Gobbling up a lot of acres may require big horsepower, but it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg in fuel.

That was the idea behind the conversion of a 1965 1200 Case 4-WD that Iowa, farmer Floyed Eiten souped up with a mega horsepower truck engine.

"I wanted high horsepower that would run cheap," Eiten says. "That engine will run as economically as one half its size with the same load."

The truck engine is a Cummins turbocharged V-8 packing 320 hp., almost double that of the tractor's original engine. He got the Cummins  out of a wrecked International cab-over semi and bought the tractor from a salvage yard because it had a blown engine.

Eiten says that size-wise the Cummins engine seemed almost custom-made for the engine housing of the Case. The clutch housing of the Cummins bolted right into the engine flywheel of the tractor, but he still had to re-machine the tractor's flywheel. That's so the Cummins' live pto would match up with the rpms of the Case. He also had to add a lot of heavy duty springs to the clutch to accomodate the tractor's extra power.

The hardest part of the project, Eiten says, was beefing up the tractor's cooling system. "I had to keep putting bigger and bigger radiators in front of the tractor's so it wouldn't overheat," he says. Along with replacing the tractor's original radiator with a bigger one, Eiten finally mounted an extra truck radiator in front of the tractor's to keep things cool.

Eiten first took the repowered Case to the field in 1978. But continual improvements, like those to the tractor's cooling system, weren't complete to his satisfaction until just a few years ago.

Other refinements include an electronically coordinated steering system. It can be used to override the tractor's original hydraulic system when necessary. When activiated, it turns the back wheels the same number of depress as the front for extra tight cornering in the field. A light dimmer switch in the cab is used to turn the steering system off and on since it's too sensitive for the open road.

Eiten made the air-conditioned cab himself a few years ago out of angle iron, sheet metal and glass.