Tractor Hours

[JW IN VA]

Any rule of thumb on tractor hours?I'm sure its like a car,some miles are worse than others.Assume normal maintinance is followed.

 

[TennesseeTuxedo]

I've got the exact same question rolling around in my head. Hope you get some helpful input.

 

[Bigfoot]

Wow, spent the day on a tractor, and one question kept coming back to me-----How many hours on a tractor would be equal to 100,000 miles on a car? I never could settle on a number.

 

[tom4018]

Wow, spent the day on a tractor, and one question kept coming back to me-----How many hours on a tractor would be equal to 100,000 miles on a car? I never could settle on a number.

If a car averaged 50 MPH the it would be 2,000 hours. My truck shows hours also and if I do the math it has averaged about 45 MPH.

 

[littletom]

To me its 6000 I don't know why but if looking that's a number I won't to stay under. But on something like a boxcar magnum that's nothing. My dmax has 198000 and I thing 5000 something hours. My sprayer has odo. that's unhooked with 8xxx some miles showing I bet it has way more than 7500 hours I am in it all summer every year it seems like. I think it should depend on the tractor how it is cared for and what it has done. We have put 700 hours on a 6430 deere in the last year and it has a pretty easy life. I have a 1086 that prolly gets 300+ a year all heavy tillage a lot harder hours in wear and useage, but half as many.

 

[Nesikep]

I've been looking at old IH 684's and similar.. We got ours with 5500 hours, and it runs fine... Our JD950 was overworked all it's life, we got rid of it at 5500 hours because we knew the tranny wasn't going to take another 1000 hours of our kind of use, engine would have made 3 times that many hours though. Most of the time, haying is easy work on a tractor, field tillage is the hard stuff... There's so much more power going to so many more gears in the tranny and rearend compared to lightly pulling and most of the power going through the PTO

 

[John SD]

One thing to keep In mind is that depending on whether you have a mechanical or electronic hour meter, all hours are not created equal :idea:

Dinking around in the winter choring with a lot of idling, my old Ford tractors would take about an hour and a half to roll up one hour on the meter. Get out in the field farming at rated speed, I can put an hour on in 45 minutes :o

IMO, the all day long running hours in the field are "easier" hours than the winter chore duty of start every day and run for a couple hours under light/moderate load in the cold :idea:

 

[tom4018]

One thing to keep In mind is that depending on whether you have a mechanical or electronic hour meter, all hours are not created equal :idea:

Dinking around in the winter choring with a lot of idling, my old Ford tractors would take about an hour and a half to roll up one hour on the meter. Get out in the field farming at rated speed, I can put an hour on in 45 minutes :o

IMO, the all day long running hours in the field are "easier" hours than the winter chore duty of start every day and run for a couple hours under light/moderate load in the cold :idea:

Not sure about all but most of the cable driven hour meters were an hour of time at PTO speed, so like you said if you ran it harder you put it on quicker.

 

[John SD]

One thing to keep In mind is that depending on whether you have a mechanical or electronic hour meter, all hours are not created equal :idea:

Dinking around in the winter choring with a lot of idling, my old Ford tractors would take about an hour and a half to roll up one hour on the meter. Get out in the field farming at rated speed, I can put an hour on in 45 minutes :o

IMO, the all day long running hours in the field are "easier" hours than the winter chore duty of start every day and run for a couple hours under light/moderate load in the cold :idea:

Not sure about all but most of the cable driven hour meters were an hour of time at PTO speed, so like you said if you ran it harder you put it on quicker.

Tom, that is what I was trying to say but you did it in a simpler way :oops:

IIRC the meter registers a clock hour @ 1666 engine rpm rated 540 PTO speed. 1000 PTO is rated @ 1900 engine rpm.

I rarely run over 1600 engine rpm doing chores with a lot of 800-1000 idling. In the field doing tillage, 2000-2200 :idea:

 

[sim.-ang.king]

It's going to depend on the model.
IH's with TA's I wouldn't buy with more then 4000 hours, if they haven't rebuilt the tranny, and TA. Old John Deere with 5000 hours is just fine. Actually don't own a JD with less then 5000.

 

[skyhightree1]

Model/Hours/conditioning/records if available help me make my decision.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Most of the time, haying is easy work on a tractor, field tillage is the hard stuff... There's so much more power going to so many more gears in the tranny and rear end compared to lightly pulling and most of the power going through the PTO

Some of those older tractors have over 20,000 hours on them. Usually 7,000 to 10,000 hours per engine overhaul. If you can shop around, there are some usable rigs with 5,000 to 8,000 hours and a fresh overhaul.
Trannies really vary. Both from a design and a load issue.