More 400 creeper pics

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Shot from rear. Motor is a Prince PTO pump with 1 and 3/8th six spline bore all the way through. Pump is a Super H - 350 live pump. Air actuator is from a truck air brake system. Outside bearing (black color) and PTO shaft is from an Oliver 60 Industrial. Throwout bearing and shaft is from a 400 TA clutch. My only purchase so far is the formed steel box @ $90.
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Shot from front.
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Flow control valve for variable speed. Not yet mounted.
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It will be a couple of weeks before I road test the Hydro-Creeper. I have alot of plumbing to do on the air and hydraulic systems.

Rube Goldberg would be jealous!

Now, I got a question....no I have more than one,hehe.

Being hydraulic ignorant, did you say the motor is a pump? Then I assume a pump can act as a motor? Hmm.

Well, the next question is: Can a hydraulic motor be ran to the bullgears on an SA via the sprocket hole that drives a sidedresser? My terminology may not be correct...but you get my drift. After seeing what you are doing, I thought why couldn't a motor drive a stub shaft through the bullgear housing and the pump be attached to the PTO shaft? If this is feasible, how much of a hydraulic fluid tank would be required and what kind of pump and motor does a person look for?

That pump looks a bit small to run the motor. I suppose you won't need alot of volume though since the motor will be low RPM.

I think it should have a variable displacement Pump (like from a hydrostatic garden tractor) that would make it totally variable, and not load dependent. The priority valve will vary the pressure OK but I think it will slow and speed up as it encounters loads. (Just thinking out loud, not being critical) Jim

I guess you could say that some pumps are "bi-sezual". They can go either way. This would apply to gear pumps. Not sure about vane or piston pumps. The Prince pump is a gear pump.

On a Super A and any other tractor not using planetary hubs, the bull gears are the final reduction. You would need a large displacement motor to get the slow speeds when the motor is on the same axis as the center of the gear.

My 400 creeper drive is rotating the pinion gear which is about 25% of the diameter of the bull gear.

I will be drawing Hy-Tran from the rear frame. It holds fifteen gallons. It is unlikely I will ever overheat the fluid. The Hy-Tran will shed its acquired heat through the rear frame and center section.

You could engineer the system that you described. You will need to know the cubic inch displacement of both the pump and motor. You will also need to know the pump RPM and the desired wheel RPM. On top of that, foot-pounds of torque for both units have to be known. Engineering considerations that may be difficult to estimate are the energy losses that heat the oil.

To be honest, I did not do the calculations on the 400. I have at least four pumps that I can substitute. I started with the smallest. The Prince pump/motor was a given design factor due to its splined bore. See my previous thread from yesterday.

IH made a Hydro-Creeper for the Super A. The tractor's hydraulic system output was sent to a small motor that delivered power to a reduction gearbox that slid over the PTO shaft. The operator would lock open the engine clutch, select first gear, and send hydraulic power to the Hydro Creeper. These unit were used with transplanters. I think I have a picture. I will post it later after I upload it to Photobucket.

Search on "Hydro-Creeper" for more info.

To confirm, some pumps can be used as a motor and visa/versa. The difference is that some pumps will have drilled passages on the suction side of the pump, that prevent blowing out the shaft seal by allowing any oil reaching the seal cavity to be drawn back into the pump. Some pumps and motors will also have wear plates that are held against the gears by the oil pressure. If a pump or motor is configured for a certain rotational direction, as well as being intended as a pump or as a motor, using it differently will cause seal failure or worse.
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glomming together a Hydra creeper from off the shelf parts wouldn"t be all that difficult......IF the specs of said parts were known.......ie., hydraulic motor type/size and the tooth count on the sprockets contained inside that cast iron housing......which could be fabricated with steel plate and left open if desired....I assume the original ran in an oil bath and the case also kept body parts from getting caught in the works.

By and by, I"ll figure all this out if somebody doesn"t come to my rescue, first. My SA is just too darn fast in first gear, when cultivating the first couple times in a young crop....I cover up way too many small plants and that really pizzes me off. I"ll never understand why the designing engineers didn"t have enough sense to gear these tractors down really slow, to begin with. Obviously, it was enough of a problem...else there never would have been a Hydra Creeper offered to slow the beasts down. The Super A-140 was in production for so long, why didn"t they ever offer....even as an option....a hi-lo gearbox, baffles me. Yeah, I know that after the 140 was killed off.....they finally offered a hi-lo tranny in the Japanese made clones that followed (274-265). Just another mystery that"ll never be answered.

There were other ways to slow down the small tractors. Hugh Mackay is more familiar with them than I am.

