Second Act for a Fox

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Doug Malueg’s fully restored 1974 Fox 6644 corn chopper. Gloria Hafemeister

You’d think the biggest headache would come from rebuilding the Fox, which he stripped down to some 500 individual parts. In fact, says the Marion, Wis., man, the real challenge came in re-creating the final look, which involved 47 different stickers. These included danger, caution, lubrication, starting and Fox 4WD stickers. “I took pictures of my machine and two other identical ones in the area to get the total collection of decals,” he says. “Some of mine were worn off, and some of the stickers on those other two machines were worn off too, but I got pictures of an entire set.” He turned to the Fox Sign Co. (no relation to the Fox Tractor Co.) for the decals, laying a tape measure beside each decal so the company would have an exact sense of size.

At first, Doug says, the people at Fox were reluctant to tackle the project because it was different from anything they’d done. Plus, all the decals were in different fonts and sizes. “Eventually they accepted it as a challenge,” he says, “and I couldn‘t be happier with the results.”

The other big challenge was construction of the yellow spout. “You can’t buy that part anymore, and nobody is making it,” he says. “So I took one off another machine, took it all apart, and cut everything to within a 16th of an inch. When I had a duplicate made, I put the original back on that chopper, and painted mine. It took me two weeks of nights and weekends to make it.”