you know, because he understood the tractor. Okay. And it’s not as if the junior is the fastest thing out there.

He just knew how to drive it. Um, and I can honestly tell you from that tractor race, I [00:35:00] have sent clutches and shift forks and all sorts of parts to about eight different tractors so the guys could get their tractors back up and running again. The reason why I bring this up is that it’s some of the juniors came of it, but the two, three, and four cylinders Came with, which was revolutionary back then, a hydro clutch.

Think about that for a second. It’s a hydro clutch. Today, we kind of call it a torque converter. So here you have Dr. Porsche designing this hydraulic coupler. Crankshaft’s turning this big ass flywheel, attached to the flywheel is an impeller. Separate from that, there’s another impeller attached to your clutch.

So these parts are spinning in fluid. So it’s got to spin and create fluid pressure to drive the other side. That in turn drives your clutch. So if you really know how to drive one of these tractors, again, we have to go back. They do not have synchro transmission. You do not shift on the fly. You take your tractor, you put in whatever gear you want, you let the clutch out, it’s not going to stall.

The engine will [00:36:00] finally build up enough torque through fluid pressure and start driving the other side and off you go. So if there was anybody in that tractor race that understood that. I would have got on that tractor, gone wide open, put it in fourth gear and let the clutch out and just hauled butt down to the track.

But these people are trying to leave in first gear and shift to second and shift to third. You know, all you hear was gear grinding and I mean, I sat there when I watched the video, I was like, Oh God, I don’t want to hear this. So, you know, of course, you know, Patrick Long’s got a 108 that doesn’t have a hydro mechanism in it.

So he just puts it in fourth gear and throttles it, you know, and off he’s gone. So that is one of the really kind of the innovative things that was going on was that. Hydrostatic coupler that he created, which made a huge difference because you could start out in any gear you wanted. I don’t know if it still goes on, but there’s a competition in California every year as to who has the slowest tractor.

The guys show up, they throttle, what are you going to laugh? They throttle their tractors down, they put it in gear, they let it [00:37:00] out and they measure it. Uh, yeah, yours is going like, you know, one and a half miles an hour. There’s an option for all the Porsche diesel tractors, but basically it lowers the gear ratio even more.

So you take your tractor, you go out there in first gear. I take that back. You don’t go up first, you go out in fourth gear. So you get maximum slow pitch. You put it in fourth gear, creep, it’s called the creeper gear. You put the creeper gear in it, you throttle it down and you let the clutch out, not enough RPM to really build up enough pressure.

They get this thing to move forward since it’s in fourth year, but it will finally start to move. And it crawls along at about a quarter of a mile an hour.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my God.

Sal Fanelli: He’s got all these trophies. He does the same thing every year. And I just laughed. He figured it out. You

Mountain Man Dan: mentioned the hydro coupler. Did they experiment with any like hydrostatic transmissions that were starting to be innovated at that time?

Are they all just manual or the hydra?

Sal Fanelli: Not that I’m aware of. They had that. And of course they had a separate hydraulic system for your three point hitch. What was nice about the [00:38:00] hydraulic system is there were ports in different places, if you wanted to tap off to it. To run another hydraulic mechanism for your planter, your seeder, you know, whatever those things are that people buy you

Mountain Man Dan: did Porsche themselves manufacture a lot of the implements for them or did they have third party companies that people would buy them

Sal Fanelli: from third party companies do that.

I don’t know who the companies were over in the EU. But in the U. S., they teamed up with a company called F& W, and the gentleman’s name, his last name was Funk, and the other gentleman’s last name W, I believe it was Williams, Williamson. You could order a Porsche diesel tractor, and if you wanted a bucket, a backhoe or something like that.

Porsche would get it to H& W, which was in Connecticut, and they would configure it with your bucket, whatever you wanted on it, and then transport it to whoever the buyer was. But H& W was the only authorized

Mountain Man Dan: company to do that. For the hydraulic systems they had, was it all Hydraulic fluid or did they use any sort of pneumatic [00:39:00] systems like some of the old farmhalls did?

That was all hydraulic fluid.

Sal Fanelli: The way the systems were designed, pump up in the front, and you could change the pump 5 liter, 10 liter, or 20 liter per minute, I think. But depending on what you were doing, if you needed more flow, two screws, take it off, pop the new one in place, exact same hose connections, and you went from a A 10 liter to a 20 liter per minute pump.

Mountain Man Dan: And then you mentioned for like some of the attachments, most of the Porsche tractors, most commonly with like two point or three point hitches on the rear, three point hitch for everything.

Sal Fanelli: Yeah.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah. No, during that time of the fifties, like a lot of the tractors and still had two points and the three point was the new thing at that time.

That was so much greater three point implement. It’s so much better than a two point. It’s, it’s amazing, much better control.

Sal Fanelli: Yeah, no, the only thing that I know of that you could order. From the factory to get delivered into the U. S. was a sickle bar mower. So the factory over in Germany would attach a sickle bar mower for you before it got shipped to the U.

S.

Mountain Man Dan: Was the sickle bar mower that they would provide, was it one [00:40:00] that sat on the back of the three point or was it one that tied onto the side of the tractor?

Sal Fanelli: Side of the tractor ran off a pulley, so in other words, a center mounted pulley. So all the tractors came with a shaft in the middle that you could mount a pulley on.

Mountain Man Dan: So they didn’t have to do like the farmhouse where you had to run off the PTO with all the pulleys drawn up underneath for a belly component.

Sal Fanelli: No, no,

Mountain Man Dan: I wasn’t going

Sal Fanelli: to buy one of those for mine. I’m like, uh, no. I mean they did it, got it. That’s really awesome. But I’m like, I really don’t need this. So kind of the interesting thing about horses is that depending on your make and model, you know, the juniors had one PTO off the rear, the two cylinders had one out the rear, one in the middle.

When you get to the three cylinders and the four cylinders, and some of them had two PTOs out the rear. One in the middle and then one out the front, you could actually get attracted with four PTO outlets, all individually controlled by, you know, levers in key positions. What style were they, were they live PTOs?

Mountain Man Dan: I mean, you mentioned they were [00:41:00] individually controlled, but I was just curious what style PTOs they work. So I know there’s like three or four different types.

Sal Fanelli: So the front PTO ran off the crankshaft, whatever the engine RPM was, that was the RPM going out the front. The cinema PTO and the rear top PTO were driven off the clutch.

So basically in which clutch was out, they engaged. And then the other one in the rear was engine RPM all the time.

Mountain Man Dan: So

Crew Chief Brad: a

Mountain Man Dan: lot of

Sal Fanelli: the engine RPM is it went straight off the back. It’s amazing

Mountain Man Dan: how different PTOs work and everything. Cause I’ve got. Other than my old Farmall, which of course, if you want the PTO to run, you have to have the clutch out because that’s a clutch PTO.

More modern tractor, I have a newer tractor, it’s a couple years old, it’s a Mahindra. Instead of just one to engage the PTO, it actually has its own clutch that doesn’t run off the transmission. So I engage it to turn it on and then engage the clutch by hand for it to run to where I can have the clutch in moving and the PTO

Sal Fanelli: works.

So the later generation tractors, like I’m working on a 318 now, [00:42:00] it’s still, it’s a double clutch, so when you Let the clutch out the initial bite is for the PTO and that last bite is for the transmission to move it. So you always engage the PTO first before you move the tractor

Mountain Man Dan: electronics on them. So like I mentioned for gauge, why they came with attack on them, what other sort of like gauges did they have as well as their charging system, stuff like that?

Like, were they six volts, 12 volts, 24 volts?

Sal Fanelli: So all the tractors were global. The early ones were. Two 6 volt batteries, and then eventually they went to a single 12 volt battery. Yes, and that’s only because the availability of 6 volt batteries was more common over there 12s. Totally no, but you know, so they have two batteries that are nested together.

So you open the cover, you slide out of the tray, and there’s your two batteries, you know, to service them. 90 percent of the tractors, that slide out tray is long gone, and everybody just puts a 12 volt battery in there. Which I completely understand. So for some of my customers, they want authenticity boy, I play health finding one of those trays, but I’ve got a lot of [00:43:00] outlets around the world, a lot of individuals that I can go to and, you know, when you find the parts that I need.

