Gasoline Tractors are they coming Back ?

[hornett22]

I know they are putting gas engines in commercial wood chippers. Kubota converted one of their diesel power plants to gas. I think vermeer is using it. It's around the 70 hp mark somewhere.

 

[MossRoad]

If you have something that needs to run at a continuous speed with a specified HP and torque, the thing doesn't care if it's a diesel or gas or electric power source. It just cares about shaft power. HP is HP is HP. So something with a hydraulic pump wouldn't care.

The only time you'd notice a difference is if the machine started bogging down. The diesel will hold in the torque range longer due to the longer stroke of the connecting rods and crankshaft.

Fuel economy is where a diesel would also be of benefit in a situation like that, I'd think.

My current machine is all hydraulically operated. It's a Kohler Command 25hp gas engine. That turns a variable volume pump that supplies the 4 wheel motors, and two other fixed displacement pumps that provide power to the steering, FEL, and hydraulic motors on things like mower decks, snow blowers, augers, etc. No drive shafts, transmissions, etc. Just pumps, hoses, rams, and hydraulic motors.

You start it up, push the throttle to 3600rpm like a lawn tractor, and off you go.

 

[MossRoad]

Our 70's IH2500b was a gas engine with HST. The engine turned a pump. The pump turned a motor. The motor turned a shaft on the 2 speed range box. That turned a shaft that turned the rear differential. There was also a pump in there somewhere that provided the hydraulic power for the 3pt hitch, steering, FEL, etc. Again, with that, you set the throttle at high RPMS, selected the range you wanted, and off you go.

 

[Hay Dude]

I know they are putting gas engines in commercial wood chippers. Kubota converted one of their diesel power plants to gas. I think vermeer is using it. It's around the 70 hp mark somewhere.

Its much cheaper for sure. A 75-100HP diesel wood chipper would be $10,000 more than a gas variant.
I can tell you as a person who works outside with equipment every day that even though my gross profit is growing, my percentage of take home pay is dropping for the last 2 years.
We are all looking at alternatives to shed off costs to make up for higher fuel, insurance, parts & service costs.
One thing gas engines are is cheaper.

 

[4570Man]

We had battery operated forklifts with clamps in our paper warehouses that did actual real work unloading rail cars and lifting double stacked rolls of paper that weighed 2.5 tons 20' in the air for hours and hours every day for over 40 years. Seemed like real work to me.

They never maintained a very high continuous load. That’s where batteries are seriously lacking.

 

[MossRoad]

They never maintained a very high continuous load. That’s where batteries are seriously lacking.

They'd run non stop for several hours twice a day. Start/stop/change direction, power the lift pumps. It was not easy work. Much harder than the load on a car.

 

[Agvg]

Its much cheaper for sure. A 75-100HP diesel wood chipper would be $10,000 more than a gas variant.
I can tell you as a person who works outside with equipment every day that even though my gross profit is growing, my percentage of take home pay is dropping for the last 2 years.
We are all looking at alternatives to shed off costs to make up for higher fuel, insurance, parts & service costs.
One thing gas engines are is cheaper.

Extreme difference, if I want to buy me a new ICE van, the difference between gas and diesel is not large.

 

[4570Man]

Extreme difference, if I want to buy me a new ICE van, the difference between gas and diesel is not large.

I just picked up a high top Ford transit van. Going from a ecoboost motor to a Mercedes’ diesel was at least a 10k difference. And with diesel costing $2 more per gallon it makes no sense.

 

[Agvg]

Hmm, priced up a small van here, a few hundred dollars, strange.

 

[eagle628]

That means fracking, right?

Certainly for much of America, although in general it's probably excellent news for Qatar which controls a huge amount of gas that doesn't need fracking to extract.