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I was taught the following rule of thumb: Warmup on a gas tractor is really not that important. Some gas engines don't seem to want to run on all the cylinders until it's warmed up a bit, once it's running on all of 'em then that should be good enough. You won't hurt a gas tractor by pulling it hard enough to kill it, and also you don't need to worry so much about the piston rings needing to expand on startup. Okay, in the dead of winter we also let gas tractors warm up until we have heat at the heater core too. Warmup on a diesel tractor, you want to at least feel heat on both the heater hoses, that means it's warmed up enough to have the coolant warm and thermostat open. At this point you could work it hard if you don't have a temperature gauge that works, but you should go by where the green is on the gauge. As for cool-down... For hard work like tillage, never less than 3 minutes at a slow idle. But if you have an exhaust gas temp gauge, run it until the temp is down below 450. That'll protect the valves and not melt the aluminum fins out of the turbo. Also if you stop the engine and the gauge starts going back up, restart the engine because the head is still way too hot.
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