Now, when it comes to gauges, they were very basic. You could get a tractor that had no gauges at all, except for it had a device that they call the. Four function control lamp. What you and I would refer to as idiot lights on a dashboard of a car. Okay. One for oil pressure, one for you generating, make sure it was charging.

There was another one that would illuminate when you got low on fuel. And then the fourth one, it was where differently sometimes it illuminated when you had your high beams on other times it was a blinker because the EU is when they make a, a safety change. They don’t care if you’ve got a 2021 tractor or a 1954 tractor on road.

You have to go and update it. So that fourth bulb a lot of times was used to indicate that you have a directional light on someplace. So that was the basic dashboard. The next thing is pretty much everybody was smart. They put an engine [00:44:00] temperature gauge in it. Standard mechanical temperature gauge, you know, the pitot tube type.

Screws into the head, monitors the head temperature. You know, that’s cool. Then from there, on some tractors, have a speedometer with the odometer on it. So you know how fast you were going and how many kilometers you put on your tractor. Kind of cool. There’s another option for an hour meter. See how many hours were on your tractor.

What I’ve learned from my diesel tractor is more about how many hours you’ve got on it. When you do for service, not how far you’ve driven it. So like that, the bigger tractor, like the four cylinder, you could actually drill a hole and put a clock on it if you want to know what time of the day it was.

Right in the center of the dashboard, when you look at a picture of one, you’ll see this chrome cover. It’ll look like a pepper shaker. Okay, and that’s your glow indicator. So before you start the tractor, right, you put the key in, you initiate a switch, And you look through the pepper shaker, and in there there’s a wire.

As that wire changes color, as it gets brighter and brighter orange, that tells you how [00:45:00] hot your glow plug is. So once it starts to glow orange, you wait a few extra seconds and you pull the starter, So your fuel is getting injected on that and helps attract your start. There’s an interesting thing about this.

It’s got a really, really cool feature. So this glow indicator you put in the dashboard and it’s got, I think it’s an inch and a 16 nut that tightens it down. And then the chrome cap comes off separately. And I thought for the longest time, why did they do that?

Crew Chief Eric: So what you’re telling me, Sal, is They had a built in cigarette lighter on this thing.

Sal Fanelli: Bingo. Exactly. So you can take the cap off and when it glows, you can stick your cigarette in there and light it. I haven’t told myself like, oh, this can’t be. I came across a tractor once and I pulled the cap off and looked down inside and there were cigarette ashes in it. I’m like, I’ll be damned. Yeah.

And then next to the cigarette lighter, they had a power outlet. Which today we would call a cigarette lighter plug, but it was a completely different size so that you could pull power to run. I don’t know what that probably, you know, a work light or something like that. All those gauges, knob [00:46:00] switches were all very common in many cases, but we’re talking about Bosch.

We’re talking about Hella. They still make the exact ones today. So when somebody wants to restore their tractor, the authenticity, once I know the year, make and model. I know what horn they’re supposed to have, what kind of switches they should have, you know, what is your temperature gate supposed to look like?

So you can do all of it.

Mountain Man Dan: Speaking of the glow plug thing, I’m familiar with what you’re speaking of because some of the older military equipment that I ran when I was in the military had the same thing where you had to manually turn on the glow plug before you could start it. I wasn’t familiar with that.

They go out there and have the engine cranking over for 10 minutes straight with it not starting and you have to go back, look. flip this switch to turn a glow plug on, and they finally get it started.

Crew Chief Eric: To your point, Sal, about parts availability still being a thing today, 60, 70 years later on some of these tractors.

I mean, that’s, that’s awesome. And if you think about it, it’s also probably due to the fact that they actually made quite a A lot of these in a short amount of time, 125, 000 tractors is not a small order by any stretch of the [00:47:00] imagination, especially over slightly over a decade. So we talked about parts scarcity before in sports cars where you’re in low numbers, you know, they only built 1500 of them.

And even in the classic car world, it’s really, really hard to get parts, but it almost seems like for the Porsche tractors, even though they’re not. As famous as a Farmall or an international or John Deere, like we’re accustomed to here in the States. It’s actually pretty popular tractor in, in, in the reality of things.

So this is, this has been good, obviously for business and it’s good for the longevity of the brand. It’s actually really cool. And to your point, there’s a lot of really in very Porsche style, innovative features on a tractor. That’s 60 plus years old.

Sal Fanelli: Again, you know, we talked about commonality of all these parts, cylinders, pistons, all this stuff is available.

Cool. Heads aren’t, but I’ve got my own process where even if I get one that’s correct, I can save it and put it back together. So those aren’t a problem. But here’s a really interesting thing. If somebody calls and wants a wiring harness, I can get them a new [00:48:00] NOS wiring harness. They go, what? I go, yeah. The reason why I say that is because the same gentleman that made them for Porsche Diesel, In Europe, Phil makes them today.

He has turned the business over to his son. Which you can call him. He has, you know, the boards. So you put the wire up to a certain length and you cut it off here. You know that? To me, it’s a factory wiring harness.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah,

Sal Fanelli: absolutely. I’ve located the gentleman who used to cast the emblems. So the emblems that I sell people, the, on the side come from the same gentleman.

He’s in his eighties. The gentleman that makes all the trim work still makes it today. He’s in his eighties. It’s kind of cool because I tell people, so why are you selling reproduction parts? I mean, to me, if it comes from the exact same person and the same vendor, it’s not reproduction. It’s continuous production.

Absolutely. Now there are people out there that are selling, you know, repops, you know, as we call them. And I’ve seen some stuff come in from China. I’ve ordered some of these things just to look [00:49:00] at them. And I kid you not, I, I got a switch in a few months ago. That was a copy of the Bosch switch, you know, obviously made in China.

I got that thing. I stuck a key in it, started playing with it. Like I threw it in the garbage. Like I’ll never sell something like this to my customer. It was half price, but you know what? They’re not going to be happy with it. So in the garbage, it went.

Mountain Man Dan: I was I heard you mention the generator on them for these tractors.

Was it a standalone generator or was it a generator starter combination?

Sal Fanelli: Standalone generator.

Mountain Man Dan: I had an old main amp, a small one when I was younger, that the generator and the starter were one component.

Sal Fanelli: Most people don’t know is that if you take a generator and you put power across the field and all of that, it starts turning as a motor.

So that’s really how you check them. I get a tractor in, I’ll pull it off. I’ll do that quick little check and go, yep, it’s good. I mean, most of the times I still pull them down, clean them, check the brushes, you know, do all that, stick it back together. But people are always saying, is it hard to get a generator?

Actually, it’s pretty easy. They go, you get it from Germany? Like, nah, just go down to your [00:50:00] local Napa store and ask for a 12 volt generator for a 356. It’s the same damn thing. Like some of the filters, it took me hours and hours and hours, but I researched the original size, the micron rating, the height, all of that for the original Porsche tractor.

And I spent hours on the WICS site finding the equivalents to those, and I converted them to U. S. standards. So if somebody calls and says, hey, they need a fuel filter, well, you know what? Go down to NAPA and tell them you need this part number, and you’re good to go. Same thing with oil filters. So there’s really no reason to bring them in from overseas.

In fact, actually, the oil filters that I sell to people have better capacity than the factory and a lower micron level. What’s being filtered What’s going back in the engine is significantly cleaner than the factory filters.

Crew Chief Eric: And, you know, that brings up a really good question, Sal, because we’ve just done some episodes recently about oil and oil analysis and things like that.

We’ve had, you know, Liqui Moly on, we’ve had Blackstone [00:51:00] on, and it brings up a good question because the oils that were used in the motors and a lot of the petroleum products 70 years ago are different than they are today. Leaded fuels, how. Are you evolving or modifying the tractors to deal with low sulfur diesels?

And what type of motor oil are you running in these tractors in today’s modern times?

