Before & After
RESTORATION OF THE MONTH
'Winning Personality' Makes '29 Rumely a Keeper
Nebraska man restores 70-year-old classic
By Leslie McDaniel
Photos by G. Wayne Walker Jr. and Ted Shultz
Ted Shultz has been involved in enough restoration projects to know at least one absolute: "Almost everything you restore will fight you, to a certain extent," he said. The 1929 Rumely 20-30W Oil Pull he's completing is no exception.
"We've done an awful lot of work on it," he said. "When we got it, the valve keepers were the only thing missing. At one time, it'd had a buzz saw on the front of it (the last owner used it mainly to cut wood with), so we had to take that off. The draw bar, and one steering end, were busted.
Ted, a fiberglass fabricator specialist at Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Waverly, Neb., is the third owner of the nearly 70-year-old classic. It was one of his first collectible tractors.
"When I bought it in 1975 (for $1,750), I didn't know what it was worth," he said.
Ted didn't touch the Rumely for nearly 15 years. In the last three years, though, he's rebuilt nearly everything on it.
"There had been mice in the top," he said. "They'd built a nest and ate away a whole section of the radiator. It took me a month to rebuild just the radiator." As time passed, Ted made progress on the project. He began to know the tractor; began to almost understand it. "My son had it running in his shop once," he said. "We tried again this weekend to get it running, and we've got some pretty good blisters on our hands. It fought us. Every tractor, every engine, has its own personality."
And the Rumely? Ted responded without a moment's hesitation.
"It's a female."