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Andrew: I'd run the other way, and fast. One must remember why hydro transmissions were developed in the first place. At that time I was farming, running 9 relatively new tractors. I looked at hydro more than once. My IH dealer through other dealers lined up appointments with users to look at the pros and cons of hydro. Most of the farmers I visited were vegetable farmers with both gear and hydro transmission drive tractors of the same model, and further most were potato farmers. Here was the advice I got in the late 60s and early 70s. If you have precission work requiring infinate variable speeds, buy a hydro, but plan to keep it 30 years and not do any heavy drawbar or shuttle work with it. Potato farmers wanted hydro because of harvesters that saw potatoes on endless conveyor chains close to 40' in total. this was a far cry from the old two row digger with 10' of conveyor chain. The hydro made it possible to regulate the speed so the harvester nicely got rid of all soil as the potatoes reached the truck box. That soil created a cushion for the crop. With hydro they could reduce the losses from bruising up to 30%. That my friend paid them handsomely to have a hydro sitting around to do nothing but run the harvester, maybe planter and sprayer. Most other vegetable crops were developing harvesters that required hydro with it's infinately variable speeds to give them optimum production and quality product. At that time I walked away from hydro as most of my uses were haying or loader work. Give me a good working 656 gear drive and at the end of the day I will have baled as much hay, as the good working 656 hydro using the same baler. If front end loader work is your thing, there are shuttle shift tractors around that will give you many more years of trouble free service than hydro, and just as fast as hydro. Plain and simple hydro is a precission machine and haying and loader work are not precission jobs. Bear in mind, I treat farming as a business to make money, rather than a way of life.
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