Rather than shell out big bucks for tidy, lightly used tractors, Cumbrian outfit ADJ Contracting has a penchant for the well-worked, dogeared and unloved.

The trio behind the business – Ashley Benson, Dave Marwood and James Rawsthorn – then set to work, stripping away body panels, splitting gearboxes and opening up engines.

See also: 20-year-old John Deere telehandler gets perfect £20k refurb

Any mechanical maladies are properly rectified and inherent weaknesses upgraded before they’re treated to a cosmetic makeover.

Another trademark move is to extract as much power as possible, helping them keep pace with far more modern machines.

The aim is to not be too greedy and risk pushing key components beyond their limits, but any breakdowns are treated as fair game and they’re usually built back stronger.

All the more impressive is that each member of ADJ carries out this work, and their contracting duties, around other careers:

Ashley is a digger driver, Dave a car mechanic turned wind turbine engineer, and James is an independent agricultural engineer.

When they featured in these pages two years ago, a Case IH 5140 Plus, Ford 8240 SLE, John Deere 6400 and 6600 were their front-line machines, with a broken-down MX110 mid-makeover.

Since then, the John Deeres have been moved on for a profit and a McCormick MTX 140 and Claas Ares 816 have been drafted in, both of which have needed attention.

Though some of the firm’s machinery is collectively owned – mainly forage harvesters and associated silage kit – tractors belong to each member individually.

The Ford and Claas are Ashley’s, Dave owns the MX110, and James has both the 5140 and the McCormick to his name.

Souped-up McCormick

The latter is the tractor that’s furthest from standard spec. When James bought the 2003 model two years ago for £12,500, it was on 7,500 hours, looked a little jaded and was stuck in four-wheel drive.

Replacing the solenoid soon solved this problem, but the legacy of the former owner using it like this meant the four-wheel drive clutch pack was on its last legs.

He decided to split the tractor and replace it, nipping some other potential problems in the bud while he was at it.

This included forward and reverse clutch packs, plus a new charge pump to make sure the hydraulics were fighting fit.

“You can have the biggest and best hydraulic pump out there, but if the charge pump supplying it is no good, you’re wasting your time,” he says.

The Perkins Phaser 1006 engine was another area to address as this was decidedly flat for its claimed 145hp.

After trying and failing to extract more power by turning up the screw on the factory Delphi fuel pump, he decided to replace it with something superior.

“It just refused to pump a proper amount of fuel, so I thought I’d fit it with a Bosch VE one instead,” says James.

A suitable donor was sourced from a New Holland TM135, which he then had to make fit.

This process involved fashioning a custom spacer so that it could be mounted in the timing cover, altering the tractor’s fuel feed, bending the injector pipes to fit and making a new throttle linkage.

Then came the challenge of getting the timing right. “I had some idea of where it should be, but I essentially winged it,” he says.

“It popped and banged a bit it to start with, but I eventually got it running smoothly, starting well and not getting too hot – all that pointed to it being about right.”

To put an extra spring in its step he fitted a larger turbo salvaged from a DAF 45 lorry, which also donated a cylinder head from its Cummins engine to Dave’s MX.

Together, these modifications gave it a formidable boost in performance, with it reading almost 200hp on the dyno before he decided to back off.

“I thought I might be pushing my luck so wound it down to 180hp, but it’s still probably putting out about 190hp at the flywheel,” says James.

“The engine note barely changes up the hills around here, and if you hit a lump with the drag chopper, it just puffs out a bit of smoke and carries on.”

Smoother ride

Comfort has been addressed by replacing the rubber cab mounts with a custom suspension system.

This uses brackets off an Iveco-era McCormick, which were cut and rewelded, along with spring/damper units from a more modern Italian-built model.

Improvements in ride quality are modest during general driving, but it removes the harsh jarring when bumping over tramlines or hitting potholes on the road.

Attention has also been given to cab wiring as James’s generous selection of work lights was forever melting fuses.

He solved the problem by pulling the relevant wires off the back of the original fuse board and rerouting them to a heavier-duty version bought from eBay.

At the same time, he added an isolator switch so that the front and rear lights could be turned on and off individually.

