[AT] Transmission speeds - rambling

[Francis Robinson]

    The discussion of variable speed transmissions got me to thinking about 
our old tractors. My fathers first tractor was a new 9N Ford/Ferguson in 
1942. It came with a three speed transmission. Its been a long time but I 
think the McCormick 10-20 that came on the farm about 1946 was also. His 
next one was a new 1948 Ferguson TO-20 which came with a 4 speed. He bought 
a Sherman 3 range add-on for it. It had an under-drive that would make it 
absolutely crawl in first gear, a direct drive and an over-drive that would 
make it fly in fourth gear on the road. I can't really say that having 
twelve gears was really all that exceptionally useful since changing up or 
down a minor change took extra shifting (and remembering which combination 
generated what speed). We finally decided that for most things you only 
needed 4 gears as long as they were the right ones. The trouble is the right 
4 gears for the corn belt might not be the right 4 for a vegetable farmer or 
someone raising something else.
    For us a very general gear set that had first at about 4MPH, second at 
about 5MPH, third at about 7 or 8 MPH and fourth at about 15 MPH worked out 
pretty well.
    I am fond of the ranges on the 5 speed Farmall's from the Super M on 
through the 400 series ) I'm not personally familiar with the later ones. I 
didn't really care for the speeds on the earlier M's where second, third and 
fourth were very close together and fifth and fourth were too far apart. I 
have always found that 7 to 8 MPH gear to be very useful for pulling wagons 
etc.
    My Allis C gets around that on its three speed by having a very slow 
third gear which will pull a wagon fine but it is really slow on the road.
    My MF-165-D has a three speed with a dual range shift and then the 
Multi-power hydraulic shift. Lots of ranges but a lot of shifting around to 
get up or down one gear.
 Day in and day out I find my Farmall S-MTA to be very flexible and 
comfortable to use. I don't normally use it in the TA setting as a regular 
gear but use it for starting loads, tough spots and slowing for turns etc.
    As a kid I grew up on a John Deere MC crawler with a blade. Reverse was 
so slow that you had to make a chalk mark to be sure you were actually 
moving...   ;-)   It was so slow backing up it hurt... We backfilled ditches 
by pushing the dirt in at an angle then stopping, raising the blade, pulling 
one clutch/brake lever back tight, pivoting around 180 degrees and move a 
few feet, Pull the other lever all the way back, make another 180 turn, drop 
the blade and make another push... Over and over. It was still twice as fast 
as waiting for reverse. Fourth gear was too fast for a crawler and it seemed 
to almost fly (clattering very loudly) but it almost didn't have enough HP 
to get it started moving geared that high. It finally went away and was 
replaced with a John Deere 40-C crawler which was a very nice little unit on 
which the problems of the MC were cured. Another 5 HP would have worked 
wonders on it. Both of those little crawlers were solid and dependable.
    BTW, one of the best things we did with that 1948 Ferguson TO-20 was to 
install an over-bore kit which bumped it to just over 30 HP (originally 
about 26). My Super M, the S-MTA and the Allis C all have overbore kits in 
them. I believe the Allis C kit was to increase it by 6 HP and the S-M kits 
bumped them up by 9 HP. Sometimes getting enough HP for a given implement is 
better than having another gear.



--
"farmer"

When you reach the end of your rope
 tie a knot and hang on...

Francis Robinson
Central Indiana, USA
robinson at svs.net