Sal Fanelli: When it comes to engine oil, do not use synthetic. Don’t use a synthetic blend. I call it, I jokingly refer to it as dinosaur oil. Go get dinosaur oil. Ford, Motocraft. Ford has a phenomenal diesel oil that’s old school.

And what’s nice about it, when you do the research on it, it has a higher level of zinc in it, which is what these tractors really want. Synthetic, all that stuff, you know, they’re taking all the zinc out of it. So you want the older, you know, again, I call it dinosaur oil. You know, you want that. The base Rotella works just fine.

You know, multi grade. These tractors are actually designed for straight 30. Yeah, you know, that’s fine. You can, if [00:52:00] you can find it, use it, but your standard out the door rotility, that’s a 10w30. Go for it, you know, and don’t worry about it. Hydraulic fluid, again, nothing special. Actually, these tractors, when it comes to hydraulic fluid, They were actually designed to either use a thicker hydraulic fluid or SAE 10.

If you can find straight SAE 10, just use that. Now, when it comes to diesel, if you look at the original emblems that the American Porsche Diesel Corporation put on the fuel tanks, It says specifically that these engines were designed to run a number two fuel oil. What’s number two? Home heating oil. So if you get home heating oil, run it on that.

And the reason why is because it’s not that it has more additives in it, but the way it’s processed, there’s things that are left behind. They run great on them. If you do have to use, pump diesel. See if you can find the station that has non road use diesel. That’s the way to go. I mean,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s, that’s [00:53:00] amazing.

I mean, to keep these things going after so many years is just absolutely incredible. But I think Dan has maybe other technical questions about the tractors.

Mountain Man Dan: Earlier, you’d mentioned that Porsche created the narrow model for in the vineyards. I was curious if they did. I’m all having like a hot proper designs and things like that as well.

Or if that was like the one, like off design that they built,

Sal Fanelli: I’m going to cover three different ones. So they made a vineyard model and they made the vineyards in the one, two and three cylinders. So the three Oh nine that I mentioned, I have here earlier, the three Oh nine was made as a vineyard. So you’ve got this 98 millimeter monster motor in this somewhat lighter tractor.

And it’s really narrow. It’s scary to drive because it’s fast, and it’s got that narrow word base. And if you turn a little too quick, you’re like, whoa. So you have to back off. And again, it’s a 98 millimeter. So it’s a bear. So they did that. So they had a vineyard. Now, the 3 cylinders and the 4 cylinders, [00:54:00] so the Supers and the Masters, you could order in what they call the high crop version.

So you went from the standard tire size, I know it basically back then was 26, you would go from a 26 to a 36 inch tall tire. So very, very tall tire, but narrow, not really wide. And your front rims, instead of being 16 inch, would go to 20 inch. This way the tractor would sit, you know, somewhat level. So yeah, they were called High Crops.

They had their own special fender configuration. Again, tall, narrow tires. There’s one for sale right now, like for example, in California. I know there’s one in New York. There’s not that many high crops around, but it’s, it’s a really neat configuration. An interesting thing about the high crop is if it’s a factory high crop, it actually has like a little baby step ladder that comes off the side of it.

So for short people like me, I got something to step on so I can get up in the tractor, get up there and drive it. But without that, It’d be like one of those running, leaping things for me, [00:55:00] you know. But that leads me into the neatest tractor that they ever built. And it was called a P312. They only made 200 of them.

They made them specifically for the coffee bean fields, the mountains, the coffee bean areas in South America. So they’re all in Brazil. Every one of them. Rarest hen’s teeth. There’s at least two or three in the U. S., you know, that I know of that have been professionally restored. It’s a really unique tractor.

You’d have to pull it up online, but it has this cowling that just continues along, you know, and sweeps over. Because they didn’t want to damage the coffee bean plants. So it was designed to take the branches and kind of gently, you know, move them out of the side. Couple interesting things about that tractor.

So when you think of tractors, we think about the weight of a tractor. Is it 4, 000, 5, 000, 6, 000 pounds? This coffee bean tractor had magnesium rims on it. Why they were keeping them light, I have no idea. It’s got little funny 10 inch magnesium rims on it. Yeah, they look [00:56:00] just like something that came out of the original Coopers.

I like mini Cooper rims, or Austin Cooper, I should say. So it’s kind of funny. So you’ve got this big shroud. I mean, it’s very artistically designed. I mean, you know, You kind of look at it and you go, gee, it’s got, it kind of got the lines of a three 56 and years ago I was traveling over in the UK and we got an email from a lady over there that had purchased one of these and wanted me to go look at it, figure out what was there, what was missing and all that.

I meet up with her husband and her son, you know, and we go out and we look at this tractor and there it is. It’s pretty much all there and I get on it. And what you quickly find out is that there are 312s around for sale, but most of them, all that sheet metal is missing. So it’s like, what do you do with it?

I couldn’t understand why until I got on the tractor and started it up. Again, right? We’re talking air cool. All the heat from that engine blows right on your face. It is horrible. No wonder they took the shrouds off for this thing. You had to get rid of the heat someplace. Of course. You know, so finding one that’s all intact with all the pieces, you know, [00:57:00] it’s really amazing.

But here’s the cool feature about the 312. The engine came with a whole box of parts and you could convert it from diesel to gasoline to kerosene to whatever else happened to have around that you could burn. Wow. It’s like a tri

Crew Chief Eric: fuel.

Sal Fanelli: Yeah. I really haven’t studied them all that much, but the way it was designed, you started it on gasoline because they only had like eight and a half to one compression ratio.

And once it got up and running and hot, You could switch it over to diesel. It would continue to run.

Mountain Man Dan: There’s a model or a farm. All that’s very similar to, I can’t remember the model of it, but you started on gasoline and converter. You switch it over the diesel.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re talking the same thing. How does that work without a spark plug though?

Sal Fanelli: I don’t know. I’ve never researched them. Of course, you know, I keep telling my wife I’m getting an airplane and go down and go buy one. But talk about one of the most dangerous things in the world you could ever do. Cause everybody down there, they like to deal in cash. Uh, yeah, I’m not going to walk around with 20, 30, 000 of a pocket.

Because they don’t even know where my body went. Right.

Mountain Man Dan: Well, you mentioned it [00:58:00] now, the three 12 was multi fuel all of the other ones diesel, or did they also have some gasoline engines or experiment?

Sal Fanelli: Only the three 12 was the multi fuel one. So they never experimented with gasoline or anything else. You know, early on, I mean, you know, diesels weren’t really well known back then, you know, people didn’t really talk about diesel engines and, you know, like everything else, he was just out there to perfect it and make it work.

Crew Chief Eric: Probably buddies with Rudolf Diesel, right? I mean, he’s got to get, he’s got to market his new engine somehow, right? If you think about the time.

Sal Fanelli: Well, yeah. But it

Crew Chief Eric: actually begs an interesting question that we didn’t cover earlier in Porsche fashion, right? Kind of looking at those motors back then, this would have been a pushrod engine or was it an overhead cam?

Sal Fanelli: These are all pushrod engines

Crew Chief Eric: with the collapsible tubes, just like on the flat fours. Yep, exactly. Yeah, so the

Sal Fanelli: difference is instead of it being a collapsible tube, the way it’s designed, the base of the tube has a long spring with a spot [00:59:00] washer and then a sealing washer. So what you do is you kind of put it in place and they have a special tool that compresses and holds it all together.

You get it where you want it, you line it up, you make sure it’s lined up, and then you just quickly pull this special tool out of the way, it pops in place. The first time I went to use it, I thought, what the hell is this? I couldn’t get it to seated right and all that. So I probably took some time, step back and look at it and figure out how I write.

This is how this really works. I’ve been using it the wrong way. And once I figured that all out and stuck it in there, I have never had one leak.

Crew Chief Eric: Get another carryover, let’s say from the beetle and any of those flat fours. Cause all the way through the nine 14, the big block four cylinder, they use that same technology, right?

