can an 806 pull a 6-16 plow

I was wondering if anyone has had experince running a 6-16 plow on an 806? it has a turbo. thanks

Andy: It will in loam to sandy loam soils. Some hard clays may give it difficulty. I farmed sandy loam and pulled 5x16 semi-mount 8" deep with my 656 on 16.9x38 tires. My only other tractor at the time was a 1066, and given the fact it had duals and busy with even heavier work, it wasn't worth the change over. I did plow with 1066 the first year before duals and a 12 ton manure spreader

It is rather interesting in that the day I started plowing with 656. We backed plow into shop, prepared to remove back bottom, reducing it to 4x16. Looked at all those bolts, then set two years. Finally I said to my hired hand, take it as it is and plow that clay hill behind the house. If you don't encounter problems there, none will happen anywhere else on farm. Over the years the 656 was a bit slower than a bigger tractor, however the plow repair costs dropped per acre. Remember this, a 5x16 plow at 4 mph will plow more acres per day than a 4x16 at 5 mph.

No!

OK..... Why then?

i used to pull six eighteens with my 1466 and it was like a tiger by the tail. something broke in the tractor rear end almost every year. but our ground does plow hard. now use five sixteens with the 1466 and the 1486 and four sixteens behind the 1206.

Tom: You've led a sheltered life. There are hundreds of tractors out there pulling a 16" bottom per 15 hp. My neighbor plowed 60 acres per year for years with a Cockshutt 570, 5x16 trailer plow, and he didn't have an acre of level ground. I pulled a 3x16 trailer about 60 acres per year with Farmall 300, later went to 5x16 behind 1066, constantly had to check see if the plow was back there so went to 656 with 16.9x39, no liquid or solid weight. Gave the 1066 something to do that was work for it.

Andy: He's probably one of the guys that want to plow at 12 mph, and spend a whole bunch of money on repairs, both tractor and plow.

And 806 is a five plow tractor and will do fine with them but myself i pull 4x16's with mine and over here at times it is all ya want with a 1000 lbs on the nose
same with the 1066 and 5 x 16's behind it with 1200 on the nose and she will still stand up on ya real fast

(quoted from post at 19:23:14 08/30/09) I was wondering if anyone has had experince running a 6-16 plow on an 806? it has a turbo. thanks

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At 85 drawbar HP for an 806, and 15HP/ 16" bottom, it's cutting it close.

It looks like everyone has a different opinion. One thing depends where you are located. I use to pull 4-14's in southern Illinois with my 806 diesel and in the clay type soil that is all it wanted. Now you get down in sandy loose soil and I would say a 5 bottom would not be much of a problem. I use to plow in low 3rd gear, sometimes low 4th and thats with six weights on the front also and fluid in the rear with the motor turning 100hp. Pull a 6 bottom, not around here.

Andy- It doesn't seem like anybody read "turbo" in your post. If the fuel was turned up to take advantage of the turbo, you should be making enough power for average soil, but you will need a lot of weight, IMO. We ran a stock 806 with 5-16" in black ground without a problem, so you should have enough for 6.

YES it will . I have plowed many like 2-300 acres a year for ten years or more with 6x16 trailer plow nothing like a trailer plow. no weights on front. Just loaded tires and duals in spring most times in summer no duals. with on land hitch none of that setting lopsided all day stuff either. usually in 4th low sometimes in 3rd on some of the tougher up hills.

Andy: Just about everywhere I've travelled, and I've done a bit, an 806 would pull a 6x16 plow and play with a 5x16 plow. What I can't understand is how the forefathers of some of these guys managed to break prairie sod or clear from the forest, this difficult to plow land they now farm. Even 100 years ago most of this would have been done with mules, horses or oxen. I can't for the life of me understand how an ox, mule or a horse could have pulled a tillage tool the size of a pick, if an 806 wont pull 5x16 bottoms. Even if man used that pick in traditional manner, and if the soil is that damn hard, the pick would have bounced, rather than penitrate the soil.

