mowing with an H

Have a chance to buy a 6 ft brush hog mower at a fair price, will a 40 H have enough power to run that???

My dad runs one behind a 9N ford...

I assume a H should have atleast that much power....

later,
Dustin

As long as you don't get into anything real heavy or thick, that H shouldn't have any trouble at all. She may have more than she can handle with a 6 footer in heavy stuff. Make dang sure you get an overrunning clutch for that pto shaft though. I was trying to be cheap and didn't buy one for my H and I ended up wiping out a guide wire for a utility pole and that cost me more than the overrun coupler. So just get one if you don't have one already, ok!

It will do OK, but like kippster said, an overrunning clutch is a must. Otherwise, without the live power take off, you will come to the end of the field, shove in the clutch, and the tractor will actuall go faster, hit a tree and set there with the wheels spinning!!!

Gene

Also make sure you have some way to keep the mower from fipping upand over onto you if you catch the front of it on something.

Gordo

Now Gene, how do you know something like that might happen?

You are correct though. As an experiment I took the coupler off and tried to stop the tractor with the brakes. I had no chance against the momentum of that blade.

I pull a 6' JD 616 behind a Farmall 504 diesel... It has 46 PTO hp and will lug down in heavy stuff. A Farmall H will do ok with a 6', in your yard.

Charles

All you got to do is kick the tranny out of gear how do you think we got along without the overrunning clutches. I guess you never ran a pto pull combine or baler.

From experience with an H and a 5 or 6 foot Bush Hog (I don't remember how wide). Marginal power, low gear all the way in heavy stuff. Later used a Super M with same cutter. No sweat.
Agree with the overrunning clutch idea. It IS possible to get the tractor out of gear by blipping the throttle shut and making a quick move with your hand, but you gotta be quick or the pressure on the gears (from the mower) can make that very hard to do, and you could damage the tractor gears as they are forced out of engagement (I suppose). Used a PTO-driven combine for years this way. Trouble is, if you're trying to get out of gear when the machine is already bogged down (combine) or overloaded (mower), it's pretty hard to get the tractor out of gear with all that pressure coming from the PTO. Go with the overrunning clutch. I certainly wouldn't do today some of the stuff I did back in the 40s and 50s when I thought "we can't afford that."

Gene, while I can't speak for combines, PTO balers and forage harvesters have overrunning clutches built into them.

On a baler, it's in the flywheel, and on a forage harvester, it's on the knife drum.

With haybines and combines, there's aren't any large flywheels, knife drums, or large blower fans that carry lots of momentum. Plus there's enough drag in the system that the machinery stops fairly quickly... The PTO shaft twisted off on the haybine when I was cutting earlier this summer. It stopped dead quicker than I could blink. No way would it push an M more than a few inches.

Without the overrunning clutch, you could do some serious damage to the tractor if you jumped on the clutch and brakes in a panic and managed to lock the wheels. We've still got the original PTO shaft from the M... The splines on the front of the shaft look like an inside-out rifle barrel, twisted almost halfway around. I'll have to ask Dad if he remembers what happened, or if that was how the tractor was when he bought it. All I remember is going to a dealer about an hour's drive away and pulling the shaft off a parts M they had on the lot. Had to be over 30 years ago.