Sal Fanelli: Yeah. The same thing that, you know, it said the company started here in the U. S. in 1956. And these special tools we’re talking about, I have them all in my inventory and I use them almost on a daily basis to work on customers tractors.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like the Schwaben tools for the modern Volkswagen. You got to have all this specialty stuff to work on these cars, you know?[01:00:00]

Mountain Man Dan: You were talking earlier about the fact with the Vineyard model, how it was kind of scary for the fact that you turn it, want to try to lean over. Porsche tractors, were they made as tricycle front Or were they all wider front end tractors?

Sal Fanelli: So no tricycle front ends at all. The junior, one of them came with a fixed width front end.

The others all came with adjustable. And the reason why is you can take your back tires. You’ve got the center sections that would go this way or this way. And then you can take the tires and flip them. So you can have, you know, various different widths and you could adjust the width of your. Front track can be the same as the rear.

Do threes and fours all have adjustable front ends.

Mountain Man Dan: Did they offer any door rear wheel setup or was all single rear wheel on those tractors?

Sal Fanelli: That’s an interesting question. There is one photo out there where there’s a junior vineyard with dual rear wheels. And I looked at that photo for the longest time and I’m like.

That’s had to be special rims. Being an engineer, I pulled mine out and experimented with it. [01:01:00] With the factory rims, you could actually take and put one hub on this way, put the other one on this way and line it up and it works and the studs coming out of it are exactly the same. Pure Sterling went out and found another set of rims and I’m currently creating a dually vineyard.

That’s awesome. Just because there’s one out there. David, I want to have the other one.

Mountain Man Dan: So I assume when you’re saying that the center hub of the wheel came out much like many of the older tractors did to where the center hub could come out to swap it to which direction and then the outer rim would actually bolt.

Sal Fanelli: Exactly. So that’s exactly what it is. So you take the center. Okay. That, you know, basically it looks like this and you take one and you reverse it. The vineyard they took and they reversed both of them, but tuck it in as closely as could be. Well, then you take another one of those and you flip it this way.

So you’ve got this configuration. Then again, the rims, because of the location of the lug, and where it is, because it’s offset, you could put it on, you know, and [01:02:00] change the stance of the tractor. So you take the inside flange, bolt it on this way. Take the rim and put it on so it protrudes into the tractor.

Then you do the opposite for the other side and you have this dual rear vineyard, which I laugh at because I thought the configuration of the vineyard, so it could be as narrow as possible. But again, these things have so much torque, you know, who knows what they’re doing. So I decided I’m recreating that one.

I went out and found a set of fenders for it. So it’s going to have dual wheel rears. That’s pretty cool. A little hot rod. So

Crew Chief Eric: let’s transition into our third section where we talk a little bit more about how you came into this business. Right. You’ve mentioned a couple of times, former engineer and things like that.

So tell us about the origin here, how you got into it. And you’ve told me in passing, there’s actually an interesting story about. This is the legitimate Porsche Diesel USA. And so let’s get into all that. Let’s talk about the business

Sal Fanelli: again. So the folks overseas decided they wanted to [01:03:00] try to sell Porsche diesel tractors in the U S in 1956, they create the American Porsche diesel corporation originally out of New York city, you know, and then they moved it to Pennsylvania.

They were in operation until about, I believe about 1970, because although they went out of production in 64, they still had to continue to supply parts for the tractors that were out there. And then sometime, I don’t know when, they shut their doors down. The last thing that they did is they went to all their dealers and distributors around the U.

S., borrowed all the parts back, and they sat in a warehouse,

Mountain Man Dan: You mentioned that they’ve moved from New York to Pennsylvania. Where in Pennsylvania were they at?

Sal Fanelli: It was 808 Carker Street, Eastern Pennsylvania. I was up that way a few months ago and I wanted to go back to the original site, so I pulled it up on Google Maps and did the map view.

It’s a parking lot. Oh, well, so the original Porsche Diesel Corporation’s been flattened. Oh, well, that’s okay. Employee number [01:04:00] one of the American Porsche Diesel Corporation, name is Roland. Roland’s now out near Colorado Springs. He finds the parts. He buys them from, I don’t know who the hell he bought them from.

He buys them, give them to him, whatever. And this is about 1990 ish. He starts selling parts to keep these tractors up and running. Or for the people who wanted to restore them to try to sell, you know, parts to restore them. I’m out in Yuma, Arizona. I’m doing some work with the Marine Corps, and a friend of mine is taking me to see this World War II Jeep that he’s restoring.

And as we pull into the area where the Jeep is, about 40 acres, and there’s just farm tractors all over the place. Well, the gentleman’s primary business was repairing farm tractors, but then also restoring them. Which is kind of cool. Well as he pulled I just happened to glance off my left shoulder and I see this unique looking red tractor parked up underneath the tree with this interesting [01:05:00] nose.

So I’m like, man, what is that? So we’re looking at the jeep and his name was Bill. I happened to mention to Bill, I said, what’s that red tractor up there? Oh, that’s a Porsche tractor. I said, oh, very funny. He goes, Oh, really? It’s a Porsche diesel farm tractor. What? Porsche never made farm tractors. He goes, oh yeah, they did.

Go look at it. So I walked over and here’s this junior. It’s a 108. It’s a G model, which means it came from the factory without any hydraulics on it. Oh, I’ll be damned. My locus is made in Germany. It’s got Porsche diesel on it. So I walked back. That’s amazing. Is it for sale? No, it’s my mom’s. Oh, okay. Years go by, his dad passes away, mom wants to reduce the inventory of this truck that goes up on the auction block, and I bid on it, and one, it comes here.

And that’s when I find, then it was called Porsche Diesel. So I get a hold of Roland, call him what I have, give him the serial number, he validates that it’s one of the original ones that came into the country, and I start buying parts from him to slowly do the restoration. He happens to mention to me in passing in 2009, that this is getting to be a [01:06:00] lot more work than he thought.

You know, he was getting on in age, you know, he really wanted to try to sell the business. He had mentioned it to people, and they all talked, but nothing ever happened. So we got into this great conversation, pretty quickly got the inventory, I see the price and all that, I’m like, the hell with it. I’m buying Porsche diesel.

My wife and I go out to Colorado. We do the inventory. We stick them all in U Haul and we drive back across country. And I set up Porsche diesel here and we named it Porsche dash diesel USA LLC. The significance of the dash is because the name Porsche is controlled by Porsche. You can’t use Porsche by itself.

So by having Porsche dash diesel. I’m legal. I don’t have to really worry about them, you know, and they don’t really give me any trouble anyway. So we started Porsche Diesel USA. Then happened to be talking to a friend of mine who’s good friends with a lawyer who looks at trademark stuff. And I went, could you have him check and see what happened to the original company name, which was the America Porsche Diesel [01:07:00] Corporation.

And they check. And when they shut down the operation, they vacated the name. It was never trademarked, never registered. So we have applied. For that name. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. So the paperwork’s in. So as I understand it, it won’t be long. And I can actually call myself the America Porsche Diesel Truck Corporation.

Just like they did in Eastern Pennsylvania back in the 60s.

Crew Chief Eric: You mentioned at the top of the conversation, there was something important to remind you about, about the AP and the AP changing. And it has something to do with the company history. Yes,

Sal Fanelli: yes, yes. Thank you for reminding me about that. So if you remember in the early days, it was Elgar Porsche.

Well, Porsche Diesel decided that. There were a couple of model extractors they wanted to keep that were the same as the Elgar’s. So the AP, they changed to mean aluminum Porsche. Oh. Because there were, there’s a series of the, only the two cylinders or the crankcase is made out of aluminum instead of cast iron or cast steel.

So whenever, yeah. So whenever somebody says, I [01:08:00] have an AP, I go, do you have an Elk eye or do you have an aluminum portion? You have to know because, so the differentiation is between up to 1956 and then 57 on out, any of those tractors that they call the P218s are also known as an AP. Which it means aluminum Porsche.

Crew Chief Eric: So I gotta ask, did they let you join PCA with one of the many tractors that you have, or do you own a Porsche road car as well?

Sal Fanelli: So the answer is I own a Porsche road car. I own a 2016 GT4.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh wow,

Sal Fanelli: congratulations. Yeah, it’s something I’ve wanted for years. You know, I kept waiting for them to come out in 17, then 18, then 19.

