All things tractors thread

I am hoping to see tips and info about no-till tractors and related equipment. for a total newbie who may be about to buy a farm for my retirement.

I had one similar a LONG time ago. It was huge, red, heavy, tricycle looking with two small steering wheels. It did have 3 point and pto. Donā€™t remember the horse power but it was a lot, strong! That sum beach would rare up if you werenā€™t careful. I wish I still had it.

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Mine is not 3 point but neither is my equipment. Hydraulics are fine and pto works for my needs. I use it to plow, brush hog, hammer mill, sickle, rake, baler, trailer, planter, disc etcā€¦ The front end was modified to a wide front end.

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my olive trees have different ages, the youngest being 10 years old and the oldest about 300 years.

in my province almost 100% of the olive trees are grown Picual variety, a variety which gives very good oil, has a very high performance and produces a lot of olive.

if, of course in my area also attacks the olive fly (unlike the fruit fly), I would have just sent a Facebook message to a friend agricultural engineer asking for the ideal to treat fruit fly insecticide, when the answer me, Iā€™ll tell you.
in my province there are millions of olive trees and this makes it not necessary to try insects, some farmers if they use insecticides against the olive fly and others like me do not use anything.
Some years ago I made several courses on olive growing and technicians recommended us not try 2 things:
1 if the fly attacks to an olive oil, nothing happens, the oil will have the same quality.
2 fly attack makes olives attacked down fall, this in my terms means losing 3% of the olives, but nothing happens because the remaining 97% gain weight and recover the 3% and also insecticide and we saved the day working in dealing with insecticide ā€¦ eye, that this only happens in my circumstance where there are millions of olive trees, where there are more olive trees than flies and then attacks are minimal, if you have few olive trees if you have to use insecticide or lose 100% of their olives (though my fruit trees if that have to deal with the fruit fly with Imidan-phosmet 20%)

20% phosmet surely go too well
http://static.plenummedia.com/40767/files/20160727144205-imidan-le---18102.pdf

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at least in my country ford is not considered a good tractor (eye, which can make different models in the USA and these good, but those made in Europe were pretty bad)

ford, case and Fiat (Ferrari) joined the group forming new holland, even tractors sold under different names but the tractors are exactly the same

tractors you cite this would be my order from best to worst (caution, perhaps the best brand manufactures tractors in one continent or another continent and the opinion is different depending on the continent where you live).

1-john deree ā€¦ very good tractor, for many years has been the best tractor in the world.

2-Case and New Holland ā€¦ very good tractor can improve the details, but that aregla with powerful engines cummings, cummings is a manufacturer of motors of ships or aircraft, that experience makes Case and New Holland have engines very robust and reliable

3-massey ferguson, has long been the best or the second best tractor thanks to its perkins engine, currently is staying a bit back and have a little dated technology

4-kubota, in my country is considered a normal tractor, far outweighed by other tractors, in my country there was a brand of tractors called ebro and was bought by kubota, ebro was quite an old tractor, so maybe weā€™re not being fair and thinking in kubota think ebro

5-bielarus, this is the worst Iā€™ve seen tractor in my life, is all iron and more iron, a few months ago I saw one of its latest models and looked like a tractor manufactured in 1960

?-mahindra, I can not comment, I do not know this brand

ā€¦ A very inportant advice is that if someone is going to buy a tractor, choose a good brand, but it is also very important that that mark has workshop or technical service near you and you can have access to spare parts easily

I explain how we sell olives:

I am a member of a cooperative, the cooperative has about 500 members, every day I have my olives to the factory we have cooperative and olives are crushed.

then my cooperative is associated with another 20 or 25 cooperatives, we get together to sell oil together in a group, we have several traders who are always traveling in Europe or USA for a good price for our oil, and when we afrecen one fair price, as we sell, sometimes we sell 100%, sometimes sell 25% of the total.

usually my cooperative and according agreed in meeting sell oil year 4 times throughout the year, so optenemos an intermediate price more just, this is like go public, which happens if I sell oil in February to 2 euros and March 3 euros worth? To avoid this we sell in 4 times and so optenemos an average price.
the get together in cooperatives also has its logic, if I wanted to sell my oil alone, intermediaries would take advantage and I would pay a little money, being within a group of companies we have 200 million liters of oil to sell and it is us that dominate the market and we can demand a fair price

I did not know who had tractors gasoline, I thought they were all gas oil, diesel engine is more durable and lasts longer than a gasoline engine, so thought all tractors in the world were diesel.

