parking tractor safely

whats the best way to park these old tractors safely on slight grades with engine off. i never really trust the old brake wracheting locks on these things and was wondering what you guy's do. when putting in gear when parking do you go low or high gears? and when nose foward do you park in reverse and with butt aming down grade do you put in a foward gear, high or low???

Low or reverse, depending on whether it is pointed uphill or down, don't know if it makes a difference.

Sideways on a hill is always superior because it will not roll that direction. Use the brake lock (with working brakes it is not a problem. If children are around, I would put a bolt through the flipper hole of a diameter that would keep the flipper from being depressed (kids try all levers and pedals).
Low gear (1st) is almost impossible to drag the tractor to turn the engine over. It will slide the tires. So 1st is the answer. I would block the wheels against a RR tie if I thought there was a remote chance of children being around the tractor at all. I would also use a battery disconnect switch in the battery cable to prevent the starter from being used to make it go. I hope this helps. Jim

I make sure loader is resting on ground and also any 3 pt. equipment....ALL pressure relieved from hydraulic system.

Rick

Drop any attachments to the ground like snoop said. Apply the brake lock and put something, anything on the downhill side of a tire.

Also, you want to use a low gear when leaving the tractor in gear. Always use the direction opposite of what the tractor wants to roll. That way, if the tractor does somehow roll and the engine turns over, it will not start. The engine wil be turning backwards, so unless you have a 2-cycle motor it will not be able to start.

I never park one in gear to easy to have it start and the person get hurt by doing so. Me I also do my best to park so that the tractor will not roll so if on a hill I park alone it not up or down pointing. If it has a 3 point I park with the equipment on the ground.

Back when our whole haying operation consisted of older tractors, we always thought we were lucky to find a place to quit for the day where there was a hill handy to park 'em on so we could roll-start 'em the next day and not have to pull-start each one! Usually they'll stay put no matter which gear ya leave 'em in, unless you're on a REAL steep hill...

I had some shift fork troubles lately and notice that the tractor won't budge if it's in two gears at once. If you're a handy machinist, I suppose you could probably devise a way to intentionally put the tractor in two gears at once. Do that, and I guarantee you'll be stripping teeth from gears before you make the tractor roll. However, implementing such an idea would take some serious modification, and I doubt it's worth the trouble. There is the matter that releasing the clutch while two gears are engaged stalls the engine, plus, getting it out of "park" when these gears have the tractor's weight pushing against them is a bit of a trick.

As previously mentioned, the most practical method is to drop implements and select the lowest gear opposite the downhill direction, and set the brake. Parking sideways of the hill certainly will help.

If I want to stop only for a moment and leave the engine idling, I try to select a place to stop where the tractor stops rolling on its own first, then set the brake. Not easy in my hilly country, but again, being crossways of the hill helps a lot.

It is an excellent practice to regularly disassemble and examine the brake assemblies, or at least keep them well adjusted. Also examine the brake pedal pawl and the lock ratchet (the saw-tooth thing on the left brake pedal which the pawl engages). The leading edge of the pawl (where it engages the lock ratchet) should be sharp, not rounded. The spaces between the lock ratchet's teeth should be deep, clean, and free of detritus. The profile of the lock ratchet teeth should lean toward the pawl, so that the force of the pedal draws the pawl down into the teeth, and holds it there.

Never disengage the brake by stomping on the pawl. This causes rapid premature wear and deformation of the pawl and the lock ratchet teeth. Always release the brake by stepping on the brake pedal(s) and allowing the pawl's return spring (or gravity) to disengage the pawl.

One last note on parking pawls. On any IH product, if a brake held engaged by the parking pawl for whatever reason releases on its own, it will fully release. Massey Ferguson made a parking pawl which toggles. Snapped into the "release" position, it acted just like an IH parking pawl, releasing as soon as the brake pedal is bumped or pressed. However if the pawl was snapped into the "lock" position, a spring pushed it into the lock ratchet teeth, and stomping the brake pedal only locked the brake tighter. It likely would not take a genius to modify any given IH brake lock to work like this--something to think about if you have kids around.

The only way to keep the kids safe is to keep them away from dangerous machinery, or at least never allow them near the machine unsupervised. And that assumes your supervision is adequate. Numerous accidents have proven that someone's supervision or judgement was lacking.

Good luck.