art
Super Member
We have a variety of soils and conditions and through the years it I learned not to boast about what a tractor and set of plows might do until looking at it. Something that might fit here was working with a 85 PTO horsepower two wheel drive tractor and a 130 PTO horsepower four wheel drive in the same field same day with just the sun and no rain!
We started out with a four bottom 16" on the smaller tractor and there was a six bottom 16" plow on the larger tractor. Both could go about four miles an hour and pulled well. The ground was clay, not a hard blue clay but a brown clay with a low amount of sand and the ground had been tilled the year before for corn which was chopped and the stalks were in the 6" height range.
We tried pulling both plows faster and both tractors struggled in a higher gear, with power and wheel slippage. After lunch the larger tractor was put on a chisel disc and sent to another field to work. We put the six bottom on the 85 PTO or 100 engine tractor. It would pull it as comfortably at the same speed as the four bottom! It was more noticable when the bottoms tripped! I guess we had found what it would do! Several people were amazed over the fact of that the smaller tractor would do and to the fact that as long as we stayed in the four mile per hour range both tractors would pull about the same. We did bring in other plows and tractor combo's with wider bottoms as well as larger horsepowers. The part that got me, even with larger horsepower with smaller plows we found that the ground could only be moved at about 4 mph!
We started out with a four bottom 16" on the smaller tractor and there was a six bottom 16" plow on the larger tractor. Both could go about four miles an hour and pulled well. The ground was clay, not a hard blue clay but a brown clay with a low amount of sand and the ground had been tilled the year before for corn which was chopped and the stalks were in the 6" height range.
We tried pulling both plows faster and both tractors struggled in a higher gear, with power and wheel slippage. After lunch the larger tractor was put on a chisel disc and sent to another field to work. We put the six bottom on the 85 PTO or 100 engine tractor. It would pull it as comfortably at the same speed as the four bottom! It was more noticable when the bottoms tripped! I guess we had found what it would do! Several people were amazed over the fact of that the smaller tractor would do and to the fact that as long as we stayed in the four mile per hour range both tractors would pull about the same. We did bring in other plows and tractor combo's with wider bottoms as well as larger horsepowers. The part that got me, even with larger horsepower with smaller plows we found that the ground could only be moved at about 4 mph!