On a Cub, and perhaps an A (I dunno), there was a planetary gearset that bolted between the right side housing and the drop (final drive) box. Hugh has also talked about a gearset in the torque tube.

I believe these were aftermarket items. They are very expensive and rare. I have only seen one Hydra-Creeper and one bolt on final drive planetary. I think they are worth around $750 each. They might pop up on eBay from time to time. Here are two pictures of slow Cubs.

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Can't seem to sleep tonight.

Rather than build a Hydra-Creeper gearbox, you can go with a cleaner solution. The expensive planetary you see below was purchased for around $75 on eBay. They come in all different ratios and HP's. I am using this 3 to 1 ratio unit to speed up the one-of-a-kind right side Electrall. They work even better as reduction units.

So you have three options here.

1. Attach a small hydraulic motor on the high speed side and then attach the complete unit to your PTO.

2. Remove one final drive and place it between the final drive and the housing it attaches to.

3. Stuff it in your torque tube.

This all pre-supposes that you have a lathe and perhaps a milling machine. Older machine tools are dirt cheap now. I have been to machine shop auctions where good old iron have received no bids. The junk man won't even bid because he cannot handle them.

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Geez Jim,

Now you have me worried.

Before I got involved with this project, I went to the Prince site and found an exploded view of my pump. A note on the drawing said that the wear plates were mirror images of each other. I assumed this meant that pressure could be applied to either port. I also assumed that there was no need to worry about internal pressure control or conflict.

This, coupled with having used gear pumps as motors in the past, left me reassured that there would be no problems.

I am too far in to put everything back on the shelf. Que sera, sera.

Ooops, I should have said left side Electrall. Ya, the tractor has two 10 kw generators. I am looking for two more.

In response to the SA question...the thought of mechanical-engineering some additional gear reduction is not trivial but not all that big of a deal either.

The real, practical problem, IMHO is now you have a stump puller gearing without the structure to back it up. All that reduction is going to find the next weakest link and somewhere along that path lies a tractor in unexpectedly in 2 pieces.

Matt: How would you ever call these "stump puller gearing". Any time you apply fluid or hydraulic dirve you actually reduce torque to the rear wheels.

I'don't know what Wardner's motive is, haven't been following these threads, however hydro creeper drives and hydrostatic transmissions were not designed with maximum drawbar pull in mind. They were designed to give exceptionally slow speeds for vegetable seeding, transplanting, spraying, harvesting etc.

I just got out my Farmall 130 manual, maximum drawbar pull in 1st gear using hydro creeper drive is 1,980 lbs. A 130 in regular 1st gear would pull 3 times that amount. Believe me, I have pulled 7,000 lbs in a tractor pull. In that same hydro creeper drive IH specs do state 130 travels 24 feet per min. with no load, and 15 feet per min. at maximum load. Hardly a stump puller.

A unit intended for use as a motor will work in both directions. A unit intended for use as a pump is intended for 1 direction operation unless it is listed as bi-rotational. In many cases a pump can be disassembled and reconfigured to the intended direction. I would contact Prince to be sure that their unit will work for your usage. I do not know how fast that you intend to operate the motor, but at speeds below 1000 rpm, gear motors and pumps loose a lot of efficiency because of leakage past the gears. An orbital motor will give better results at lower speeds.

This looks like a viable setup for those who dream of rototilling with a farmall. C or Super C with this drive would still leave the pto free for use on the tiller. Looks awesome!

Hugh, I think you misunderstood...my response was to Mark's post pining for additional gear-only (no hydraulics) reduction in the SA-140 lineup.

I still believe adding another reduction stage would cause field problems. There has to be enough structure in the trans gearbox case, bearings, gear teeth &amp; down the powertrain to resist the additional torque multiplication.

Matt: Sorry, using classic view, I was unsure who you were responding to.

Have said that there were 3 different gear drive reductions for the Super A through 140. All of them worked very well. You wouldn't need to worry to much about the offsets, with 24" tires they could never get enough traction to do damage. Believe me, I've owned 3 Super A, 2 130 and a 140 over the past 50 years. I've done a lot of heavy work with them far beyond what IH engineers ever expected.

Rarely have deep reduction gears ever been designed for pulling more load, They were designed to give slow precission speeds around vegetable and nusery crops, primarily transplanting. Had to be a slow enough speed so the hand of man could keep up with the plant picker. Most manufacturers would have given warnings about misuse.

Take for example the mighty 1066 and 1466, when equipped with duals, the manual advised not to use the 3 lowest gears for maximum drawbar pull. It was fine to use then for going slow.