I've raked with something as small as an Honda Foreman ATV in a pinch. Not sure how good that is on the transmission and I would speculate that a transmission will buy a lot of fuel.
I used to rake with an 801 Ford. Used something like 15 gallons of gas in a long day to do it. When I decided to go with 'all alike' tractors that moved me to using an 86 hp Ford diesel to rake duties. Normally its the 7600 that gets drawn for the job but sometimes the 7710 gets the nod and occassionally the 7610. I still use about 15 gallons or so of fuel in a long day with the rake. Greatest fuel sipper I ever had was a 1210 Case DB. Thing would rake all day on 5 gallons but with parts costing twice what they do for the Fords I couldnt see keeping it for the savings.
I cant see ever saving enough fuel pulling a hayrake to ever pay for a tractor. If it saved 10 gallons a day and fuel was 4.00 a gallon thats 40 bucks a day. That would mean it would need to rake 200 days just to pay for an 8000 tractor. For most of us, thats a lot of years of raking at what I think are unreasonable savings. Plus, the first time you need a thousand dollar water pump (dont ask how I know about those, I had a Romanian tractor when I started out) over an 80 locally available one it makes it even worse.
To me, a better solution is (and was for me) to increase output. I added another rake and made an offset hitch so now I'm pulling two instead of one. Nominally I should do twice the work using the same fuel and time. Realisitcally, its not quite that efficient, in that I only save a third. Payback is a lot quicker on a 600 rake, with a 600 overhaul and 200 in a hitch than on several grand for a tractor. Plus, the time savings can be priceless when rain is coming.
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Today's Featured Article - Restoration Story: Fordson Major - by Anthony West. George bought his Fordson Major from a an implement sale about 18 years ago for £200.00 (UK). There is no known history regarding its origins or what service it had done, but the following work was undertaken alone to bring it up to show standard. From the engine number, it was found that this Major was produced late 1946. It was almost complete but had various parts that would definitely need replacing.
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