Hay making equipment-compact tractor

Scrounger,

Our place has hills. Going downhill or on a level isn't bad but going uphill it just doesn't have the oomph. Don't get me wrong, 8n's are nice little utility tractors but they have their limits.

What's ironic to me is that a lot of people say you need to get the overriding clutch. I haven't, just means I need to plan ahead a little bit <G>

Mike

I live in rolling hill country. With a sizable baler behind a 8n and no over running clutch and you happen to get started down hill disaster is only seconds away. I concern myself more with stopping the light tractors as compared to pulling with them. It is unnerving when you are in a downhill direction and both rear tires are locked and not turning and the rig is speeding up rather than slowing.

__________________
Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

Scrounger, Do you have any Pic's?

P.S. I found these pic's, is this the one's your talking about?

http://alltractorsusa.com/forum/viewtopic.php?=&p=11651

Guy kinda sounds like you?

Those are my balers!
I don't think I've posted on that site for over a year!

While I agree with you that an 8N is not the most "practical" choice for a baling tractor, the point I am trying to make isn't about an 8N.
It's about not having to have high dollar, new, or fancy equipment to accomplish things around the farm.

If I listened to all the "you can't do that" or "it can't be done" or "It won't work", comments I have recieved over the years, I'd be broke, in the poor house and probably nuts (of course, I might be nuts anyway.....).

I bale with my Farmal H and a Oliver 520 baler.

__________________
Oak Harbor, Ohio

http://thelaubachermarriagechronicle.blogspot.com/

Mr Hoppes: Your tutorial might be found in this book I have read twice now. Small-Scale Haymaking by Spencere Yost. Published by Voyageur Press. (voyageurpress.com) I bought it a TSC. Fun read and if I ever get to haymaking I think this book will be a good reference

Just for reference, I've run a square baler (producing normal size bales -- 50-70lb) behind a 4wd Ford 1700 compact (approx 24 PTO HP). Never had any problem operating it. I have relatively flat ground and only produced about 100 bales, but no reason I couldn't have done more. My BIL ran it on a JD B (hand start, no less). He had more trouble than I did on hills (from a power perspective, but not mass). I used a dump rake that was rigged with a hitch for the tractor to put the hay in rows and a 7' sickle bar mower to lay it down. Also handled that without any problem. It is worth noting that the 1700 had 12 forward gears--I certainly wasn't in the lowest, but not in the highest (comfortable) gear for the field, either. I do know that starting the flywheel on the baler made the tractor take notice.

BTW, you have to be careful when talking about torque comparisons for PTO power. PTO horsepower is rated at 540rpm (for most tractors discussed in this thread)--this means that 20 PTO HP is 20 PTO HP (the torque is constant). For driving the wheels, it may look a little different, but from a PTO horsepower perspective the torque is the same regardless of the machine if you're talking about 540 RPM (torque * rpm = HP). That isn't to say the torque curves are all the same, but I'm not sure there's enough difference to talk about here. Usually, torque is fairly similar when driving the wheels when running PTO driven equipment, too, since you are often running at the peak point for the engine to get the PTO RPM/max HP and, if you have equivalent gearing (including wheel/tire size), you get the same effective torque to move the machine, even if the engine torque looks higher on the lower RPM engines.

We have a Massey 50 tractor. We cut hay with a sickle mower, rake with an ancient rake (big & heavy), and bale with a IH 65. Our fields are all on a slope, no flat at all. We also plow & disc the garden with it. And plow snow.

Never have had a problem yet. BUT we are getting a new tractor tonight Keeping the Massey & getting a IH. Can never have too many tractors

About those Wisconsin pony motors on balers. We have an old skidsteer, and when DH was rebuilding the engine, he found a old one just like it for parts - it had come off a baler.

We can lift and carry 1800 lb round bales with the skidsteer, so I think the motor has a bit more power than some might expect.

Oh, and just to keep a bit more on topic, we have an Oliver 1800, but hire the neighbor to bale our hay. We get 20 - 30 large round bales a year. We came close to buying a small square baler when we lived in WI, they are very hard to find here in SD. Wish we had one, we could make money selling square bales off our alflafa field to the horse folks, and buying grass hay for our needs.

Cathy

I have 1955 Ford 600 model 640 (no live PTO) NOT BIG ENOUGH for Wisconsin hills...REALLY gotta have live PTO to use my NH 66 baler ($100 plus parts) (which just broken AGAIN!) or it will plug often.

Love my NH 256 rake (best purchase at $750)
My New Idea Model 251 sickle mower ($100) just broke down too...
Can't use my NH 479 ($650) haybine with the Ford 600 right now, no hydraulics.

So I pay to have my 16 acres cut and baled by farmer with thrower. I try to rake if I have the time, to save money.

The biggest problem is I am at the mercy of the neighbor on when to bale. Haven't cut the first crop yet. Maybe Saturday???

I'm ready to sell the old Ford and trade up to something with hydraulics and live PTO. Clutch just went out on Monday while I was driving down the hill.....man I did not need that to happen.

You have given me a ray of hope!

__________________
Cloven Trail Farm
Lord help me be the person my dog thinks I am!

Ja-Lyn's Radio Flyer, aka "Rad" on his 17th birthday.
9/14/93 -12/3/10.
Rest peacefully my soulmate, I'll love you forever.