I’m like, okay, they’re never going to reintroduce this car. So I started looking around for a used one, found one at one of the auction sites. I bought it really right because I submitted my bid and the auction site froze up. So all the other people were bidding on it. Their bids were never accepted. It’s the only reason why I have the cards.

I got really lucky. Anyway, the guy that owned it before me, we still keep in touch. He just bought a [01:09:00] 2021 and the standard joke with him is It’s like, okay, 2021. So in 2024, I’ll call you so I can buy your used GT4 and I’ll sell mine. We just laughed about it. He’s a great guy. He’s a, he’s a pilot for United.

Just a super guy. Been a member of the Porsche club for years. Cause my original Porsche. I bought an 87, nine 11 target. So it wasn’t until, you know, just recently when I got the GT four, cause my membership had lapsed. And when I put in for it again, they agreed to let me keep my same Porsche club number and all that.

I can’t think of her name right now, but the lady that runs the Porsche hospitality tents at the various races, for example, like VAR, she has asked me to bring a tractor to the next VAR. So I’m hoping that. The master I’m working on is going to be done in time for that. It’s October, you know, and I’ll bring that down, show people, teach them about Porsche diesel, Porsche diesel truckers, you know, because what [01:10:00] they do in the hospitality tent is they have presentations by different people, you know, 20 minutes.

Um, you know, in between races and stuff, and maybe she’ll give me a spot to do a presentation on the tractors.

Crew Chief Eric: I’d ask and wonder if your GT4 is Carmine Red with Mimosa colored wheels, you know, because we have these, these fancy terms, but, uh Racing

Sal Fanelli: yellow. It’s racing yellow. I did my damnedest because I did not want a white or a black or a gray one.

There you go.

When you eliminate those three colors, you’re down to red. There is a green one out there. Like there’s a guy in Arizona that owns a Brewster Green one, which is really kind of awesome because it’s the same color that they use in the 3 56 for one year. I think it was like 1962 or something.

Yeah, one those made, and there’s been a few that have shown up that are red, but when this yellow one popped and it was in, in Staten Island and New York. I just got really lucky that I was able to buy it

Crew Chief Eric: earlier in the conversation. We talked about what it would cost in today’s dollars to buy a Porsche [01:11:00] tractor.

And obviously there’s more in the country now than there was ever before. And I’ve heard many a time that the Porsche tractors are actually quite sought after as collector’s items in your opinion, as a professional and being at the, kind of the top of this. What does the aftermarket look like for somebody that would want to get into a Porsche tractor, and what does it cost to, you know, maybe restore one or in terms of like price to maintain and things like that.

So why don’t we unpack that a little bit?

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah. Please. Also, to add that for someone who’s looking to get into it, is there a particular model you would recommend over the others for someone to seek out

Sal Fanelli: Good questions When it comes to the tractors. Most of your collectors want to buy juniors, and the reason why, they’re lightweight, they don’t take up a lot of room, they’re easy to maneuver, you want to bring it someplace you don’t need a big trailer, okay, and those are probably the most popular ones, and you see prices on those all over the map, seeing them as low as 5, I’ve seen them sell as high as 71, [01:12:00] 000.

Only on break in trailers, though. Don’t get me going on your 71, 000 tractor. But anyway, an unrestored running Pantene tractor should be between 10, 000. That’s about what there were. Some people will tell you they’re worth more than that. Some people will tell you, no, it’s not that much. But you have to look at the individual tractor.

What’s there? What’s missing? What kind of damage is there? How well does the engine run? I’ve come across juniors, you know, for three and four thousand dollars, but the problem with those is that they’ve got four or five thousand dollars worth of parts that are missing. If you’ve got a damaged hood, if your hood can’t be fixed, you’re out of luck because you can’t find the hood anywhere.

Fenders, somebody can probably duplicate hoods, really, really difficult. All the engine parts available, electric, all the gauges we talked about, the wiring, all that stuff is there. So if you’ve got one that’s running, You’re talking at least 5, 000. Now, a junior restored depends on, you know, your make and model again, because some of them were very basic, a very [01:13:00] basic restored tractor should go for probably 20, say basic, I mean, another frills, no hydraulics, you know, and all that.

And then you get into the opposite end of the spectrum. Uh, as an example of vineyard, a professionally restored concourse level vineyard is worth, you know, like 65, 000. Because again, there’s not that many of them, especially if you have like one of mine, which was a 1960. The later versions, the 109 vineyards, I’ve never seen one because again, there were only maybe 50 or 75 of those made.

I have to pull out the Bible and get you the real number. Okay. That’s why I have that book, you know, by my wayside all the time. So if you were to find a decent running one cylinder tractor in junior, And buy it for in the 8, maybe 11, 000 range. Depending on what you wanted to do with it, if you wanted a real true restoration, now to me a restoration is where you completely pull it apart, clean up everything, rebuild stuff as necessary, and replace the clutch and you’ll put it back together.

[01:14:00] You’re putting 10, 000, 12, 000, 15, 000 in it. There are people out there that just do repaints. They leave the wiring harness alone, you know, they just throw some paint on it. They still look good. But to me, that’s not really a restoration. Now, what I’m coming across now is something in between. They’ve done the homework and they’ve done a really, really good paint job on it.

And they’ve gone through and they’ve done some work on the engine and maybe it still has the original wiring harness, some other stuff. So I referred, um, I came up with a term. I call them repurposed. It’s a repurposed tractor. It may or may not go out into the field. It may or may not be sitting in somebody’s showroom, but all those repurposed tractors show up.

On the 4th of July at a parade someplace and it’s really cool to see. A lot of the folks that I’m working with, you know, my age or older, they just love taking them to parades. They just think it’s really cool. The two silver tractors, I mean, they’ve gone up in value, but not as much as you would think.

And I think the reason for that is the name. It’s It’s called the standard and everybody thinks, well, it’s just a standard. Yeah. It’s just, it’s a nomenclature [01:15:00] thing. Then you get to the three cylinders. The real collectors are starting to get into the three cylinders because it’s a super, you know, I’ve got a couple of guys I’m working with, they finally understand, you know, they’re buying two summers, but the three cylinder tractors, you know, they’re 20, 30, 40, 000.

Now there’s a tractor for sale right now. I’m not pimping this tractor, but. Here’s an interesting one. Here’s a tractor that Porsche Diesel sent to F& W to have a bucket loader and stuff like that put on it as a demonstrator, which they did. And they demonstrated the tractor. It’s never been sold. So it’s still on my records as an unsold tractor.

So I tell everybody who’s called me about it. It’s like, hey, If you’re interested in that tractor, and you buy it, F& W will give you a sales receipt, and I will write you a receipt to prove that that tractor was never sold to anybody. Think of that. That’s a 50 some odd year old tractor that’s never been sold.

Still on the American portion of the U. S. Registry as an unsold tractor.

Crew Chief Eric: I think that sets the [01:16:00] record for Brad’s lost and found on the drive thru of the oldest thing that you can still buy new off a dealer lot.

Sal Fanelli: This is it. That tractor is currently sitting right here. So it’s got, it’s got some leaks. I’m going to turn the leaks for it.

I tell people it’s like, it’ll be sold to you and you’ll be the original owner, factory certified.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s awesome.

Sal Fanelli: Because the one thing that’s nice about having the American Porsche Fusel Corporation, I’ve got the listings of all the serial numbers of the tractors that came into the U. S. And you know how Porsche Cars North America will give you a, well they used to call it a Certificate of Authenticity, they keep changing the name.

I can do that now for your tractor. I just finished tracing one that came from Europe, got shipped to the West Coast, was sold from the West Coast distributor. I found the original receipt to the original owner, who never sold a tractor. His son’s restoring it. So I’m putting together a letter for him that says, this is what it was made.

This is what it was shipped. Boom, boom, boom, boom. You’re the original owner was passed down to you from your [01:17:00] dad. I think that’s pretty cool. So the three servers, you know, three servers are getting upwards, you know, into the low forties. Now that we come to the master, if you can find the running master for less than 65, 000, you need to buy a couple out there that are really, really rough can buy them for less.

