Gear or Hydrostatic Transmissions for Compact Utility Tractors?

[oldpilgrim]

If I could have bought an HST tractor with similar capability at a similar price, I would have done it in a second.

So Gladehound, by this statement, you're admitting that the HST is better because you would have gotten one "in a second" if all other things were equal. Am I misreading something here?

 

[ovrszd]

Some interesting discussion here. I like it.

Some of us are on quite different pages here and I'm pretty sure it's going to stay that way no matter how much I argue or think I'm right so I'm just going to leave it. One point I will add is that if you don't have parts support for a tractor or anything else for that matter you essentially have a piece of junk. Unfortunately many good older tractors are turning into junk not because they are no good but because parts are no longer available.

This is only going to get worse in the future years. It's an unfortunate side effect of so many off shore manufacturers bringing in cheaper tractors to sell on the market in the last 20 years or so. Short term it's nice because it brings prices down but long term we will all suffer.

30 years ago Kubota was one of the off shore manufacturers bringing in cheaper tractors.

Now they are looked upon as a quality standard that all SCUT and CUT tractors are measured against. And they are expanding into the Utility and AG market.

But then, That's a whole new thread on it's own.....

 

[npalen]

I bet if 90 percent of the owners here had ever spent time on something like a Farmall M with a Farmhand "loader" they would be more appreciative of today's power transmission technology.

 

[ovrszd]

I bet if 90 percent of the owners here had ever spent time on something like a Farmall M with a Farmhand "loader" they would be more appreciative of today's power transmission technology.

Or baled hay using a little Ford tractor with no "live" PTO.

 

[oldpilgrim]

I bet if 90 percent of the owners here had ever spent time on something like a Farmall M with a Farmhand "loader" they would be more appreciative of today's power transmission technology.

I plowed, dug, hauled, lifted, scraped, and trenched with this for almost 25 years. After moving snow for 3-4 or more hours at at stretch, clutching about 5,000 or more times during that period, I appreciate the new transmissions a lot.

I now have a bigger bucket on the Mahindra.

 

[ovrszd]

Now that's a classic!!!!

 

[Sawyer Rob]

When I was a kid, our farm had a Farmall H and a Farmall BN on it...

Yesterday, my helper and me were in the woods, cutting/skidding firewood logs. We are working out way to a BIG oak that has blown over... Anyway, my helper was worrying that I wouldn't be able to get the tractor into a good spot to use the skidding winch from, but I just locked one brake and pivoted the tractor right where we needed it.

That got me to thinking, how do you do that with a hydro?

Nothing I've seen/owned with a hydro would have got into the spot we needed to be in, so we would have had to cut out more tree's that I didn't want to be cut, nor did I want to spend the time cutting all those extra tree's.

That also got me to thinking about how much I use the individual brakes on my tractors...and actually I do quite a bit, even quite often when doing rotavating jobs...

That's something I've been doing for years, without even thinking about just how useful those individual brakes are!

SR

 

[ovrszd]

When I was a kid, our farm had a Farmall H and a Farmall BN on it...

Yesterday, my helper and me were in the woods, cutting/skidding firewood logs. We are working out way to a BIG oak that has blown over... Anyway, my helper was worrying that I wouldn't be able to get the tractor into a good spot to use the skidding winch from, but I just locked one brake and pivoted the tractor right where we needed it.

That got me to thinking, how do you do that with a hydro?

Nothing I've seen/owned with a hydro would have got into the spot we needed to be in, so we would have had to cut out more tree's that I didn't want to be cut, nor did I want to spend the time cutting all those extra tree's.

That also got me to thinking about how much I use the individual brakes on my tractors...and actually I do quite a bit, even quite often when doing rotavating jobs...

That's something I've been doing for years, without even thinking about just how useful those individual brakes are!

SR

If you get any responses at all they will likely be chastising you for treating your tractor like that and how a "Good" operator could have done it without that abuse.

Love my brake pedals.

 

[murphy1244]

If you get any responses at all they will likely be chastising you for treating your tractor like that and how a "Good" operator could have done it without that abuse.

Love my brake pedals.

HST units have split brakes too:thumbsup:

 

[GManBart]

This would only be true when you're not moving. Run an implement with the PTO while moving and you can add the extra inefficiency of the HST transmission to any difference in rated PTO power.

Even if that's true, it will only become a factor when you haven't correctly sized the implement for the tractor and PTO rating. If you're running out of power, you either miscalculated on implements, or tractor size/power, not transmission style.