Here are 2 types of diesel, one is used by cars and not now remember his price for my car it is petrol, worth about EUR 1 or 1.10 dollars.

the agricultural diesel is subsidized, can only be used for agricultural machinery and boats of fishermen and is priced at 55 euro cents, 60 cents, the same price you (although here the standard of living is lower than in the USA and therefore it costs more expensive than you)

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Europe is considered the best tractor in the world is the Fendt brand and the second best mark jonh deere.

fendt is regarded in Europe as the ferrari tractors.
fendt familar is a small company created in Germany and the way they work is different from other brands ā€¦ fendt has very few factories and workers, they do not manufacture anything, they do not invent anything, they do not create anything ā€¦ they seek the best and buy and they ride on their tractors.

for example, it says fedt which is the best engine in the world? cumming of case, because they pay a lot of money to case build engines for fendt ,then he says fendt tractor has the best direction? or that has better injection pump? and they buy it.

the fendt end is a tractor that incorporates the best case, John Deere, Kubota, New Holland and other tractors, also carries the latest technology, the most leading a fendt 2016 and incorporates the technology to other tractors will have in 2026 or in other words ā€¦ Fendt 2006 is more modern than any tractor created in 2016.

the fedt tractors are guaranteed for 40 years, all this makes it a tractor worth much, much money as fendt does nothing as a manufacturer, everything is bought and they simply assembled in their structures

This is the fendt vario:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VACAvJyy9Ns

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It has an evil scowling face - I like that

OK, thanks for the explanation of how you sell your olives. That is a lot of oil! Probably a good idea to get an average price over 4 different times.

Yes, there are older gasoline powered tractors here, but I donā€™t know if they sell new gas tractors. Someone else in this forum might know. My pastor (church leader) has an old gasoline tractor. I forgot what brand, but he still uses it. I prefer to have diesel, I like the sound and smell of a diesel engine, and yes, they are probably more reliable and economical.

When I buy diesel at the local market, they sell two different diesels. One for off-road use, like for tractors and farm equipment, and another for on-road use, like for cars and trucks. I think off road diesel was about 10 cents cheaper per gallon. The only difference is that they put a red dye in the off road version for identification purposes. If you get caught using off road diesel in your vehicle, you could get fined.

So, you say gasoline, or petrol, is about $1.10 a liter? That comes out about $4 a gallon. Today I put gas into our Jeep, it was $2.19/gallon. Itā€™s been this low for a while, since the price of oil has dropped so much over the last year. I remember that about 8 years ago it was almost $4/gallon, right before the big financial crisis.

Just stumbled across this thread, always interesting in talking tractors.

Iā€™ve had two tractors on my farms: An old Case (1951 vintage) on my place back east, and my current tractor a Satoh (Mitsubishi) S470D. The case was a gas powered unit, pre- 3pt hitch, and did fine for what I was doing back then, mostly moving things around and a bit of plowing and clearing land. The Satoh is also quite old (1984 vintage) 4wd 18hp diesel. Quite a workhorse, it mostly get used for snow removal and a bit of land prep.

The Satoh seems to be a copy of the Kubota models of that era. Well made, no fills, very simple to run and work on. And they last forever. Mine still is running like a champ after considerable abuse by myself and the PO. While there are times that Iā€™ve wished for more power, or some more modern controls (like side adjustments on the 3pt and the toplink), all in all this tiny tractor has and does serve its purpose well. It has dug me out of 7ā€™ snowfalls without too much complaining (albeit somewhat slowly). Canā€™t really complain.

Speaking of raring up, a few months ago, I had my plow hooked to the tractor. I was going up a slope, and had stopped for some reason. Then I had my foot on the clutch, and off the brake, while the tractor was in 4th gear. So with my foot on the clutch, I was rolling slowly back down the hill, and popped the clutch, and whoooop! I popped a wheelie! You talk about getting your attention. Glad the plow was back there to give me some support if it got too hairy, but I doubt the front tires got more than a foot off the ground. But, still, I learned my lesson!

