Oh, well, why not add my 4 cents worth?(inflation makes the old 2 cents worth just about worthless). Fifth gear on H and M are direct drive through the tranny, just like the third gear on a 3-speed car transmission, back when that was a normal gearbox. Pretty impractical much of the time, just because back in "my day," the back roads were washboards, and as often as not, our wagons had iron tires. There just isn't enough torque to start a heavy load in fifth, and there certainly isn't enough torque to toodle along at high idle while you're trying to do maybe 6 or 7 mph with a loaded wagon. Many's the mile I went from our fields to the barn in 4th gear, wide open, roaring like mad. IHC should have followed the lead of Oliver and John Deere, who put in six gears. Fifth on those tractors would have been perfect for the country roads. Even sixth was much slower than the 5th on the H and M, and would have had a lot more torque, I imagine. Maybe some of you fellows can testify to that if you've had experience with those tractors (gulp! they're not red!). As to field speeds, the speeds of H and M were typical of their day. Second was considered "plowing speed" in the 20s and 30s and probably in the 40s, too. I know from bushhogging with an H and a Super M that even first can be too fast under certain conditions. IHC did offer a lower first, which I think came packaged with a 7 mph fourth. Both of these speeds would be really useful. An H does not have enough moxie to do pull its normal load in fourth, and as everybody here says, fourth was just too slow for the road. Sweet tractor to drive, especially way back then when they first came out. Every time my father would go to town, I'd coax him to stop at the IHC dealer so I could drool over those red beauties. Later, when my father bought one, I was disappointed in the lack of torque (compared to the F-20 and 10-20 I was used to), but the comfort level next to those old beasts made everything all right. For their day, they were pretty comfortable.
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