Re: F-20, F-30 Road Gear

Posted by LenNH on February 27, 2010 at 11:29:10 from (24.60.236.239):

In Reply to: F-20, F-30 Road Gear posted by Ross Bryner on February 25, 2010 at 11:51:00:

Here is a direct quote from an original "Farmall" brochure published in 1938 or 1939 (I am guessing date by inclusion of F-14 among the Farmalls): "Special transmissions available for rubber-tired Farmalls give traveling speeds of upwards of nine miles per hour in high gear."
Note that these are not EXTRA gears--they are substitutes for the original gears. In the case of the F-20, as one writer here mentions, third- and fourth-gear positions were exchanged (the old fourth position becomes third, and vice-versa). In the F-12, as far as I know, the gears remained in the same position. I must say that I think these would have made these tractors much more useful for hauling crops on roads. In "my day" (the 1940s), roads were often rough or washboardy, and 6-8 mph would have been about all you'd want to do with a steel-tired wagon. I remember many hours dragging a wagon down our country roads at 4 mph with the engine roaring full-blast. This is a fast walk, or about a 15-minute mile. Seven mph would have been great. I am pretty sure this "road gear" could have been used, engine throttled back, for light jobs like raking hay. As somebody else said here, the original F-12 had three speeds, slow, slower and slowest. But don't forget that this tractor was designed for steel wheels, and 4 mph on steel is right on the edge of intolerable on hard surfaces like gravel roads. My (bleep) still has the indentations made by my father's 10-20 when I drove it on the road 65 years ago. Incidentally,despite the slow speeds, the F-12 was a wonderful tractor--durable, reasonably comfortable, agile, and quite capable on rubber tires of pulling a load beyond what it was originally designed for. We plowed with a 2-12 Little Genius and disked with a double 7-foot harrow that came with my father's 1929 10-20.
It had what was, for its day, a good attachment system that made it fairly simple and fairly quick to attach implements like cultivators and mowers by simply flipping a few toggle bolts and tightening them with a long-handled socket wrench that came with the tractor. If the mower had been properly blocked up when it was last unhooked, it could be put back on in about 5 minutes (after removing the drawbar by flipping the four toggle bolts). The front and back parts of the cultivators could probably be put on in about 10 minutes, again if the outfit had been properly blocked up and had not sunk into the ground (this happened sometimes between seasons if you didn't take enough time to put some good solid wood planks under the implements). My father used to say that the IHC drawbar was a great selling point. You could carry a "passenger" or two on it, and you could put planks across it to carry a couple of bags of feed, some firewood or what-have-you.
Traction from the big 40" tires was very good, especially if the tractor had the beautiful cast-iron wheels that were available late in production. In all the fifteen or twenty years that my father's F-12 was in almost-daily use, it never required any repairs other than a new fuel pump diaphragm. Even in the winter, it carried several loads of manure to the fields every day.
Don't know how I got from gears to all that palaver, but back to subject:
Will and Markle's "Farmall Regular and F-Series" book says a 7.07 mph high-speed was available for the F-20, and 6.6 mph for the F-12. The higher number given in the IHC brochure might be accounted for by the tractor's being driven at high-idle instead of at full-load governed speed. Just a guess. Will and Markle state simply that "Other gear sets were also offered," without stating what they were.

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