Case garden tractor pulling

There are considerable differences between the hydraulic drive on the your Case tractors, and a hydrostatic transmission found in most other garden tractors. Not saying either is better than the other, but they aren't really the same.

For what its worth, I've used my Case 220 (also hydraulic drive) to pull loads over 2,000 lbs and it did it with no problem. However, these were rolling loads, not dragging or sliding. And stopping that weight was a bit scary, fortunately, no hills were involved.

I will mention that Case had some trouble with the gears in the transaxle coming apart, and blowing out the bottom of the axle housing.

Yahoo has a Case Garden Tractor group that may be of interest to you.

Link

The trans-axles in the Case garden tractors are as rugged as you will find anywhere and normally they are 100 percent bulletproof. Unfortunately, a bad run of bolts from a supplier was an issue for certain years of tractors. These 4 bolts hold the hi and lo range gears onto the carrier of the rear end. Sometimes those bolts stretched and sometimes they just snapped.

When they snapped or dropped a nut, the lack of clearance between the cast-iron case and the rotating parts became apparent when the loose part broke a hole open. Once the problem was discovered, changes were made to the rear axles and since that time, no one has had a problem. As for the older trans-axles, the remedy is simple. Take the trans-axle apart. Replace the four bolts. Run a two inch long bead of weld on either side of the carrier, right where the two halves meet and put it all back together. End of problem. There is no reason to dismantle these trans-axles in the near future and should that be necessary, there's a thing called an angle grinder that will quickly remove the welds.

As for the confusion over "hydrostatic vs hydraulic", Case themselves are as much to blame as anyone. Many of the early tractors had a decal on them that said "HydrAstatic Drive". Notice the A instead of the O? Most people don't. They just assume that HydrOstatic is the same as HydrAstatic. Not so.

While it is true that Case and Ingersoll have produced a few true hydrostatic machines, the garden tractor line has always been hydraulically driven, never hydrostatically driven. The former is a positive displacement pump whereas the latter is a variable displacement pump. Huge difference.

All that said though, there are guys out there who have "pulled" with the 200 and 400 hydraulically driven tractors. How successful they have been, I cannot say. The cheapest entry level Case puller would be the 210 gear tranny model. I know that guys do pull with that model. There are forums out there dedicated to the pulling crowd. My advice is to find one and ask your question there.