Another thing that needs realized is that the lifting power of a skidsteer is not necessarily due to the motor - there are hydraulics involved. There are several good backhoes, skidsteers and other equipment built around 18-20 HP Kohler motor......

Talked with my brother last night. I knew he was using old equipment to cut and bale, he has 1600 small square bales in one barn, another 1400 in another barn and 800 still on the ground. He's using a 20/20 1968 John Deere tractor with a 1972 John Deere square baler. His haybine is the newest. It's a 1992. He uses his 1957 Farmall 230 to pull the rake and wagons. The rake is the same one our dad used when we were on the farm. My brother still has dad's 1952 Farmall tractor. He just recently bought a hay elevator and said he bought the hay baler off a guy that had had it sitting in his garage for several years. He paid $3000 for it. He said it was like new and hardly used. He claims that a new small square baler would cost around $17000.

Ive baled with an IH "H" and a case and a case 1270 ...the 1270 is better that said I just yesterday used a Kabota with hydrostat WOW what a pleasurethat is inthe hayfeild!
Id just guess that a good size hydro might be the way to go.

Yeah a "good sized" hydro, but not a smaller one. IMHO Hydros are good for mowers and loaders, but just don't have the feel and power of a geared machine.

Cut and rake your own hay if you would enjoy doing so, but hire out the baling. Guy around here makes large squares, and charges $1/ft of bale made.

I dunno. I can bale it WAY cheaper then I can hire someone to else to do it. Most people I know don't have the time to bale for someone else, and the "for hire" guys charge a mint. Also, if you have a small field, they are less likely to want to do it.

ReootMyself, torque is torque is NOT true! If I hook a chain up to my Super H (30hp) and my truck (150 hp) the truck in 4wd, both weighing the same, that truck will only se foward movement in the rearview mirror. That is a promise. Hook up an 8n (25 hp) and see what it can do, now pull that engine and put in the one out of my lawnmower (25 hp) now see what it can do. Compare a smallblock vs. a bigblock engine with the same hp and tell me torque is the same. Those old long stroke engines have soooooo much more torque and lugging ability than the new short stroke engines they don't even fit in the same arena. As for reliable, my Super H is on it's first engine (1953). I got it 20 years ago, and the only money it has cost me is new brake disks ($50) I rewired it this spring ($30), gas and oil. I highly doubt any new machine can compare to that cost of ownership. Good equipment, when built well in the first place, costs little to maintain. Our bailer was bought new in the mid 60's. Had to replace two kicker belts and the knotter timing chain. It has seen hundereds of thousands of bales go through it. I doubt ANY new piece of equipment can compare to the quality of older equipment. A used $500 machine can be rebuilt to new for much less than the $20-50,000 a new piece will cost. I, and many other can run their whole operation for more than a decade on what a new sub-compact tractor that is only good to mow a lawn costs. Mike

This would be true if we didn't use gearing (transmissions) between the engine and the load (wheels or PTO). There is a formula that shows the relationship between torque and HP at a fixed RPM (whether 540 for your PTO or 10 RPM for your rear axle driving the tractor forward):

Torque = Horsepower * 5252 / RPM

at 30 HP and 540 RPM, you get 291 lb ft

at 150HP (for the heck of it) and 540 RPM, you get 1458 lb ft

Thus, 30 HP at 540 RPM always is the same torque.

Assuming you can run your machine at peak HP output and have the gearing to produce the desired RPM, you get more torque to the PTO or wheels for a greater engine HP. Torque and HP curves and lugging properties differ across engines and affect performance, but these differences are much more important in cars and trucks where the RPM varies widely as part of acceleration, etc. In a tractor, where you typically are setting the throttle at a point to get 540 RPM (which, for most tractors, puts you at or close to the maximum HP rating for the engine, rather than necessarily at the torque peak), as long as you aren't exceeding the engine's ability to supply, torque is torque. Torque curves (lugging) starts to matter for PTO implements when you exceed the HP rating, then the question is whether you stall (poor torque curve, typical of newer higher rev engines, or gas engines compared with diesel) or do you just slow down some (older engines, diesel). You have to be careful here, though too, because the gearing and the engine torque curve still interrelate to determine ultimate performance, and it might not be as bad as you think for a tractor.

All that really matters between your truck and your tractor is traction and gearing (and whether the driveline in your truck can take the torque of the lowest gear output of your transmission and transfer case). If you have a manual transmission with a granny gear, a transfer case you can put in 4 low, and can eliminate traction as a variable (pull on pavement, maybe) you might be surprised when your tractor stalls (movement really wouldn't matter as it reflects traction, you'd be looking to see which machine stalled, as that would be the indicator of which had more torque).

None of this is to argue against the value or quality of older equipment.

I agree with your formula in theory, but HP is what is derived from torque, not the other way around. A modern engine gets it's HP by increasing RPM. So an old 2 cyl JD, for example gets it's max HP at around 900-1000 RPM, while a newer tractor gets it's peak HP at 3000 RPM or more. Using that formula shows that a slower turning engine will create much more torque than a faster one. Since torque is what actually turns that PTO, a 30 HP older,slower engine will have much more torque to power equipment than a faster engine geared back down to the PTO. I'm in no way saying that newer tractors can't do the job, just that newer tractors, in general, need more HP to do the same job. Also, in general, older tractors, and other equipment, cost less for parts, and will need fewer repairs due to their more robust and simpler construction. Either way, proper sizing of the bailer is what is key here. Mike