60 years ago when I was a young boy, there were hundreds of photos out there from every state in the US and every province in Canada, and always it was a Farmall H pulling 2x14 or an M pulling 3x14. IH advertized this, even in the toughest going an H was 2 plow and M was 3 plow, yet some of these guys can only pull 4x16 with 100 hp. Something doesn't add up here, I think we're being given a line of BS. I'd like some of these guys to explain how their forefathers broke this sod. Must have been a truly amazing feat.

So.... Hugh, does that mean that once I get a new bottom on my newly discovered (drug out of the weeds of my neighbors pasture)Cockshutt 1230 3pth 1 furrow plow, can I pull it with my Farmall SA (if it had a 3 point hitch)in the clay on the north slope of the Annapolis Valley?!!!

Robert

Robert: You be careful, some of that noth slope is quite steep. Years ago they had oxen down there with short left legs.

Haha! Still do, just have to plow in same direction all the time!

Send me an email at [email protected]
I have a question about plow shares for Cockshutt plow (need new one)
Thanks

It can, but if all you're going to do is scratch the dirt up a little why bother with a plow?

It depends on the ground. In real easy plowing soils, you should be able to walk right along with a 6-16. I know that Dad's 856 had a tough time with a 5-16 in his ground when he used it to finish up plowing one year. It was slow going with a lot of spinning and working the levers. That had near-new 18.4x38 tires, full fluid, and one set of iron weights at the time.

Ya gotta wonder how the pioneers did it. I imagine that they didn't cover much ground in a day. There were probably days when they barely cut one furrow, if that. I imagine they didn't plow very deep the first time over, either...

A 6-16 plow can easily be reduced to 5-16, so if the plow is a good deal I would not hesitate to buy it because it has too many bottoms. Try pulling it, and if it's too much, remove the rear bottom and move the trailing wheel up.

Hugh, I wonder if it has to do with the design of the plow. When I was a kid, I watched a neighbor plow with his team of mules. He moved his garden around to different parts of the pasture every so often.

When he signalled the mules to go, that one bottom plow cut a furrow like a hot knife though butter. He had the reins draped over his shoulder and didn't seem to use much effort to hold the plow. Unless he was doing something I couldn't see, the plow maintained a steady depth. Seems like it had a long bottom rail.

When you figure the average mule/horse can walk 4 mph or better, that is moving right along. He didn't seem to fight the plow at all and at that speed it would be a lot of work if someone did have to.

Nobody here is talking about the added stress on the drive line because of the power increase over factory settings. Regardless of the tractor color, about any dealer will tell you that increasing the power by more than 10% of the original setting is putting the drive line at very significant risk of failure. If you have to max it out to about 120 to 130 hp. I would not do it.
A straight 806 around here would be 4 - 16's or 18's with picking up speed in the soft areas. I would look into a variable width plow if the conditions vary from field to field. The White 588 was the best of the domestics and should not be to bad on price as more farmers are getting away from moldboarding. I can't tell you about the IH 730 and 735 plows (variable width) as very few seem to be around. As for buying a fixed-width plow and adding/removing a bottom, that will get old if you have any amount of ground to cover unless you are buying based on price.

No disrespect Hugh but I farmed with 806s back in the day pulling 6x14s & 5x16" plows & in some of my ground there is no way a stock or near stock 806D would pull a 6x16" plow at any reasonable depth. Maybe 4 or 6" but not 10" or deeper like we plowed. In good pulling L-3 was tops & almost every thru you had to pull the TA back in a place or two. A coule fields it was L-2 with the TA pulled back. When we use to plow that ground with a SM & 3x14" # 16 plow it was all the SM wanted in 1st gear. Good plowing was 2nd gear, that was really rolling along.

Good sable loams that when you dropped the plow in the ground it was one continious slab till you pulled the plow out of the ground on the other end.

