Borrowed these photos from a FB post. Brings back many memories of my rice farm moonlighting days(and nights). These rice eating machines were the Cadillac harvester back in the day. Equipped with a single or twin CAT engines and longgggggg D4 UC. The late George Rankin (R.I.P.) was an integral part of these machines. I’ve witnessed him strip one of these monsters down and reassemble in short time! Muddy fields were never an issue for these machines.

A little more on the Hardy

Thanks for the video Gary. If I had hadn’t served time locked up inside one of those cabs, I’d probably want to go drive one again. The video makes it look like it cuts WAY faster than in person 😝.
On a good day, we only averaged 25 acres per machine. The owners had about 10-12 of these monsters.
We purposely did not clean the upper portions of the windows, due to the excessive heat generated from all of the glass. Left enough to see the header!
These machines were so basic compared to say, one of Bruce Petty’s lean mean green wheat cutting machines!!!

"Neil" wrote:

Good shot at the 4:40 mark of the two engines - I presume one for threshing and one for traction?

Yessir. Twin engine model utilized an Allis Chalmers HD-5 transmission;
Both usually CAT V8 1160, etc., if upgraded to full hydrostatic transmission, it relied on a sole 3208T.
I think the hydrostatic units only had 2 speeds, just like one of the foremen:
Slow, and SUPER Slow!!!

At one of the California shows I was talking to George's wife and she said that they had the change to purchase Hardy before they shut down.