What Can Tell Me About Pneumatractor?

Ductape · Aug 26, 2007

Saw this not too far from my house. I could help but stop and take a couple pics. Looks to have two engines, but the rear one just compresses air. This appears to have been driven to where it is parked, and looks to be functional. Anyonw know if the tractor is driven off the crank, or is it powered by an air motor? If its driven off the crank, what was the purpose of the huge compressor and air tank? I'm guessing this was not the hot ticket for working in tight quarters. Interestingly, it has an IH vin tag on the back.

74clueless74 · Aug 27, 2007

Nothing, really...never heard of one 'till I read your post, but if you Google pneumatractor or Schramm (the air compressor outfit) Pneumatractor a bunch of prior postings come up. One says runs on 3 cyl, compresses on three, like a LeRoi; sounds fascinating, but it's bedtime here. With sympathy, Bud

Grrrr · Aug 27, 2007

I think it might be like the predecessor to the modern loading shovels with a compressor on the back.

But I dunno.

Farmwithjunk · Aug 27, 2007

Ductape said:
Saw this not too far from my house. I could help but stop and take a couple pics. Looks to have two engines, but the rear one just compresses air. This appears to have been driven to where it is parked, and looks to be functional. Anyonw know if the tractor is driven off the crank, or is it powered by an air motor? If its driven off the crank, what was the purpose of the huge compressor and air tank? I'm guessing this was not the hot ticket for working in tight quarters. Interestingly, it has an IH vin tag on the back.

It's essentially a self-propelled air compressor. The engine is used to power the compressor AND to propel the tractor. They weren't intended for general "tractor" jobs. Most I've seen were used to pull rock drills, or other air powered implements from work site to work site. Most of them I've seen were used in road construction or in mining operations. Believe it or not, those things were once fairly common. Portable "tow-able" compressors made them obsolete.

tommu56 · Aug 27, 2007

Schram had one built on the ford 300 6 cylinder it uses 3 cylinder to run and 3 to compress. some were built in to tractors or a road maintainer type thing

tom

74clueless74 · Aug 27, 2007

There's a site (courses something, under pneumatractor, I forgot to note it) with a thumbnail of Shramm that mentions these, described as "...a self-propelled air compressor unit...designed to operate with a front end loader, snowplows, backfill blades, front and rear winches, mowers, posthole diggers, rotary blades, pneumajuck (jackhammer?) and more...". Various other postings describe how the front 3 of a 6cyl are conventional, the rear three being the compressor, just "floating" when pressure up or compressor not being used, like some LeRois. While it might pull itself around on 3cyl, you wouldn't think it could do much work on 3 cyls...The rig pictured seems to have the diesel driving a separate 4 or 6cyl compressor, which would seem to leave enough engine power to actually do some work (I assume the compressor would "float" at such time). The thumbnail says or implies they were quite popular in their time; probably getting rare as a couple other posts said repair parts were very high priced.