But. When you look at them, you know, the engines need to be rebuilt. Hoods and fenders are in rough shape. It doesn’t have the correct wheels and tires on it. Okay. It’s a master. It’s running everything else you can fix. There was one recently that the guy advertised as a 419. And in the Porsche world, I have a 418, which was a 95 millimeter system.

The 419 was a 98 millimeter. They only built 50 of them, I believe it was. Okay, this guy claims to have one. So I saw the data tag. The data tag is correct. There’s a tractor. It looks correct. But I asked him if he could validate the fact that it had 98 millimeter pistons. I never got an answer. So I was [01:18:00] talking to people who are thinking about why and I said, look, if you look at the data tag, you can see those are not, the factory never used hollow rivets.

They used what they call dry block rivets. Those are hollow rivets. That data plate’s been off and back on. Unless I see the engine number with the born on date. Did I explain? I’m going to give you guys a lesson on born on date. Um, with the born on date and the same thing with the transmission with its born on date.

I can’t validate that it’s a 419. Well, it didn’t sell, but the bidding only got up to half of what they thought they were going to get out of

Crew Chief Eric: it. And what were they thinking they were going to get? I’m just curious.

Sal Fanelli: The guy was hoping to get two hundred and some odd thousand dollars out of it. Whoa. He claimed he had sold one recently, another one.

So wait, wait, wait. The rarest hen teeth and how’d you end up with two of them? Apparently claim to be sold another one for right at 200, 000. Good night. I’m not sure what it got up to, but they finally, you know, pulled the blinds open and said, well, the minimum bid was 185, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: Never got that. So [01:19:00] what’s the elusive 312 go for since they’re pretty rare as well.

Sal Fanelli: Oh, in the U S they can fetch up to a quarter of a million dollars. Wow. But it has to be all there. So when I say all there It has to have all the shrouding and this and everything else, the magnesium rims, not the steel rims and all the parts that you can convert it. If you wanted to permanently convert it from one field to another, to another, all of that stuff is almost impossible to find.

There’s actually a website in Brazil, but there’s a guy down there that has a couple for sale and they’re 75, 80, 000, which is a pretty decent price, but you’re looking at picture. You had no idea what it looks like underneath because nobody ever, you know, Lifts the skirts and shows you what’s up underneath there, you know, and you know, as well as I do Bondo does wonders for like six or eight months, right?

A hundred percent. So typically if you’re looking at a master, you’re looking at somewhere in the 70 to 125, 000 range. And that’s stripped. So in the case of [01:20:00] mine, I’ve got the front weights, the rear weights, I’ve got, you know, all the PTOs, all the PTO covers. The three point mechanism in the back had a bazillion pieces.

I’ve got ’em all. There’s a seat that goes between the fenders. ’cause you have to remember, back in Germany, some people bought tractors instead of cars. So they would have a seat so they could put the family on and go to church on Sundays. Mine’s got the original seat on it. Wow. You know, so all of that just starts adding and adding and adding to the features.

And then I have a full dashboard, so I’ve got this pedometer, you know, I’ve got all the gauges and everything on it, and now it’ll work. So that drives the price up.

Crew Chief Eric: So you mentioned a couple times now, tractors in use, and so I’m wondering, are people still using these tractors for what they’re intended for?

Are they mostly museum pieces or collector pieces sitting in storage somewhere? Or is it kind of a mix of everything?

Sal Fanelli: It’s a mix of everything. So I have tractors that I’ve done for collectors that sit inside museums and air conditioned, perfect environmental conditions. You know, that’s really cool. The last two I just delivered [01:21:00] were tractors that were used on farms that the people sent here.

One came from North Carolina. The other one came from Virginia for service. They hadn’t been serviced in years. So I did a complete service on them. There’s one gentleman that he really wanted his tractor back before the July. I’m thinking, hey, I got it. He’s a farmer. Is there a crop that’s got again or something?

Does he really need it? So hurry up and got it done. No, no, no, no, no. He wanted to put it in the 4th of July parade, which is cool. So, I mean, he took this tractor home to North Carolina and he sent me this awesome photo of him in the 4th of July parade. There’s another one that I delivered back to its owner this past weekend.

Same thing, service. It just needed to be completely serviced. It had some lakes where it really wasn’t quite running right. Took care of all of that. He has a 200 acre farm that he uses his Porsche diesel tractor on. So, yeah, I’ve got customers, you know, that do all sorts of things with it. But yeah, there’s quite a few in the U.

S. that are still This 1951 that I was telling you about, until the guy [01:22:00] brought it here a couple years ago, he was still using it. He had a mower that he was pulling behind it. He had seven or eight acres of grass that he was mowing with it. Unbelievable. I was like, dude, you got a 1951 Porsche diesel. You got an Elgar Porsche.

It’s the oldest one in the world that’s still running. You’re doing what with it?

Mountain Man Dan: The limited research I did prior to this for Porsche tractors, the one thing you mentioned about them having a seat on them. That was one of the biggest things that popped out to me because all the years I spent riding one offender that was hard as could be bouncing up and down.

I would have loved to have had a pack. Sit on while riding along on a tractor.

Sal Fanelli: Well, the interesting thing about the seats, so of course you’ve got your driver’s seat and they had different configurations of seats you could put on top of each of the fenders. Now, when it came to the junior, it was just this light tubular one because the fenders weren’t really structurally designed for average 150, 160 pound person.

It was really for like, you know, the kids or the grandkids, you know, to go for a ride, but two threes and fours, they had real seats, [01:23:00] structural steel, wood slats that you could actually sit on and go for a ride or go to church. But the really cool thing is that one of the options that came along late was a cushion for those seats.

So you could actually put cushions on the seats as you drove around on them, which is kind of neat. I’ll tell you again, if you guys ever want to come down and drive one of these around. I’ll tell you, driving a Porsche diesel tractor without a cushion, it hurts. They have no suspension. You said you’re doing research.

Take a good look at the design of the seat, the bump. Biggest bump in the world and it’s in the worst possible place. It’s a

Crew Chief Eric: horribly designed bicycle seat. That’s for sure.

Sal Fanelli: Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: So Dan, I think you have some wrap up questions. You wanted to ask

Mountain Man Dan: Sal with your restoration work as you were talking about the different levels of restorations or anything.

I was curious about a couple of things. One is for the collectors. How are they with authenticity? Are they very picky about [01:24:00] that? And I’m sure that those are more complete, definitely are what draw the bigger numbers. But then like for your website, you claim New old stock or reproduction parts for the stock.

What sort of parts commonly go bad? Like what is one of the biggest parts that you sell?

Sal Fanelli: Two good questions. Let’s get to the restoration thing. First, if a customer sends me a tractor, asked me to find the tractor to do a restoration on, we sit down and I go through the tractor, top to bottom, front to rear.

What do you want me to do? And I tell them, I say, you know, are you looking for a true up restoration? Or I’m going to go completely through the engine and rebuild it. Or are you looking for a repurposed tractor where I’m going to replace what I have to replace and leave everything alone? Do you want a wiring harness?

I painstakingly go through all of this stuff, all these different pieces and parts, and I give them an estimate for what the cost is going to be. They also estimate my labor hours because when it comes to parts, last October, November, the exchange rate was. 1. 05. [01:25:00] So it was 1. 05 to the euro. Today, with our economy, it’s up to almost 1.

25. So the price of parts has gone up 20 percent ever since the election. This is why I tell everybody, I will estimate it for you because I have no idea. what the exchange rate is going to be tomorrow. So what I encourage folks to do is that if you want me to do a restoration, let me buy the parts now.

Fork over this major chunk of change now so that we’ve got the parts here and we’re fixed on the exchange rate. It may go down. It may go the other way. You never know. You just have to hope for the best. So the killer right now is wiring harnesses because the exchange rate has gone from 105 to, like I said, you know, 125.

The cost of shipping to get one here has gone up, and the cost of copper has gone up. I used to be able to sell, for example, like a junior wiring harness for about 410, 415. That same wearing harness today is over 500. Jeez. There’s somebody in the U. S. that makes them at charges of 1, 000, so it’s still cheaper.