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I am always reminded how narrow European tractors are, even the large ones. I assume to navigate smaller roads. It also seems like all the tractors over there are 4wd.

Cummins sells a lot of engines, but I once talked to a heavy equip. mechanic who said he didnā€™t like Cummins. He claimed they were prone to drop valves. I donā€™t know what particular Cummins engine he was talking about though.

I like the Perkins engines they put in Massey tractors. Perkins is made by Caterpillar and most Americans think CAT makes the best heavy equip. I know there are a ton of old CAT dozers out there and they never seem to quit. I think itā€™s fair to say they make really tough equipment.

I have a friend who bought one of those Carraro tractors for his orchard.

He likes it. He jokes that the tractor is so compact, you wear it.

I wonder about the eventual availability of parts though. I remember White used some Japanese motors in some of their tractors and after quite a few years no one could get parts for these motors anymore. My father-in-law always had a rule to use the standard. He meant use pretty much what everyone else uses. The standard generally has most of the kinks worked out and you can generally swap it out easily in the future if you need to, or get parts for it. The standard many times is easier to resell if you need to.

Got the the JD out yesterday to do some bush hogging. I did have some issues again with the neutral switch. It took me a couple minutes to find a combination of shifter positions to get it going. But, after that, no problems.

I didnā€™t do a lot of mowing, just levelled some overgrown plots, around the corn patch and the orchard. After about half an hour of running the mower, the tach started to go wonky again, as in no rpm reading. Donā€™t know whatā€™s going on, but these two issues arenā€™t too worrisome, unless of course the tractor wonā€™t start at all.

I have a question though, about the PTO. Since the bush hog is attached to the PTO, is it OK to back the tractor up into a tight spot to mow, with the PTO still spinning the mower? I guess what Iā€™m trying to say is will it hurt the PTO if I put the tractor in reverse, as in will it violently reverse the PTO shaft? Is that shaft independent of the tractorā€™s drive shaft? I asked a couple of people this question and got two different answers.

Test it out with no implement attached to the PTO. My answer is that the PTO wonā€™t reverse when tractor is put in reverse. Many things on a PTO canā€™t turn in reverse.

Thanks, Steve, Iā€™ll try that. I still have the mower attached to the tractor, but Iā€™ll unhook it from the PTO and see what happens.

And a question totally unrelated to tractors- how do you pull part of someoneā€™s post and insert it into your own post, like you did with mine? Thanks.

Most of my tractor knowledge is from models in the 1970ā€™s but none of them had a pto shaft that reversed. If a piece of equipment needed that function, like a silage chopper ,for instance, the reverse lever was a part of the chopper not the tractor. I started driving tractors when I was about 13 and this is my two cents for what it is worth. In this day and age most things have redundant safety devices but farm equipment is a little different. You really have to think ahead about what might happen. The most dangerous situations I ever got in were when I was learning a new piece of equipment and how to run it, just when I would think " I got this figured out" I would make a mistake. One of the biggest dangers we have here is steep hills. One of my coworkers father in law was killed this summer when his tractor turned over.

Oh wow, sorry to hear about that. I know tractors can be very dangerous, even if one is experienced in using them. It just takes one moment of inattention to cause a tragic situation. This is my first year in using one, and Iā€™m trying to be very careful. Thankfully my rig has a roll bar and seat belt, but I donā€™t take any chances. We too have some big hills on the farm and I try to be careful around them.

We just got hit with a brief but strong rainstorm, so Iā€™ll go try my experiment when it clears off.

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Rollovers happen and are dangerous. My sister in lawā€™s granddad died when his tractor turned over next to a pond, pinning him down in a foot of water and drowning him.

The real danger is in spinning shafts like a pto. Get near one of those when it is spinning and let a burr catch your shirt or pants leg and you will go round and round and it will not be pretty. Know several people that it happened to and it did not end well for any of them. You lean over a shaft and your shirt hangs down or you have a bulky jacket and it will almost reach out and grab you.

By pass starting is also dangerous.

No one on our farm has been seriously injured but we have had many, many close calls.

We have a 2940 and 2950, which looks like yours just a size bigger, and you should be fine going in reverse. To start these two tractors we have to turn the steering wheel back and forth to relieve hydraulic pressure, could that be part of your starting problems?

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