You have to respect what those old timers did but the plows back then were mostly 10-12" bottoms & they didn't plow vey deep. As a kid we had a neighbor who would use horses to plow with when it was too wet for a tractor. He never plowed over 4" deep using a 2 horse hitch & 2 bottom sulky plow. Using tractor he pulled a 2 bottom Little Genius with an H, about the same depth. I know one year I took the SM over & disced some ground for him in the spring & was turning p what he had plowed under

Dont know if it can or not. I think the problem would be traction.

I pulled a 4-16 semi mount on the fast hitch with my 706 ger. 4-low and about 4.75 mph. That is where I thought the plow worked the best. Fairly easy load for the 706.

steveormary

I have pulled 6-16 fine with a 706 German diesel in sand ground, and have had the front end of an 806 (with a full rack of weights) 4 feet off the ground with 5-16 in black alfalfa ground. Depends on how deep, how fast, and how far you want to plow. It will pull it, but it sure wouldn't be my first choice in most ground, unless it is an on-land hitch--then maybe.

BC: Ah ha, I think you hit part of the problem, "poorly adjusted plows."
I had some damn good plow teachers when I young, one was my dad and another was a neighbor who's farm I eventually bought. He was still living on the farm, liked to get out on a tractor at 63. The day my 5x16 semi-mount plow was delivered, 1066 was at his former farm. I knew a new plow would never be adjusted right. I also knew that George who had plowed for 45 years on open tractors wouldn't be able to resist 1066, cab and that plow. I never went near, he phoned me about 3-4 days later asked if I had any diesel. I said, "there is a 100 gal in tank behind barn." He said, "Oh I've got that all burnt, I need another tank full before I move to your home place." He knew I always had a 150 gal. tank my pickup.

I went and fueled him up, he said it took him about 12 hours getting that plow adjusted right. He said the plow felt like he was pulling the Titanic anchor when he started, now the 1066 just plays with it. There was a method in my madness, I knew if I said nothing, I would get the best adjusted plow in North America. We went on to plow with 656 on that same plow, 16.9x38 tires, no chloride, no wheel weights. Pooy adjusted plows are definitely part of the cause. I went to a plow clinic some years later, couldn't believe the percentage of poorly adjusted plows.

Steve: the problems most of these guys are encountering is poorly adjusted plows, read what I said to BC. I know there are huge numbers of poorly adjusted plows working across North America every year. All I need do is visit plow scrap yards, look at how the wear parts wear. They don't wear same as on a well adjusted plow.

Of course there are two other factors, some guys insist on plowing 8-10 mph, that takes power. The plows we're discussing were engineered for 3 to 6 mph, not a bit faster. The other is plowing more depth than half the width of cut. Plows are not engineered for this. Put those three together, I can see the power they require. I wonder how their bottom line performs.

can I ask you how to properly adjust a plow...no one seems to know around here. that would be SE Michigan. thanks

Hugh, Alot of operators want to go too fast,whether it is bushhog or plow. 4-low give me 4.75mph and the plow worked very well at that speed.Also could throttle up or back at that speed.

steveormary

We kept the first "demonstrator" 706D that came through my grandfather's dealership, it worked the shows and plowing demonstrations with 5-16's, the "steerable" plow, and we added another 706D the next year. We had that 5-16 for one year, and Gramps swapped it for a 4-16 that the 706 would pull full depth in L4 at 1800 and just sniff at the fuel tank, and did a beautiful job, furrows would lay out flat. Our neighbor bought the demonstrator 806D and 6-16 plow, was still using it that way the last time I saw it in the late 70's when he passed away. He had an old 560D that came behind it with the 16' spring-tooth drag, and then the 806 went on the big 4-row potato planter- everybody had told him that binder would never pull that big planter, and they were all pulling theirs slowly with weighted D4 Cats- the old 806 pulled it in L3 at 3/4 throttle, cruising- the poor guy riding and watching over the planter feed was the speed control, not the power of the tractor. Then came the skinny tires and 4-row cultivator with hillers- he didn't like to run any other tractor. Ran two diggers, one on the 806, one on the 560, until he got a potato harvester- 806 again. Potato harvester required a stone picker- 806. Only time that thing didn't work every day was when it was snowing- and it was never in the dealership for a repair, not once, and he never had to go through the engine