So I tell [01:26:00] people, it’s like, you know, I don’t know what the cost is going to be. Now I’ve got somebody that I just got done quoting a clutch kit for, for his three cylinder. Today, it’s gonna cost you right at around 1, 200, the longer you wait. I have no idea where it’s gonna go. I sit down, ask them exactly what they’re looking for, tell them the levels that I do.

For example, like my trackers, anything that I can disassemble and take off of it. I have a friend of mine that runs a powder coating facility. Funny as this sounds, R A L 3 is a standard color powder coat. He takes my stuff, he blasts it, he acid s washes it, puts everything together, and I get it back powder coated.

And what’s nice about powder coating, Mike Jr. I take it to shows. I really don’t care if people climb on it. You’re not going to hurt it. Armor

Mountain Man Dan: code is extremely durable, which is much better than paint.

Sal Fanelli: Exactly. What’s really cool is to see the glow in some little boy or little girl’s eyes when they know they can sit on this really, really cool tractor and have mom and dad take a picture.

I mean, it just makes my [01:27:00] day. So that’s why I do that. When it comes to the restoration, I detail the hell out of everything. So these customers are exactly. I signed a document. They sent a document. They know exactly what they’re going to get when time comes. You know, this is not a mass process shop. I don’t do one a week.

It takes me anywhere from 18 to 24 months to do a tractor. Honestly, I won’t do more than one at one time. I’m going to focus on that tractor. The last one I did when it was quote unquote done, I sat back. I looked at that tractor for three weeks and kept changing stuff because it wasn’t good enough for me.

When I delivered it to the owner, he had other restoration experts come in and look at it. There’s not a one of them. Had a single complaint about the tractor. Not really proud about that. Yeah, so what you’re gonna find with these tractors is the ignition switch is the biggest pain. And the reason why is it sits there on the dashboard.

It’s at 45 degrees and it’s an open hole. So later on, Porsche came up with a little flip over cap. So you have to lift the cap, put the key in it. When you pull the key out, it closes [01:28:00] it. Ignition keys, you know, aren’t really a problem anymore. You know, the little glow indicator, you get dust and dirt down there, it’s not too bad.

The early wiring harnesses were actually a little too undersized, so you did have a problem with wires getting hot, so you have to watch for that. I tell all my customers, like, I’m not trying to sell you something, but you ought to replace the wiring harness and reason why, and this is, here’s all your reasons.

And I can send you pictures of tractors that have caught fire because of wearing heart problems. Other than that, really what you get down to is the early tractors, the valves that were designed, the materials that were designed, were really substandard. What happens after a while, you’ll have, you know, today’s valve spring pressures are real high, right?

We’re talking about valve spring pressures of like 25, maybe 30 pounds, that’s it. But the valves eventually, because of the heat and all of that and material that’s selected, they actually have a tendency of rounding over and getting pulled up into the head. And what happens after a while is they [01:29:00] break and they drop down a cylinder and then you’re done.

I tell my customers, it’s actually cheaper for me to sell you a cylinder kit, which is a cylinder The pistons, a new wrist pin, and piston rings. As compared to you sending your cylinder, I have to bore it. I have to order a custom sized piston and put it back together. The difference is a few dollars and you have it in a few days as compared to months.

Usually it seems to last forever. Of course, you know, 50, 60, 70 year old tractors, you’re going to get leaks from various seals and all of that. Over the years, as I’ve had to replace a seal on a tractor, I’ve done the research and converted that European seal to a U. S. equivalent. You call and go, hey, I need a crankshaft seal.

I tell you, hey, go get a, um, a CR and I give you the number and it’s, it’s the same damn thing. But the other thing that I’ve done is I’ve also converted them from a single lip. They’ll be good for a hundred years from now.

Mountain Man Dan: And then you mentioned telling your customers, it’s sometimes easier to order the [01:30:00] piston wrist pin and all of that for any of the cylinder heads on those.

Do you have them re sleeved? Is there still production of those where we can get new ones?

Sal Fanelli: Now cylinders, new production today, they’re available. Really what I do is I just, I order a single part number and you get a new cylinder, you know, and everything that you need. And then what I do, I think you guys are familiar with this, but when you put the cylinder on.

There’s a critical height that you have to maintain for a diesel. So you get the right compression ratio. Well, there’s a stack of shims that goes up underneath that. So what I do is I, there’s four different sizes. I send my customers a complete kit and I charge them for four shim. I said, but you know, if you don’t need them.

If you don’t want them, send the ones back and I’ll refund your money. The ship kits are like 28. So, you know, it’s like, you’re going to use one. What are you going to do with the, you know, the other three, you don’t need to be wasting that 17, 18, whatever it comes out to, you know,

Mountain Man Dan: other than doing the restores yourself and everything.

Do you offer parts to say someone like myself, who’s a DIYer that [01:31:00] works on my own equipment and things like that?

Sal Fanelli: Yeah,

Mountain Man Dan: absolutely.

Sal Fanelli: I primarily started out the business to supply spare and repair parts. The net transitioned into repairing cylinder heads because the issue with these tractors, if you run them too hot aluminum head, it’ll crack.

Sometimes they’ll crack by where the fuel injection port is it’s inside. It doesn’t make it, it doesn’t make any difference, but if you run them too long. Hot. They’ll crack in between the intake and exhaust valves. And if the crack goes deep enough, you’ll have cross flow. I’ve got a process set up now with a friend of mine that runs a machine shop.

Heat the heads up, pop the valve seats out of them, cut it down, heli arc it, rig it. We got a CNC machine. We re cut everything, put it all back together. You can’t tell it’s ever been done. So I save the heads. That’s awesome. Okay, I do all that. I do that for customers. I have four reconditioned heads sitting, you know, on the shelf.

So if somebody sends one in, I just take one off the shelf, you know, and ship it to them. So their tractor’s not down for months at a time. It’s down for just a couple of weeks. But everything else is available for [01:32:00] folks. If the wiring harnesses, as an example, are custom ordered, I don’t keep them on the shelf because, you know, I have to know the year, make, and model.

You know, did it come with directional lights from the factory? Did it have four way flashers? Did it have The trailer socket on the left fender, the right fender on the outside of the fender or on the inside. Those are all significant changes to get the specific wiring harness that you need for your tractor.

But getting the wire harnesses four or five ways.

Mountain Man Dan: Very impressed with the fact that the wire harnesses are half if you order them from Europe than if the gentleman that builds them here in the U. S. That’s an amazing thing. Finding in the U S is cheaper, but for the people that you mentioned, the gentlemen that wanted his tractor back for 4th of July for the parade, other than things like that, because I know recently in the past week or two, there was a Jack town tractor show up in banger PA, which is primarily for gas and steam engine tractors.

But I’ve myself, uh, tractor shows I’ve been to. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Porsche [01:33:00] tractor in person. Is it a common thing to where they go out to these other shows or do Porsche tractor shows tend to have only the Porsche tractors at them?

Sal Fanelli: Well, there’s only ever been one Porsche only tractor show, and that was held Hilton Hut Island, South Carolina, about eight, 10 years ago.

And my junior wasn’t ready, but it was for Porsche tractors only. I have no idea how many showed up, but I believe it was about 50 or 60 of them. Here’s the amazing thing is that the majority of the Porsche diesel tractors are sold in Pennsylvania. So you would think that they would show up and it shows up there, but they don’t.

What we find out is that most of them are out in the field. Some place just got stuck over in the corn because it didn’t run anymore. There’s a gentleman up there right now. That’s got a master. He goes, are you interested in buying my master? I’m like, yeah. Well sure, send me some pictures about how much you want for it.

He goes, well, you can have it for 500. I went 500. Send me pictures right away. It’s just the chassis. Everything else has been taken off of it. There’s no wheels. There’s no tires. There’s no front suspension. The engine’s gone except for the block. I’m like, [01:34:00] I can’t do anything with this. It’s really. And I said, wait a minute.

