Hi all, Looking for some information.
We have an old minneapolis-moline manure spreader on our farm covered in weeds and all rusted up. This was my grandfathers and is a horse drawn but was later used behind a tractor. My dad and I finally got around to loading this thing up and are planning on restoring it. We are not sure what year it is or really anything about it. My dad only remembers sitting on spreader seat behind the tractors working the levers as a kid. We are wanting to get this as close as possible to it's orignal looks. If any body has any information at all that could help us that would be great.
Here are some pictures:









ID


Seat fell off

 

Looks alot like this old one with wooden sides.

 

Awesome, sure does. Thank you very much for the picture. If you have any more please post. Thats the closest I have seen. Where did you get the pic?

 

That was common for horse drawn spreaders to be converted to tractor pull.

Since Horses don't generally come with PTO output those type of spreaders were ground driven.....

When I was a kid my dad had a spreader similar to that. There was a flat steel seat where you sat to drive the horses (it had long since been converted to tractor drawn, which basically consisted of bolting two pieces of flat iron to the tongue so you could hook to the draw bar of a tractor) there was one leaver which engaged and disengaged the ground drive mechanism and another which adjusted the apron chain speed.

People would sometimes install chains in the winter onto the rear spreader wheels because they would skid on the snow in the winter time with a heavy load on the spreader and not drive the machine. The chain gave the drive wheel traction to run the spreader.

 

Found this by doing a Google image search

 

This is great. Thank you very much for the info and pics. That is exactly what it must look like, the seat is the exact same with the toolbox too.
Thanks!!!!! anyone come across any more pics or info, keep em coming

 

Anyone have any idea what year the spreaders in the pics are? Still curious about the year of this thing

 

These guys might be able to help.
http://jetstar.minneapolis-moline.com/main.php