I've seen a bunch of David Bradley, 2 wheeled tractors for sale recently, for really cheap. How useful are they?

Do any of you have one, or have experience with one?

Keith

They were built at the Bradley Factory in Bradley Illinois, a suburb of Kankakee. My grandfather worked there back they made plow shares. That's all I know about them.

It depends on condition of course and what attachments you would have for it. If you have the front end loader, pallet forks, sickle mower, blade and plow; it sure beats doing the work by hand or working with a horse. But you'll accomplish more with a more modern tractor.

I see them at antique tractor shows and I gather there's a niche group of collectors and restorers really into them.

The concept is legit as there were others at the time like Gravely that made similar machines and there are still two wheel tractors being made today. Mostly in European or Asian markets but there are several makes imported here like the italian BCS and Grillo by EarthTools out of Kentucky. I seem to recall seeing an asian make advertised on the web as well.

I have a gravely. It works well, but I wish it had more power. I have a rotary plow which I never use, a sickle mower which I have used, and a rotary mower which I mostly use. I modified the split rims to put wide oversized tires on it and now it doesn’t get stuck as easily in wet ground.

Troy Built makes a dandy!

Have my fathers Troybilt Horse that he bought new back in the 70s before they were cheapened up. It still starts on the second pull after winter storage...that ol girl has turned some dirt in her day

there is a guy with a huge collection of them on youtube he shows many of the implements , the cool part was so many of them were made with such common parts at the time they are very interchangeable with other parts from the same time

it depends on what your use is.

Back in the 90s I had a couple of the David Bradley tractors along with a lot of the various implements and actually used them in and around the place to take care of 18 acres including 3 acres of garden and plow a 50 yard or so driveway during the winter, they did the job ok but a couple years later I got a Minneapolis standard twin two wheel tractor and that made the DBs look like toys, that Minnesota twin pulled a plow through the ground like it was nothing, cut hay with a 4 foot sickle and raked it up with a 6 foot dump rake all while you rode a sulky, I know sounds old fashioned or eccentric but it was fun and I was only feeding a couple of goats and a couple of horses

The DBs plowed the driveway just fine as long as the snow didn’t get much over 7/8 inches or so, the Minneapolis didn’t care it once went through knee deep snow like it wasn’t there

I later sold everything to a collector when I moved to a larger place and bought an actual tractor, but man I still miss that Minneapolis it was just fun

That collector took that Minneapolis to various farm shows ect and it always got a good showing, he had totally restored it but he told me he hadn’t had to do any motor or transmission work on it, both of those were stupidly easy to work on so I had done work on them myself

The DBs are fun and will work just fine in gardens ect but if your serious look for a Minneapolis standard twin their more expensive but far better IMHO anyways

Thanks to everyone who responded. I might get one. I've been seeing them in the $300.00 to $400.00 range, usually with a couple of attachments. That's cheap enough not to be much of a risk.

Will the sickle bar cut thicker weeds and light brush, or just grass, clover and alfalfa?

Keith

Weeds and brambles even horsetail and those thick thistles but no on the light brush unless your talking new of year pop ups

mine is an old gravely not a DB, and its been a couple years or more since I've used the sickle bar. But it would handle thicker weeds and light brush. I ran it through coral berry ("buck brush").

There's some videos on youtube.

Those gravelys have a lot more power the the DBs but the DBs do have a brush cutter if you can find one and they work quite good for light brush up to about pinkie size or so not as good as a billygoat or DR but they can do an ok job

I don't know how the gravely brush cutter compares the DB brush cutter, but I have one. here's a thread elsewhere with my gravely when I modified it for wide tires. It has the brush cutter on it in those photos. In heavy grass with the brush cutter is when I wish it had more power. It has so much rotating mass it will cut about anything for a second or two (saplings or whatever), but an ongoing load of heavy grass bogs it down.

Believe me it’s worse with the David Bradley’s, the brush cutter on them works on high grass with some weeds ect but clogs really fast if you begin to push it any even in higher grass

It’s sort of like trying to cut knee high grass with a lawnmower, go forward a bit, pull back and repeat