Case 1470: If they don’t find ya handsome…

Case 1470 Traction King
This Case 1470 lives in northwest Nebraska until the team at Kraupie Real Estate & Auction sends it home with someone new. Maybe you ought to give it a good home! Click the photo to see the details and get a link to bid!

Remember the Red Green show from fifteen or twenty years ago? Remember how Red always ended the Handyman Corner segment? “If the women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.”

Yeah…that’s the Case 1470.

It didn’t look too handsome, but man alive, it did a bunch of things right. It’s a sure-footed tractor that’s heavy enough for tillage, but incredibly maneuverable as well! It kept all of the things that were successful in its predecessor (the Case 1200), and fixed the bad things. (More on that in a minute…)

When Case got into the 4WD tractor market in 1963, they did it in the typical Case way. They’d always produced a quality product with reasonable features at an affordable price. They drew a box around what they wanted, and they built a tractor that fit within those parameters. In this case, that meant using pieces and parts that were already sitting on the shelf to keep costs down. Had they wanted to, they could’ve built something that was super-robust and made a ton of power, but that would’ve been overkill. They had the components to build a 200-horse tractor that probably would’ve tipped the scales at 20,000 lbs., but that would’ve been more than what was necessary for the time.

The one mistake they made when they built the 1200 was in the choice of powerplant. The 451 cubic inch Lanova cell diesel didn’t respond well to turbocharging, which was what Case had to do to be competitive in the market. At the end of the day, the turbo’d 451 was a very fragile motor that ran pretty hot. (Hot enough that Case put a pyrometer on the dash with a warning about running it too hot for too long!)

That was one of the issues that Case addressed in the 1470. Instead of trying to stretch the inferior 451 even further, they chose a direct-injected 504 cubic inch motor. The 504 responded very well to turbocharging and nipped the reliability issues in the bud. Not only that, it made 146 PTO horsepower, and even set a fuel economy record that stood for 13 years! Talk about an improvement!

This particular Case 1470 is a 1971 model, and lives in northwest Nebraska. As with quite a few tractors out in that part of the country, this one doesn’t have a PTO (most 1470s didn’t have PTOs, from what I gather). That said, though, it does have great rubber (20.8×34 at 90%), 2 hydros, a 3-point hitch, and a cab to keep the elements out! It’s only got about 8500 hours on it, too, and it runs like a champ! Our friends at Kraupie’s Real Estate & Auction are handling the sale, which ends at about noon tomorrow (October 29, 2020).

At the end of the day, these tractors don’t come up for sale very often. This one is in better shape than most, I’d say, and I think the price will probably reflect that. I’d be surprised if it didn’t hit $6-7K by the time the hammer fell. Maybe a little more if a couple of bidders got into it. I know that there are a few pretty die-hard Case 1470 fans out there (one in particular doesn’t live too far away, either), so if a few of those guys start letting their wallets duke it out, who knows where it could go? Happy bidding!

Need parts for your Case tractors? Click here. I can just about guarantee that Elmer’s Repair has what you need. The Haugs have been friends of mine for 10 years and they’ll take very good care of you! (Tell ’em that Ryan from Tractor Zoom sent you!)