Re: Hydrostatic vs. Manual pro\'s and con\'s
<font color="purple"> Other than the old man ease of use factor why select hydrostatic? </font>
I'm not an old man, but I won't go back to gears on anything that I will actually use for working my property. I love gears on the old iron. And gears are good. The modern SMALL tractors really started with the Fords, Olivers, Deeres, McCormicks, etc in the 1940's and 1950's. Sure there were tractors earlier than that, but tractors, and the impliments that go with them, as we know them today really evolved about 50 to 60 years ago.
But understand that the JOBS have pretty dramatically changed in the past 50 to 60 years for small tractors. Ford 8N's today are mowing tractors. Ford 8N's, in their prime were plowing tractors.
Very few of us with CUTS actually do things like plow a field. And those that do plow, are probably using tractors with roughly twice the hp of the old Fords. So the tractors have changed because what we ask of them has largely changed.
Now people who buy little tractors (those tractors that are roughly 45hp and lower) buy them because they are landscape business owners, property owners who need to maintain their property, etc. The tasks are often well suited to hydrostatic transmissions. Front end loader work is more efficient with a HST transmission. Lawn mowing and field mowing, especially if cutting around trees and landscaping, is faster wtih an HST transmission. Gears are great for long runs, but most of us don't really have long runs. When box blading, a HST will lose to a gear tractor, but only marginally. When snow blowing, I'll take the HST any day of the week becuase I can keep up the PTO speed while instantly changing the ground speed to match the conditions. I dare say that in the early 1950s the thought of blowing snow with a Ford 8N, an Oliver Fleetline or an AC was never imagined.
I'm not putting down the gear machines, but I am saying that conditions and jobs have FOR THE MOST PART changed.
There is a difference between change and being different. The old guys on this forum probably bolted 8-track tape players to the dash of their souped up Chevy Novas to play music. I have a Delphi SkyFi unit that I use to draw music down from a satellite. The old guys played music, I play music. So really that has not changed, it is just different.
With tractors, my point is that the uses have actually changed. I don't plow, I don't harvest, I don't run a belt over to a grain elevator to power grain up to the top, I don't do many things that the old timers did. I do mow around trees and landscaping. I use a blower to clear my driveway in the winter. I use a Front End Loader for countless tasks, and they were in their infancy in the 50s and barely capable compared to what we have today. The uses are really changes. And HST is someting that has changed the uses of tractors. It makes them more suitable for many tasks. If your tasks are not well suited for HST, then buy gear. If your tasks are well suited for HST, then it is silly not to change with the times because the tasks are not just different . . . they have actually changed!