I said, is this a 408? He goes, yeah. I said, oh, it’s got a broken crank. He goes, how’d you know that? Like, I know, but you can’t do anything with it. Okay. The transmission’s good, but what do I do with just the transmission? You know, I, you know, who knows if something’s ever needed, but I was just surprised that you don’t see more of them in Pennsylvania since they were so popular.

But going back to what you said, I took my tractor. You’re going to love this story. Once a year in the area, they have a concourse, the elegance for German vehicles only. So it’s Porsche, BMW, Mercedes. They won’t let Volkswagen in. They won’t let Audi in. I have no idea why, like, wait a minute. So I find out about this show and I submit an application, 1960, Porsche.

Model 108. I just leave it at that. I thought they’re gonna lock me out of this thing. 10 15 minutes later This guy said, hey, congratulations. We’d love to have you come and bring your Porsche. He goes da da da da I show up the guy at the gate is like, uh, [01:35:00] sir. This is an attractor show I said no, this is the concourse the elegance for german vehicles.

Here’s my application. Here’s my approval to be here He looks at me and goes I have no idea What they’re going to do with you, but just go to the top of the hill. So I drove up to the top of the hill and the guy that ran the, um, the Porsche stuff, he’s like, Whoa, what did I improve this? I said, yes, you did.

He looked at me. I went, I know you didn’t really read it. Did you? He goes, no, he goes, tell you what you unloaded here, park it over there. So I loaded it and parked it. Well, he had. Put me way the hell out where nobody was going to be. Like, uh, no, I’m not playing this game. So I fire the tractor up and I roll it up to the top of the hill right at the beginning of where the, um, all the Porsche cars are.

And of course, a lot of attention. People loved it. And, um, you know, they shut the show down and it’s time for awards and I’m going to fire the tractor up and put it on the trailer. He goes, where are you going? So I’m going to go home. He goes, no, you need to go to the award ceremony. They gave me this giant plaque for the most unique portion in the show.[01:36:00]

So I got this big, beautiful award, you know, it’s see through. So I, so, you know, so I hold it and you can. You can see what it says. You see the red tractor in the background and you know, they present it to me and everybody’s, I’m really happy. I got, this is really cool. I got my first award with a tractor.

And as I walk away, the guy follows him and he goes, don’t come back. He did not let me come back. That’s awesome.

Crew Chief Brad: I

Sal Fanelli: got my tractor award. I don’t care. Life is good. Yeah. I take my tractors to, you know, as many shows as I possibly, you know, when I have one, I brought my junior to a tractor show is called the father’s day car show in Manassas, and they allow tractors.

So I register, I go up there. I got there early, but really not. And people are coming by and I’m answering questions and, and there’s a couple of gentlemen that are walking, you know, down the street and they had these clipboards, which I didn’t quite figure out initially. I see one of them point to my tractor and start laughing.

And he’s like kind of tapping his butt, he’s laughing at it, you know, and all of it, and joking back [01:37:00] and forth. And as they get closer and closer, this laughter goes away. My wife is like, what’s going on? I’m like, I’m not really sure. I’m going to meet him at the tractor. So bright sun, shiny day, we were hiding under a tree.

So I walk out and I meet him. And I said, do you have any questions? And then he looks at me and goes, is this really a Porsche deals with tractors? I said, yes, sir, it is. I didn’t know Porsche made tractors. So I gave him the whole story. He goes, this is amazing. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t even know this existed.

He goes, I’ll be back. And he takes off. Didn’t think much of it. Another gentleman shows up who’s a Porsche technician. Been working for Porsche for years. And I’d only heard about the tractors. Didn’t think they actually existed. And here was one. He’d never seen one in his life. I’m like, look at it. Get on it.

Play with it, you know, enjoy it. Well, the guy that was the clipboard, next thing I look down, he’s got like 10 people from all the clipboards blends up, be in the evaluation committee and they’re all looking at my tractor and they’re asking questions and can I open the hood? And what’s this doing? What about this?

And can you start it? I’m just having a great time with these guys. Of course, I walk out with first place, [01:38:00] but it’s nice to have the trophy, but just the education to teach people as to what these things are. And that, you know, and Dr. Porsche actually did the tractor when the production of a tractor before he did the three 56 just blows people away.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. I could not agree more. And you know, Sal, as we close out here, I want to give you an opportunity, if at all, are there any shout outs, any promotions, anything you want to tell the audience, anything coming up that we should be aware of?

Sal Fanelli: I’m doing my best to get the master done so I can bring it down to the VIR in October.

I kind of want to go down there. I actually, two years ago, I delivered a two cylinder to one of the race teams down there. One of the owners wanted a Porsche diesel tractor. So I brought it down to V. I. R. I delivered it and he was driving it around V. I. R. over there. That’s kind of cool. I tried to convince him that we needed to take his tow vehicle, you know, to pull the car onto the racetrack and then hook up a strap and pull it with a Porsche diesel tractor.

But he’s like, but that’d be a really [01:39:00] good idea. There’s only one problem. I said, yeah, I know it’s too slow. He goes, yeah, exactly. The other thing that I tell people is yes, I run the business. Yes, I own it. But if you want to call and get technical information, it doesn’t matter if you’re buying parts or not for me, I don’t care.

I just want to see as many of these tractors. Up and running and people enjoying them as possible. Just reach out. If, if I don’t know the answer, I’ve got sources all over the place. I’ve got rolling out in Colorado point number one for the America Porsche diesel corporation. Just a great guy. What I do when it comes to parts, I give everybody the lowest possible price.

And again, it’s all based on. What I have in stock and, uh, what the exchange rate is.

Crew Chief Eric: Sal, you know, I think this might not have been the episode everybody was expecting when they read the intro paragraph, but I tell you what, I think we all got an education tonight. This is a corner of the motorsport and or sports car adjacent world that now we all have a different outlook on.

I mean, [01:40:00] incredible that brands like Porsche, like Ferrari, like Lamborghini

Mountain Man Dan: I’m going to say the Porsche tractor truly gives new meaning to grassroots.

Crew Chief Eric: All that being said, Porsche Diesel USA is a full service provider of parts and support for your Porsche diesel tractor, whether you own one or now you’re thinking or considering one.

For more details on Porsche diesel, be sure to reach out. To Sal at Porsche Diesel usa@gmail.com or check out www.porschedieselusa.com and use the contact us there form there, or just reach out to Sal directly. Like he said, he’s a wealth of information. He’s very well connected and you know. Maybe further your education on these absolutely phenomenal tractors.

So, Sal, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show. This has been awesome. Dan, I thank you for coming on and sharing your expertise in this arena. So thank you both. And this has been awesome.

Sal Fanelli: Great talking to you guys. And hopefully, [01:41:00] you know, the next time we have our poets thing, maybe I’ll bring a tractor up to it.

There you go.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www dot gt motorsports dot org. You can also find us on instagram at grand touring motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization. And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

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Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to Break Fix Podcast
• 00:27 Porsche’s Diesel Tractor History
• 01:40 Dr. Porsche’s Early Tractor Development
• 02:28 Post-War Production and Collaborations
• 04:05 The Evolution of Porsche Diesel Tractors
• 07:15 Porsche Diesel Tractors in the US
• 10:01 Technical Specifications and Models
• 12:05 Color Schemes and Export Details
• 17:31 Competition and Market Challenges
• 25:30 Technological Innovations and Legacy
• 37:44 Hydraulic Systems and Attachments
• 40:29 PTO Configurations and Gauges
• 46:38 Parts Availability and Restoration
• 53:09 Special Tractor Models
• 01:02:34 Business Origins and Expansion
• 01:10:26 Rare Porsche Tractor Colors
• 01:10:55 Porsche Tractor Market and Restoration Costs
• 01:11:37 Popular Models and Their Prices
• 01:13:46 Restoration Levels and Repurposing
• 01:17:02 Collector’s Market and Authenticity
• 01:20:43 Porsche Tractors in Use Today
• 01:24:16 Challenges in Restoration
• 01:33:01 Porsche Tractors at Shows
• 01:38:16 Conclusion and Contact Information

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