[AT] "older men" and change

Greg Hass ghass at m3isp.com
Thu Mar 30 19:02:48 PDT 2017


I think this is tractor related as it affects much of what we do. My 30 
year old skid steer has been down for over a year but due to health 
problems just got to pulling the engine yesterday. It is a Honda 24 hp. 
engine I put in less than 200 hours ago. At one third throttle it will 
go through a quart of oil in 5 minutes. I think the seal behind the 
flywheel came out but have not torn it down yet. Last night just for the 
heck of it I looked in the northern tool catalog I recently got to see 
what a new engine would cost. NONE of the engines are listed by 
horsepower but by cc. and torque. Well I know that means something to 
somebody but not me. I have better things to do (a nap comes to mind) 
than try and convert those figures. Also, I'm not sure of conversions; 
for instance, my Farmall Cub is rated at 10 hp. and is a c60 running at 
1800 RPM. The Cub power unit on our IH 64 combine was also a c60 but ran 
at 2900 RPM giving it about 18 hp. so I'm not sure you can go by 
displacement. HP rating have worked for a hundred years why change now. 
Call on a new tractor and they will give you engine horse; that may be 
all and good but only drawbar horse will tell me how many plows I can 
pull. A couple of years ago my brother bought a 10,000 watt generator. 
He got it home a fueled it up and was test running it when he happened 
to glance at the box it came in. In big letters it said 10,000 watts, 
but in small print under that it said starting watts. Also in small 
print it said 8000 watts running. Turns out when the salesman was 
showing the forklift driver which generator to load he just looked at 
the top number and took that one . My brother had already used it so now 
he is stuck. Have we reached the point where all people can do is 
deceive us?  Old man rant over.
         Greg Hass



More information about the AT mailing list