Manure Spreader Turned Into “Minnesota Ferrari”

By Leslie C. Mcmanus
Published on November 30, 2012
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The radiator from a Minneapolis-Moline tractor finds new life as a grille. An antique copper teapot serves as radiator overflow and a galvanized washtub covers fan blades.
The radiator from a Minneapolis-Moline tractor finds new life as a grille. An antique copper teapot serves as radiator overflow and a galvanized washtub covers fan blades.
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Padded seats and a sound system: all the comforts of home. Taillights and a tag holder are housed within an old chicken feeder on the back end.
Padded seats and a sound system: all the comforts of home. Taillights and a tag holder are housed within an old chicken feeder on the back end.
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Bruce at the gear.
Bruce at the gear. "When I drive it," he says, "people pull up next to me and ask, 'What in the heck is that?" 
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Cast iron seats — each with a backrest formed from a five-tine fork and hames — offer authentic if unconventional seating.
Cast iron seats — each with a backrest formed from a five-tine fork and hames — offer authentic if unconventional seating.
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The David Bradley spreader's original drive gear got a promotion: Bruce used it for the vehicle's steering wheel. 
The David Bradley spreader's original drive gear got a promotion: Bruce used it for the vehicle's steering wheel. 

There were rare tractors and engines at the Little Log House show last summer, no doubt about it. But a street rod crafted from a 1947 David Bradley manure spreader generated the most buzz.

Created by Bruce Bauer, Hastings, Minn., the vehicle many refer to as the “Minnesota Ferrari” is an inspired vision of salvaged farm relics. Bruce pretty much made it up as he worked. “I had no plan at the beginning,” he admits.

A tinkerer by nature, Bruce worked 35 years in maintenance at Land O’Lakes Inc. “There were lots of times at work when I had to be inventive and create a solution,” he says. “I really like to make weird things. When I need something pretty hard, I’ll go to town and buy it.”

The spreader’s hideaway headlights, for instance, gave him fits. Bruce originally planned to make them from round bowl drinkers, but the concept just wasn’t working. “Then I woke up one morning and had a great idea,” he recalls. “Why not use John Deere corn planter boxes?” Stabilized by antique wrenches, the manually operated planter boxes contribute a certain understated elegance to the overall design.

And so it went, in a unique blend of ingenuity and orneriness. How else to explain back seats fashioned from padded toilet seats (“for comfort,” Bruce notes), an old sewing machine treadle as a gas pedal and an air cleaner (“with big blowers!”) made from a milking machine? Milk cans became mufflers; a cow stanchion, framing a panel of safety glass and supported by a hayfork’s tines, makes a handy windshield.

A two-man crosscut saw seemed predestined for use as dashboard. The saw’s blade, however, was so hardened that Bruce couldn’t cut it. Undaunted, he headed to Curly’s Welding in nearby Red Wing. “He has underwater computerized plasma cutting equipment,” Bruce says. “There was just no other way to do something like that.”

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