jimglassford
Silver Member
This conversation is entertaining but the two tractor drive technologies were designed for different purposes. The hydrostatic transmission allows better close quarter control. You set the engine RPM on a diesel engine and the governor adjusts the fuel delivery based on load to maintain the same RPM. So saying a gear transmission tractor can idle up a hill, the governor is increasing the fuel as the incline increases. Now on the hydrosatic transmission, you can set the engine RPM and the operator is controlling a fluid flow. The benefit of the hydrostatic drive is that you can maintain the engine RPM in the sweet spot of torque while the operator adjust speed. Mowing a lawn or using a loader, the HST shines while you have to constantly slip a clutch on a GST. As for which pulls better, given a fixed load and both spinning tires, they should be equal. If you want to know which will pull more of a load with the same HP, the gear drive will. Time is also a factor, pulling a heavy load with a HST builds heat and you lose more efficiency.
Construction equipment use hydrostatic because besides the drive system, there are a lot of other hydraulic functions on the vehicle as well As for the large tractors, the premium ones use CVT transmission to get the benefits of the hydrostatic with less power loss.
Construction equipment use hydrostatic because besides the drive system, there are a lot of other hydraulic functions on the vehicle as well As for the large tractors, the premium ones use CVT transmission to get the benefits of the hydrostatic with less power loss.