towing capacity of a Farmall A

Harold H

Always keep the attachment point low. Never chain to castings. Always pull from the center of the width of the tractor. Figure out where the tractor will go, and how fast, when the chain comes off the load.
Your tractor is probably a 123 now (as pointed out) making more HP and it is fresh. Safety first. JimN

I question your horse power comparison between A and SA. With engines in same condition they should be exactly the same, and I'll give the edge to the A as it doesn't have to turn a hydraulic pump. The A was tested at Nebraska, the SA never was tested at Nebraska. IH chose to let the SA fly on the A record, rather than test it at Nebraska and have it not do quite as well as the A. I doubt if that hydraulic system would take more than a fraction of a hp, however the test would pick it up.

To address your too much load question, your A and SA can't get enough traction to harm the power train. IH used basically the same engine in C and SC and with 36" tires those were noted for shorter engine life than in the offsets. From the factory the A, SA and C were 113 cubic inch, late SA after serial 356001, SC, 100, 200, etc were 123 cubic inch. All 113 engines could be upgraded to 123, this could be the reason your noticing more hp than your A had.

As far as trailer load on drawbar, as long as the castings are bolted tight to one another, you will bend the U drawbar before you break castings. That question doesn't matter how large the tractor is, there is NO MAN tough enough to stay in the operators seat long enough to break castings as long as they are tight. Towing the small tractors with chain hooked to axle might be the exception to that rule.

I used to take part in dead weight tractor pulls, 4'x 10' flat steel 1/2" plate stone boat. each tractor had to start and pull the full load 10'. After each successful pull the crew would add as much weight as operator desired. One could keep adding weight as long as the pull was successful. The winner was the tractor pulling the highest percentage of it's own weight. Most tractors will pull on that 4' x 10' stone boat between 2.5 and 3.25 times their own weight. We never saw all tractor models compete, however in our experience the hard tractors to beat were offset Farmalls, the Farmall H and the Cockshutt 30. I've seen more than one guy show up with big 6 cylinder Olivers, Cockshutts or Farmall M, only to leave disappointed. Proves one thing,"The bigger they are, the harder they fall".

My reply below didn't address that part of your post.

No.

I agree with SDE that it would be hard to break the tractor.

I shuddered a little though when you said something about dragging trees in third. Logs are dangerous enough to drag when they're rigged right. If they're not or the rigging should fail, they can flip or roll you in a heartbeat even in first, if they fetch up. A whole tree, depending on the type can fetch up even quicker. The only tractor I ever saw flip was one where a guy was pulling fencposts by wrapping them with chain and using the torque of his tractor wheel to lift them. A neat trick, if you chain it to the front side of the wheel and go in reverse. He went the other way, and lived only because the ground gave on one side and the tractor rolled instead of coming straight back over, and he was able to get away from it.

Be careful!

Common sense must rule, and what you can pull with any tractor depends on what it weighs, the surface you're on, how you've got it rigged . . . I could go on for a while.

If your question is purely academic, you might want to try Googling some of the tractor pulling organizations, who might have some records of what kind of loads an A has moved on a track. Dunno, but maybe the Nebraska tests include some data that might help you out.