Covert tractor hours to miles???

[manganos]

I went over to my neighbors farm today and he asked me a question and I told him I'd have to ask it over here He has a Ford 5000 and it has a little over 9000 hours on it. He is wondering how many miles that would be equivlent too. Any estimates would be great Oh one thing about the Ford that I didn't know is that it measures one complete hour only when the engine RPM is at 2000 RPM if that means anything. I assume it goes around 13 mph so just mulitply 13 x 9000? Or am I wrong? Thanks

[MossRoad]

Unless he used it for the same task at the same RPMs I can't see a way to come even close to a best guestimate.

[beenthere]

Does it travel 13 mph at 2000 rpm in every gear?

Seems this (miles) would be a meaningless number at best. I suspect keeping tabs of the number of hours on the hourmeter is the best usable figure their is, when it comes to a tractor.

Was your neighbor pulling your leg when he asked this question?

[Steven]

I don,t even have a clue to this one. just assume that he left it running for 9000 hours and never had to move it. the engine components would have 9000 hours, the tractor 0. so how can you calculate miles from the hour meter when the tractor sits at idle some times running up the hour meter and does not move. like the people with remote starts for their cars, they are putting more hours on the engines than what the odometer reads in miles. maybe vehicles and equipment should come with both.

[Ozarker]

I am unaware of any way to make such a conversion so you would have to invent one. If I were going to invent a way to make a comparison, I would use service interval as a measuring stick. Service interval is an indication of normal wear in both tractors and cars.

We service tractors every 100 hours so a tractor with 9000 hours has seen 90 services.

We service cars about every 3000 miles so for a car to see 90 services it would have to go 270000 miles.

I therefor declare that 9000 hours = 270000 miles.

[Gary_in_Indiana]

There is no number of miles to which 9000 would be equivalent. It's a completely different system and type of engine use.

My best guess is what he was really wondering was how would 9000 hours be compared to car mileage in terms of high or low mileage, possibly based on the age of his Ford.

A better place to ask something like that would be a tractor dealer who handles a lot of used equipment. I'll bet a lot of it depends on the engine, too, just like a car or truck.

I'm not at all concerned with 100,000 miles on a Chevy 350 while the same miles on a little Quad 4 is way high. I'm guessing the same might be true of his 9000 hours. It depends on the engine.

[BigDave]

Ozarker,

I like your idea of comparing to maintenance intervals, but wouldn't a better comparison be to a tractor trailer's maintenance interval. I'm not sure how long it is, but it would have to be more than every 3,000 miles.

[Anonymous Poster]

Hi,

In my mind, I just multiply hours of tractor use by an average MPH that I would get out of my car/truck during normal use.

Sometime I work my car/truck hard..sometimes I am stuck in traffic. On the highway I may run at 80 mph sometimes. In the city I may average 20 mph.

My guess is that overall I probably average 35 or 40 mph. For the sake of easy calculation, let's pick 40 mph average for my car/truck.

9,000 hours times 40 Miles/hour = 360,000 miles.

That's the way the equations works in my mind.

Bill in Pgh, PA

[MossRoad]

[img]/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif[/img][img]/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif[/img][img]/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

I second your declaration! [img]/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[beenthere]

I think you and Ozarker are on the right track. And a tractor with 9000 hours on it is probably up there with a car or truck with 250,000 to 300,000 miles on it. The tractor may even have one or two complete overhauls on the engine in that 9000 hours too.