[AT] Farmall H wide front end

[Gene Dotson]

    Dean;

    Thank you very much for putting in your great words as to my own 
feelings. No one has said it so eloquently as you have.

                    Gene



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dean Vinson" <dean at vinsonfarm.net>
To: "'Antique tractor email discussion group'" 
<at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 11:31 AM
Subject: Re: [AT] Farmall H wide front end


> Whenever the narrow-front vs. wide-front discussion comes up, I'm always 
> on
> the side that it doesn't make any difference.
>
> With any tractor, operator awareness and caution, spacing of the rear
> wheels, speed of operation, terrain, height of the loader bucket if so
> equipped, etc, have got to make more difference in the tendency to roll 
> over
> than the front end style does.  If all those things have been controlled 
> as
> well as they can be, and the operator still has a concern that the 
> tractor's
> geometry is unsafe given his particular terrain, as a general rule I'd say
> forget about switching front ends and switch instead to a low-profile
> utility tractor.
>
> It's not that I disagree with the personal anecdotes or detailed
> explanations of the physics or practical tests involving toy tractors on a
> tilted board or discussions of the effects of having larger and widely
> spaced front wheels, etc.  All of those sound reasonable and right to me.
> But at a very gut level I always come back to my instinctive position that 
> a
> tall row-crop tractor is still a tall row-crop tractor regardless of what
> type of front end it has.  Putting a wide front on an H or M won't 
> suddenly
> convert it into a Ford 8N or IH 300 or Oliver 550 or whatever, in terms of
> the relationship between the height of its center of gravity and the span 
> of
> its rear wheels.
>
> In the end I think it's a shades-of-gray issue.  Is a wide front safer?
> Sure, probably so, but only by shades of gray.  If you evaluate those 
> shades
> and make a carefully reasoned choice for a wide front, great.  My concern 
> is
> our natural tendency as humans to latch onto quick soundbites and boil
> everything down to black and white, and therefore assume that "wide front"
> equals "safe".  It doesn't.
>
> Dean Vinson
> Dayton, Ohio
> www.vinsonfarm.net
>
>
>
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