This is a topic that may get quite lengthy. I have always been curious as to what was farmed out and what was kept in house as far as casting, forging, and stamping went. I think the Model A and Model T guys have a lot more answers to this question. Anyway, I always saved anything that had a logo and or date stamp on it to hopefully some day put it all in persepctive. The ROUGE plant had everything needed to make a car, truck, or tractor from scratch. Canals brought barges of raw materials to the blast furnaces for the cast iron and steel parts, the glass plant made windows, the textile mills produced upholstery, sawmills made wood products, rubber plants made the tires, and so on. Many outside vendors were contracted to produce specific components that they were already making and had their processes down. On the N-Tractors items like wheels from Kelsey-Hayes or the Budd Compnay, tires from Firestone, oil filters from FRAM, governors from NOVI, and electrical parts like the voltage regulators from AUTOLITE to name only a few. Mr. Harold Brock told me that MANZEL was a supplier of axle forgings too as well as other items like tools. My guess would be that production demands required additional suppliers be brought on board to help keep the production lines moving. So, I will start with some of my own pictures I saved along the way of restoring my 8N mostly. I encourage you to add your pictures too with as much info as you can post about the item.
Tim Daley(MI)
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