Some comments that have a little something to do with at least some of the topics of this conversation. I literally grew up on a steel-wheeled 1929 McCormick-D 10-20. I was just about 10 when I just took it out and started plowing with it. My father did not object. Today, I'd think OHSA would be all over a farmer who let his runty kid take a beast like that into the field. Those early tractors used lots of cubes because I guess the engineers were afraid to run them fast (splash lube and straight motor oils might have been factors in this decision). The 10-20 ran at 1000 RPM FULL TILT! You could make out each explosion if you were into that kind of nonsense (I was--I still get shivers when I hear an antique airplane with a radial engine pass over, and I just love going to plow days and listening to the music)(guess which member of my marriage thinks the other one has a screw or maybe two loose?). The 10-20 didn't have much h.p., but it had gobs of torque and just couldn't be pulled down in hard going. An F-20 on rubber that I often got to drive on a cousin's farm acted just the same way (big engine, long stroke, 1200 rpm max). When the H and M came out, there was scuttlebut running around that they just weren"t the tractors that the F-20 and F-30 were. True, IHC brochures always described the H and M as "full two-plow" or "full three-plow" tractors. My father didn't get around to replacing the 10-20 until 1951, when he bought a used H. That's when I realized the difference between a small high-speed engine (h.p., but low on torque) and a big slow-speed engine (modest h.p., but huge torque). For years, we used the H to pull the two-twelve Little Genius that my father had bought with his 1938 F-12!! Second gear only, most of the time. I can't speak for the plow adjustment now--maybe it wasn't as good as it could have been. Could have had something to do with it. Still, it was obvious that the H was a marginal two-plow tractor. Delightful to drive, and much more comfortable than its predecessors, but not quite up to the hype.
I grew up on 140 acres in NJ, so we didn't plow huge acreages every year (dairy operation: some corn for ears, some corn for silage, some wheat, some alfalfa or mixed grass). In my father's early days, a farm like this would have a couple of horse-drawn plows and one horse-drawn disk-harrow. There were almost always TWO hired men living in the house, who worked for a few dollars a week and room and board. Plowing in the spring started as soon as the ground would permit, and probably went on for a couple of weeks, with both plows in the field. When my grandfather bought the 10-20, he parked most of the horse-drawn equipment and used the tractor for the heavy work (a steel-wheeled 10-20 doesn't make a very convenient chore tractor--like for pulling a hay rake or a wagon full of corn or hay, so horses prevailed for that work until the late 30s, when the aging horses were sold and my father bought the F-12).
There is an old formula that seems to work pretty well: width of implement in feet times miles per hour equals acres worked in 8 hours.
Example: two twelve-inch plows = 2 foot width.
Pull at 3 mph (typical plowing speed in the "old days") and you can plow six acres in a day, if you dont take too many naps under the old elm tree, don't relieve yourself too frequently, don't have problems with the plow, can't hear your wife trying to get you to come in to unplug the sink or stop Junior's tantrum the old-fashioned way.
With the relatively-small number of acres we tilled at one time, there was never any need to spend 8-hour days on the 10-20, and I don't think I ever did (probably 6). It was a brutal ride, up and down on those lugs all day, and the noise--music to me in those days--was probably not good for the hearing. As to acres plowed with a couple of horses pulling a riding plow, I imagine a couple of acres a day per man and plow would have been a good accomplishment. Don't remember the width of those little plows, so can't apply the formula.
Been away from any active farm work for a few years now, but I still miss it. This palaver about nothing is really just a trip back in time, and I hope it's not too trivial.