Road Gear on F Series

I"m interested in the F Series (20 or 30) for my next restoration project, but I need one with a road gear of 8 MPH or more.
I know they offerred this as an add on.
Is it an extra lever that gives you a dual range trany or how did it work?
Is it easy to spot in between the motor and trany?
Any info. would help.

Eaxiest is to get an overdrive simple to add and depending on which you get could run as fast as 16 with 36in ribber in 4th full throttle. Finding the gear for the tranny would be hard.

Real easy to spot, it will be an extra box right on the front of the transmission with a little shift lever of some sort. Most of them were a "road gear", you put the trans. in nuetral and then shift the road gear in and hang on. A Hiesler unit is a dual range, giving 4 more gears all above the standard 4th gear, and much harder to find as a general rule. Any of them for a 30 are a little hard to find.

They did make F-20s with a road gear from the factory. If you find a tractor that you like just look at the shifter for the gear marking. Forth gear will be where third normally was (up and to the right). I cannot remember what the speed is in this gear, but I run one for years with this option and it seems to be fast enough.

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(quoted from post at 11:53:48 01/14/09) They did make F-20s with a road gear from the factory. If you find a tractor that you like just look at the shifter for the gear marking. Forth gear will be where third normally was (up and to the right). I cannot remember what the speed is in this gear, but I run one for years with this option and it seems to be fast enough.

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back then it was probably a road gear, but its only good for about 7-8 mph wide open. Put a HIESLER O/D in front of it, and you'll be pushin around 18mph :shock:

There is no caster and very little camber on the front wheels. You don't want to drive an F20 over 8 miles an hour.

There never was a road gear in a F-20 from the factory. I think what you are refering to is an after market replacement gear that replaced 2nd or 3rd standard gear. normally if the 20 had 28in wheels 3rd gear was considered plow gear so 2nd was replaced for the road gear,if the 20 had 36in wheels 2nd gear was the plow gear so third was replaced for the high speed gear. Regardless of the switch the plate with the shift pattern was replaced to correspond with the change.

No No, somebody gave you some miss information. The factory high speed set up is 6 mph 4th or there abouts. The reason 3 & 4 are switched is that they put 4th gear in place of 2nd and moved reverse to the other shaft which gives it a higher reverse too. I might be off on my gear sequence but it's something like that. Anyhow most of the after market road boxes drive with the transmission in neutral. There are a few true overdrives out there too,

After rubber tires became common on tractors, IHC offered high-speed gears for all the F-series. It is true that 7 or 8 mph is not very fast compared to some other tractors, like the H and M, but I can tell you something from my experience. I always thought the H and M were too fast for a tricycle-type tractor. There must not have been much caster or camber in those front wheels (as a writer here says about the F-20), because there was lots of side-to-side wobble of the wheels on any kind of rough surface, especially, I think, after the steering gear got worn. It was always exciting to be roaring down the road like a sports car, but when I grew up a bit and got a little wiser, it made me uneasy to go so fast with wobbly front wheels. The other factor to consider is that 8 mph is a lot more useful on a farm than the 17 or 18 that the H and M would do. The H, especially, would not pull much of anything in 5th gear down around 6 mph (approximately engine idle speed--not much torque), about the top speed on a gravel road with a loaded wagon, especially one on steel tires like a lot of people still had in the 40s. I always wished that IHC had done what Oliver and JD did--put in six gears, with one fairly fast (around 12 mph in both cases), and one just a bit slower (around 8 mph) for pulling heavy loads over country roads. Obviously, if you are going long distances with a tractor, it is nice to be able to slide along faster than 7 or 8 mph. One of the things you'd find with a 7-8 mph gear is that you could throttle it back a bit for light work at maybe 4-5 mph, not have to make so much noise, cut down on engine wear, etc.
Same goes for traveling over the trails between fields.

HERES A SECRET TO GOING FAST ON AN F-20!!!!!!


FOOTBRAKES, and one front tire with 25lbs of air, and one with 5 lbs of air. IVE DONE IT!!!! Goes fast with no wobble!!! on tire is doing the work so you dont have two trying to fight for the same pice of pavement cutting out the wobble.

My handle says something about F-20's?!?!?!? F-series is what i know!!





HOWARD!!!! dont go over 8mph???? wheres your sense of adventure?!?!?!?!? :lol: :lol:

read this post that was on the red power forum a few weeks back. I know it starts out talking about electric start (useful info as well) but goes into the speeds available for an F-20. I scanned and posted pics of the parts book and a very interesting brochure. READ IT!!!!!




http://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=44565

Yep, yer right, the H (and the M's too) needed a 7-8 mile an hour gear to go along with the 5 1/4 mph 4th and 15-16 mph 5th gear. My uncle's '50 H had the 7 mph 4th gear and it was nice....except it needed the slower 4th gear too. Drilling, mowing 2nd and 3rd cuttings, planting corn with 4 row planter, later cultivating and harrowing plowed ground were just a few jobs where the slower 4th was really about right and the faster 4th too fast with not enough engine power to pull anything much at reduced rpm. Dear old IH finally (too late again) fixed this problem pretty much with the Super H and M models.....along with giving the Super H the kinda power it should have had from the H model's beginnings. That's one thing about the John Deeres of that time, they had good speed selections of working gears....but their road gears were a little slow...and some will say the low was too fast for picking corn and combining. The later B's and A's got the slow low gear...but the road gear was even slower, especially for the B's...What dogs on the road!
I always thought my Super M had enough gears....and it had plenty enough power to use them all efficiently. It was a wonderful big tractor....except it was brought out about 5 years too late. I'll bet that IH lost some sales in the H and M era because 4th was too slow and 5th too fast with no gear in between. If the Super models had come out in 1948 and the TA gizmo for the H and M and the wheatlands about 1950, IH would have squashed John Deere forever.