What I find ironic is we think nothing of putting a 300 horsepower engine in our lightweight sheet metal boxes we call automobiles, yet my tractor when fully loaded with its loader and rear ballast, loaded tires and my fat A in the seat weight somewhere around 6000 lbs and it has a 38 horsepower engine at the crankshaft, and nets way less than that after going thru the hydro and gear train. Yes I know it is geared way lower, less for speed and more for torque, but still it has to pack all that up steep hills around here. We think of 60 horsepower and up tractors as being very powerful machines, but still the horsepower to weight ratio is pretty small compared to a car.. Now lets compare it to a modern motorcycle. Lets see 125 horsepower, and maybe 600 lbs..?
This summer I was wishing for more horsepower when I was hauling stone from my neighbors house and back to mine. The route of course has some rather severe hills, and one in particular requires a stop and when you pull out you are facing a steep hill. I could not make it in HI range very well.. Oh it would do it, but the engine was really puffing and wanting to drop RPM pretty bad unless I let off of the hydro pedal. So I climbed it in MED. It was just as fast in MED with full pedal as it was in HI with having to back off. I could have used some more ponies. But hard to use ponies you did not buy. Ninety nine percent of the time I cannot make use of any more horsepower in my normal tasks. But roading a tractor around here does take some of the wind out of its sails. Now I guess if I lived in Kansas or some other flat area, it would be a different story.