Another recent addition is a Deutz-branded Sauter folding front linkage and pto that was purchased second-hand for £800.

Substantial modifications were required for this to slot in place, including shaping the front framework to miss the bonnet, cutting off the original side plates and welding on McCormick-specific ones from an old Farm Force linkage.

All he needs to complete the job is a shaft from the crank pulley to the pto box, which importer Jacobsens GFM has said it can provide.

Once this has been done, he plans to get a front mower to run in tandem with his Claas Disco 2700 C Contour.

Also relatively new is a set of Vredestein 520/85 R38 and 420/85 R28 tyres, which he sourced for a sensible price.

“They’re really good tyres and I like the tall profile as it gives me a bit of extra speed on the road.”

The final task will be to treat it to a full respray with Lechler 2K paint in a colour scheme similar to the factory original.

Seized Case MX

The only tractor to enter the ADJ fleet as a bona-fide non-runner is Dave’s 2001 Case IH MX 110.

This belonged to a contracting customer who had left it running on a mixer wagon – all the water leaked out, causing the engine to seize.

They wanted rid of it, so he bought it off them for £8,000 and stripped it down to assess the damage.

Two of the cylinders in the 5.9-litre Cummins were shot, so he got a mobile outfit to bore and reline them in-situ.

New big end bearings and shells were then fitted, along with small ends and pistons, and it was treated to a fresh oil pump and second-hand cylinder head.

Finally, the tired viscous fan coupling was replaced with a rigid unit to prevent it overheating when working hard.

Once back to full health, the pump screw was turned until it delivered about 150hp.

This puts it in the same ballpark as an MX150, with the benefit of a lighter and more nimble chassis.

“It doesn’t have the same power off the mark as James’s MTX, but it’s got loads of torque so hangs on better when pulling heavy trailers,” says Dave.

Like that tractor, it has been split to have a series of jobs carried out: handbrake, four-wheel drive clutch packs, charge pump, forward pack and reverse pack.

At the same time, an additional support for the four-wheel drive shaft was added.

This was a factory modification on later tractors and it helps prevent the shaft wobbling and wearing out the taper roller bearings.

Once it was mechanically sound, Dave treated it to a full respray with 2K polyurethane paint, opting for a heathy dose of gloss black to go with the original red.

“I did all the prep work, but I wanted a nice finish so got someone with a booth to spray it.”

Other finishing touches include a stainless-steel exhaust from JLB Custom Fabrication, the same cab suspension setup as the MTX and a set of 520/85 R38 and 420/85 R28 MRL tyres.

High-hour Ares

The most recent addition to the line-up is Ashley’s 14,000-hour Claas Ares 816 RZ with front linkage and pto, which had been lurking at the back of Rickerby’s Carnforth depot.

Most of the hours had been racked up on verge and hedgecutting duties, so it was mechanically sound and hadn’t been flogged to death.

That said, the paintwork was jaded and there were enough niggles to put off many potential buyers, so it was his for £16,000.

“I’d been to see one on far lower hours which felt like it was on its last legs; this was far tighter and well worth the money,” he says.

First on the agenda was replacing the leaking radiator, which set him back £800, before addressing the problem of the brakes haemorrhaging fluid.

Whipping off the trumpet housings showed that the discs were in good order and though “flat spotted”, the seals weren’t leaking lots of fluid. Both were replaced anyway, before a weeping pipe was eventually identified as the culprit.

Once these gremlins had been rectified, it could be put to work hauling silage trailers and pulling his New Holland D1010 baler.

Unlike the rest of the ADJ fleet, the engine hasn’t yet been tuned. However, a malfunction of the ECU on the 6.8-litre John Deere six-cylinder means it puts out far more power than standard.

“It enters a sort of beast mode and pulls like a train – I don’t know for sure as I haven’t put it on a dyno yet, but it must be more than 200hp,” says Ashley.

The payoff is that it runs a little rough at idle, so a new ECU is on the shopping list.

That said, he may well be seeking out a remap now that he’s got used to the extra output.

It also breathes a little heavily, so he plans to take the head off and check the condition of the piston rings.

After that, it’s due a new set of tyres and a fresh paint job.