Hydrostatic or Gear - Which is better?

[MChalkley]

Perhaps this has been discussed before, but I wonder if the folks on this forum would be so kind as to give me the pros and cons of hydrostatic and gear drive transmissions.

Thanks in advance...

MarkC

 

[Muhammad]

(looks around...)

We all know that a good old gear tranny will outperform a hydro any day of the week! /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif Wait, that is true... given the right operator, and the wrong one on the hydro. Hyuck'yuck. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Considering something other than the L48, Mark? /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Gear tractors are better. Hydros are boring - your hands don't have anything to do unless you are actually doing work with the tractor. What I hate about my Hydro is that when I get in my pickup it takes me a while to figure out that I have to move that shifter thingy to go backwords.

 

[Von]

Mark, I know you already know which is best! Just wanted to say welcome back!!

 

[scruffy]

MarkC??? Someone was saying you moved to Europe and became a Yuppy!!! Good to see ya in here Sir!
Opinion on gear type...cheaper to repair! Plus the added benefit of a gear for all occasions!

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Hey Mark, welcome back, you were missed.
Got my Long 4n1 bucket plumbed up today. It's been sitting here for a month waiting for me to get to it. I just retired and I have less free time now then when I was working. What is going on here??
Because of your help, everything worked as expected. Including the JD two stage non-regen/re-gen bucket dump circuit. By the way, Long is not afraid to use iron in making these things.

again, welcome back
george

 

[Jag]

Mark, no matter were you are you are always starting something arn't you. Welcome Back......

 

[Bird]

Welcome back, stranger./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Bird

 

[Rch]

Mark, welcome back, Are you staying well hydrated ! Your expertise and voice of reason have been missed.

RCH<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Rch on 04/22/01 08:43 AM (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[gordon]

I'll keep it short and sweet, if it ain't a hydro it ain't for me.
Bad side of a hydro---brake steering --On some models
Good side of a hydro---safety and production

Glad to see your still on the face of the earth./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
Gordon

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Hi Mark,

...just want to be a part of the "welcoming committee"!

Good to see you back /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Do you plan to stay a while??

About that hydro-thing, ...when I joined this group a year-or-so ago, some guy had pretty much-convinced a bunch of people to "go-hydro", so I did too. (not that I was influenced or anything /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif )

Lookin' forward to your always-excellent input,

Larry /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Hey Mark,

I happened to think,... You bein' new to tractors-and-all, you're gonna need to know about TIRES, too! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

I've got some really-neat Michelin radials on my JD4700. I'll post some pix soon.

(...forget where I heard about 'em, ... Hmmm! /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif )

Larry

 

[MChalkley]

Thanks, gang. Yeah, I'm back, though I'll probably be a little more scarce than I used to be for a while yet. All work and no play lately, it seems, but that's a discussion for the psychiatry forum...

Boy, until Gordon, LHSmith, and Von jumped in there, I was afraid I was only going to get bad advice from this forum - I was ready to go looking for another tractor forum to see if all the smart folks had moved... (Yeah, Jag, I'm just trying to start something. Pretty impertinent of me, as long as I've been gone, huh?)

George, I'm glad you finally got your Long 4-in-1. And that it's plumbed the way you like it. You're right, though, they don't mind putting the steel in them. I saw, briefly, a discussion on plumbing the open/close circuit into the raise/lower circuit. I'm going to have to think about that one a bit.

And Bird, what's this???!!!! Are you really using Amsoil ATH in your tractor? How is it working out?

Sorry to throw so many topics into this one instead of where they belong, but there must be 20,000 new messages that I haven't read, and I doubt I'll ever get to them all.

Thanks again, guys - it's really great to hear from all of you again. (Even you, Muhammad... /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif And, no, I'm holding out for a Fendt with independent suspension, turbo, their patented high-performance HST/Planetary Gear hybrid transmission, etc.)

MarkC

 

[MChalkley]

I forgot you, RCH.

You betcha I'm staying hydrated! I'm still carrying around that monster cup ya'll dubbed the Chalkley cup. I did raise the pressure in the right rear Michelin tire from 9 psi to 10 psi to compensate, though.

MarkC

 

[MarkV]

Hey Mark,

Glad to see you back, sounds like life has be busy, hope you will be around for awhile. I haven't thought about oil for several months.

MarkV

 

[Bird]

<font color=blue>And Bird, what's this???!!!! Are you really using Amsoil ATH in your tractor? How is it working out?</font color=blue>

Yeah, Mark, I put that old Amsoil in the hydro; still not convinced it's worth what it costs, but I ain't convince it ain't worth it either, but one of their claims is "quieter" and I'm all for that. It does seem a little quieter; just not sure whether that's just my imagination or wishful thinking or reality./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif But at least, the tractor still works./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Bird

 

[Harv]

Dude!!! I mean, Mr. Chalkley, sir!!! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

I take off for the property for the first time in a month and you sneak back onto the board. I'll try not to take it personal-like. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

As you know, I'm a tractor newbie with a gear shift, and I can safely say with some authority that I don't miss what I never had. Although I concede that if I had a lot of pile work to do, I might be happier with HST, but I'm not totally convinced. They cost more, suck up horsepower and seem slightly more problem prone. (Uh-oh! I don't mean to be blasphemous to all the HST fans out there -- remember, I'm basically agnostic about this.)

The gear shifting seemed mildly laborious when I first got my tractor, but as you well know, it quickly becomes second nature and gives you a kind of a comforting "direct" connection to your machine, which translates to at least a feeling of better control.

What I'm not a newbie at is driving cars -- 36 years and counting. I've spent plenty of time with both stick and automatic transmissions, and although I can appreciate the simplicity and ease of the automatic, I would never own one myself. It just doesn't feel like I'm actually driving the thing. I hate driving a car that decides when/if it's going to shift up or down, they're way more expensive to repair, and if you need to do a compression start as often as I did in my youth, you really don't want a slush box between the engine and the wheels. /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

I realize that an automatic car is not the same thing as an HST, but I think you get my point. Us control freaks just plain like gears. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif (... or am I just trying to justify the only tractor I could afford at the time? /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif)

 

[GlueGuy]

Hmmmm,

Your reputation preceeds you.....

I think the correct answer is:

"It depends."

/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

The GlueGuy

 

[Harv]

<font color=blue>Your reputation preceeds you.....</font color=blue>

Actually, GlueGuy, you may find that Mark's reputation exceeds him. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

(Just a pre-emptive strike -- the Chalkley wit is just warming up. I can feel it. /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif)

 

[gordon]

Harv, any Kubota is much, -- very much better than no Kubota at all. My L3750 has a hydraulic shuttle on the steering wheel but it still relates to a gear shift tractor. So I'm in the same ball park as you on this one, execpt for the final opinion. I used to be dead against a hst trans. To put in mildly. Now bet you'll never guess what the new L has???--HST

This is what changed my mind, put just over a hundred hours on a b20 with an hst last spring. Once you learn the difference in operating the two you can't even compare then. For the first few hours I was totally useless with it, had to remember that set the throttle at the desired rpm and the footpedal is not the gas pedal it's the go pedal. Once I got that into my thick skull, my production went thru the roof with that little tractor.

You can relate an hst to a cell phone or central a-c I guess. If you never had it you don't know what your missing. But once you have it, you can't figure out for the life of you how you lived so long without it. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif