Riding Mowers & Tractors Discussions

Get the gearshift, she'll learn to like doing wheelies. There is no upshifting like a car, you put it in a gear and take your foot off the brake, that's it. Gear 1 is granny, 1 mph; Gear 6 will bring the front wheels off the ground usually. If you get up the driveway with the hydro, it's only going to freewheel back down. They are made for level or rolling yards, not slopes.

I think you would be better off with the garden tractor version. they have a larger hydrostatic transmission that works with a higher internal oil pressure to be able to pull heavier loads (which would consist of you, the tractors weight, the weight of the snow equipment and any wheel weights you might have)

Failure of the hydro is disconcerting. Evidently the fluid is so thick (from the cold?) that the hydro's pumps aren't producing sufficient preasure. Do you allow the transmission to warm up before use? Have you tried purging the transmission?

I have found that resistance from hills or ground engaging equipment causes the hyraulic oil to overheat & greatly diminishes the pulling power. Belt drives are more user friendly than they use to be.

Firsttractor said…

Failure of the hydro is disconcerting. Evidently the fluid is so thick (from the cold?) that the hydro's pumps aren't producing sufficient preasure. Do you allow the transmission to warm up before use? Have you tried purging the transmission?

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Actually the tractor did worse the longer it ran.  Trying to get up the drive I shut it off and let it sit on the hill for an hour a couple of time, then I could get maybe another 100 feet.  I ended up having my wife drive and I pushed.  I had purged the transmission several times, but it still would not go up the hill.

The spec at hydro-gear says the output torque for the LT series is 160 lb-ft which through a 20" tire would give a forward pull of under 200 lbs.

The garden tractor series is a bit better, with up to 260 lb-ft of torque continous but with 24 inch tires still only gives 260 lbs of pull. The GT series can have 510 lb-ft intermittent, which would give 510 lbs of pull - but not for long.

According to my calculations, even the GT series transmission will transmit less than 3 hp to the ground. (1800 rpm input / 30.6:1 reduction = 59 rpm * 260 lb-ft / 5252 = 2.91 hp).  Why have a 26 hp engine.

I went with a garden tractor but the 6 speed gear drive.  I want to spin the wheels or stall the engine.

Maybe you shouldve thought about this before you moved to a hill

Rebuild your house some where nicer

Thanks for the follow-up. I had less than a year of engineering and that was 40 years ago, so I'll defer to you on the calculations. Your choice of the manual transmission appears to be the best route to take. Buy a couple of back up drive belts.

Now I'm really concerned about being able to snow plow with my hydro- time will tell I guess.

One follow up question. Did you own the tractor early enough in the year to use it for mowing? If so, did the trany show any signs of this failure on hills etc.?

I went with a garden tractor but the 6 speed gear drive.  I want to spin the wheels or stall the engine.

There used to be a dual range 6-speed Peerless by Tecumseh that was a beast.