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Have you ever noticed

N

notjustair

Well-known Member
...how road gear is rarely fast enough? I used the little Farmall
A to run the auger at the grain bins. They are a little over a
mile from the home place. I got done and started home and
sure enough, I hit a downpour. I had her maxed out but she
just wouldn't run any faster! It couldn't happen when I was in
something with a cab. Oh well, my bath is done for the night
and the tractor that rarely gets run got to do some "hard work".

Road gear on the JD 7800 is about 29 mph. I was thinking it
was too slow the other day when running home with an empty
grain cart. Just can't seem to win.
 
Yeah, it isn't just "Murphy's Law" it's part of "Murphy's Laws" I think he wrote an entire book of them. Then there was "O'Tooles Observation" which said that Murphy was an Optimist. There are times I must agree with that also.
 
That raises the question: "How fast is fast enough?"

Neighbor put a set of high speed gears in his MD Diesel. It about ruined the tractor as there wasn't much torque left in any gear - as they say: "It couldn't pull the hat off of your head."
 
If it were a Ford 8N you could back it home.
Reverse always seems plenty fast enough on them! LOL
 
Many years ago when I was a small kid, we had an 80-acre alfalfa field about 7 miles from where we lived. It was always my job to drive the Allis-Chalmers C to this field because we needed this tractor hooked up to the PTO shaft on the bale elevator to get all the small bales from the trailers into the shed. Then it was my job to drive the tractor home after all the alfalfa was put up.
That tractor didn't have much of a road gear.
 
Just completed a 50 mi. round trip with the chopper @ a blistering 12 mph. Faster might be better if it didn't wander like a boat on water. By the time I got home, I was darned near sea sick. No joke there, sadly.

As for traveling faster in the rain, you're just taking on more water.

Mike
 
What were the speed limits for cars back when your Farmall A was new (1939-1947), 35MPH during WW2?
 
Several years ago I had a conversation with an older gentleman and he told me about the time he and his older brother took an old F-30 and put a "58 Olds V8 and automatic in it. He got this far in his story and my imagination took off! . . .loose steering. . .not quite centered rear cutoffs. . .fluid in the rear tires. . .BRAKES? He said that it would do better than 30 mph. I think I"m pretty lucky to have heard this story. TB
 
In my teenage years my dad and I did contract hay cutting during the summer. In most cases when moving from one hayfield to another, if the distance was about ten miles or less, Dad would trailer one tractor and I would drive the other.

One day I was coming through a small town on a state highway that featured a long, steep hill. A car was poking along up ahead, and being a stupid teenager (should that be one word?) I got the NAA up to speed and then kicked it into neutral. I have no idea how fast I was going when I passed that car. I got away with it--I somehow managed to keep it between the ditches. Of course the car came back around me at the bottom of the hill.
 
We had a Farmall A when I was a kid growing up in the 60's and if you got caught in the rain with it, it would stop running. We'd wait a day or so for the mag to dry out and it would start back up. I walked home in the rain more than once with it.
 
Considering the steering set up on most old tractors the road gear was plenty fast.Also road gear was for pulling something like a load of hay at a decent speed and most older tractors didn't have power enough to pull them very fast.And the brakes on most older tractors were barely good enough to stop them at any speed.
 
there slow , but speed on tractors isn't always a good thing, not only for a unwieldy implement being towed, but many tractors steering gets to be unstable as fast speeds, I found that one out myself on a farmall m, narrow front when young and dumb I decided to make use of super overdrive, [ neutral] on a hill, thank god that hill wasn't very long!
 
All the tractors we have ever had road gear is slow 12 or 13 mph up hill or down. That was until I bought a 1550 Oliver Utility, This one will FLY! The book says it will run 20 mph but I think it goes faster than that, Problem is with 7.5x15" and 14.9x28" tires unloaded it tends to bonce a lot and the steering is very touchy so going fast gets scary fast. I took the 1550 to a show and at 3 pm Sunday it was looking like rain, No time to get the trailer and being I was only 6 miles from the house I took off with it on the road. It didn't take long and I backed it in the barn and it just poured the rain, I beat the rain and didn't get wet. Dad drove me back to get my truck (still raining) that's when I found I forgot to roll the windows up in the truck! I got wet anyway, Some days you just cant win. Bandit
 
Road gear makes me nervous on my older tractors. I'm all for getting where I need to be, but wonder about stopping the thing if something happens or wobbling off the road.

Luckily, I rarely have far to go and it's pretty flat around here.
 
Was thinking this very thing last weekend. Took a friend's '52 JD B to town for a parade. A timed 10mph is all it would do. The weather was nice and I enjoyed the 12 mile drive but kept thinking "I'm giving 'er all she's got, captain."
I think I could easily turn a few more RPM but not my place to tinker with another man's tractor.
 
You ain't never seen slow until you travel 10 miles to the "other" farm in the 1950's with two old JD D's at 6-7 MPH. Gave me lots of time to daydream about things, including girls. Now have a tractor that will go 22 MPH to the other farm 3.5 miles away and rarely run wide open unless there is a need for urgency.
 
We had a Fordson Dexta we used on the farm that we clocked near 30 mph. Really too fast to pull implements as they would wag all over the road but with a good hay wagon or two behind it (unloaded, otherwise Dad would have a cow!) we could get home quick.
 
I for one wish road gear on my Farmall h and Farmall M were a bit slower. The trikes can get quite scary with loose steering and the death wobble in road gear. Plus a couple miles per hour slower would indirectly give them a much needed torque boost too.

My John Deere A trike feels much safer in road gear with its steering death wobble at 12 mph compared to my Farmall death wobbles at 17 mph - LOL. Hopefully someday will get all these steering systems fixed so they do not wobble, but we know how that goes. For now good thing I rarely if ever go on the road.
 
Try road gear on a tractor with no cab in the rain on a gravel road
I bet you can't slow down to first gear fast enough!:lol:
 
To go back to the OP observation though, my uncles always worked for one particular farmer when they were kids growing up. The farmer had multiple tractors:

When the rains started blowing in the ole farmer would wait by the lane while the others continued to work then jump to the front of the pack on his mid 1930's Oliver 70 on steel and plug the many mile long single lane road as the old Oliver was on steel and went so sloooow as it had no road gear whatsoever. My uncles forced to follow on a JD A and JD B on rubber would get soaked even though they had faster gears, but that old man would plug the lane in spite.
 
Used overdrive going downhill in a Gleaner one time. Going OK until I meets a car and wanted to slow down. Luckily, it went straight on two wheels.
 
My case. lA has four gears but fourth was removed when it came out during the big War with steel wheels I have all the parts from a 48 but have been to sick with that last heart attack to work on it.
Walt
 
Dad bought a Montgomery







Dad had a Montgomery Ward tractor in the early 50 with a flat head Chrysler 6 that with the governor held back would run between 45 and 50 with a wagon of ear corn behind it. We were hauling corn from rented property 7 miles away, and sometimes we would pass a car on the flat highway.
 
My 1942 Farmall H was bought new by my grandfather, who traded in his old Farmall Regular on it. 5th gear in it is very quiet. Grandpa tried 5th once, went so fast it scared him and he never used 5th again!!
 
My 2010 Farmall 95 runs 19-21 in road gear. It is so short coupled and MFD that if you hit some bumps you are airborne and hope you come down aligned with you line of travel LOL
 
Oh Ya, That reminds me of my young teen years, I would drive a F-12 about 6 miles to our other 'farm' property. NO road gear ! How fast was 3nd im thta old Farmall?
 
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