Changing goals and speed

[Bruce]

We were advised not to get an 3 point hitch auger for a lot of reasons including not much down pressure

My understanding is that 3PTs USED to have down pressure but no more. People that know tractors can clarify. However I somewhere (maybe Tractorbynet??) I saw a picture of someone who had attached a loooooong pipe to some "appropriate" place on the 3PT (I guess) so there was human powered down pressure. With that long pipe the leverage was adequate to get the auger to dig when its own weight wasn't enough.

 

[Mike CHS]

We had to use leverage when we were digging in a rocky area where even a skid steer with a pile driver didn't cut it. In our open clay soil I have been digging holes in a minute or less with our little tractor just using the weight of the auger.

 

[Bruce]

Clearly you need a lot more 40+ pound rocks in your field down a couple of feet, easy drilling just isn't all that exciting

 

[Baymule]

An auger for our tractor would have cost over $900, and since it is a small tractor, it would haven't dug very deep any way. So we bought the hand auger from Harbor Freight for $200 and have used it and been happy with it.

 

[greybeard]

Makes me wonder why they never bought an auger for their tractor. They have a little Ford 9N, that could have made short work of a lot of it..

I've used a pto driven PHD on an N series Ford--several in fact. 2n,8n,9n, and they all presented the same problem, unless you had some extensive work done to them (like adding an engine driven hydraulic pump)

It's called the 'live pto' problem. The N series were and are great trctors, but they had limitations and some quirks and those quirks are where the horror stories of PTO drive PHD originated. The biggest one, is they were underpowered at low engine RPMs, and the gear ratios of the transmissions sucked. Forward speeds were too fast for many implements
In the case of the N, and many others, there is a secondary issue with the non-live pto. Two actually.

"One is that the pto is driven off a counter output shaft of the transmission. This means that the tractor must be in neutral or moving for the pto shaft to spin. It also means that if the pto shaft is spinning, the tractor is being moved, or must be in neutral to stay still. Pushing in the clutch doesn't matter, the engine is out of the picture here. You would need to be in neutral to separate the pto shaft from the driveshaft. Hence the nasty habit of bush hogs shoving tractors around by their rotational inertia, and the need for an overruning clutch. This prevents the attachment from pushing the tractor around through the pto shaft.

Another annoying aspect of the N is that the hydraulics are driven off that pto shaft. So every time you push in the clutch, the hydraulics are dead."
That last part, means the only way the N series 3pt lift will work is if the PTO is engaged. If you hang something (a big root or edge of a big rock) you push in the clutch and disengage the PTO lever. Then normally, you will pick up the auger, breaking the root, but with a N, you're stuck there, because you can't pick the auger up out of the ground because the hyd pump has no power going to it. Your only true safe option was to kill the tractor, get a pipe wrench and turn the auger baxckwards till it cleared the obstruction, which is a pita, and most people opted to just keep the engine running, with the pto engaged and try to pick the auger up with the 3pt at a high rate of engine speed. When the auger came to surface, the end would swing wildly out in a big arc and hit anyone standing nearby, assuming you didn't twist off the driveline and it swing out killing everyone big enough to die.
Look carefully at this cutaway of a 9N ad from the late 50s and you can see why the problem exists.
Added to that, most pto driven equipment of the day didn't have the shielded drivelines that are mandated today. Just the steel shaft, visible and free to go where ever if it broke.

Modern tractors either have an engine driven hyd pump, a 2 stage clutch (one stops the PTO at 1/2 depression of the pedal) or have the hyd pump mounted on a different shaft from the PTO outut shaft.

If you've ever tried to use a powered tiller behind an N series, you will immediately see what I mean about the transmission and final drive ratios. You can't find a gear slow enough for the tiller to break up the soil in one pass unless it is really loose or already broke with a double bottom plow.

 

[AClark]

That makes a ton of sense. We had a blade for it only, and I do kind of remember it being fairly speedy for a little tractor. I learned to drive on that. My parents would have me scrape the horse pens out with it, and I thought it was great fun. I didn't even realize I was working.
Oddly enough, they don't really have rocks there. Their soil is about as hard as it comes though. The last post I dug there (railroad tie) took me hours, it was no joke.
I only knew they made augers for them (theirs is a 1941 I believe) and other implements, but they never bothered to get anything other than the blade. Obviously, they knew better than I do.

No idea when to expect a foal. The vet said 3-4 months when we went, I think a month and a half ago. Maybe an August baby. No telling what it's going to be since we have no clue on a sire, could even be a mule. Whatever it is, it will be well loved I'm sure. Mares generally don't need help for foaling and it's over and done with fast. Most of them pick in the middle of the night to foal, so it'll just be a surprise to come out and see a little head poking around their momma.

Fred, I still have a truck without the bells and whistles. It is so much easier to work on than the diesel beast, everything is simple. I do enjoy my newer truck for some of the comfort features, but that's about it.

 

[AClark]

I haven't been on lately, we've gotten really busy and I just haven't had time. Tonsil surgery is next week, and today is an emergency trip to the dentist since I crushed a molar over the weekend and it has abscessed. We have zero availability for ER dentists on the weekend here, and I had to call 10 different dentists this morning (being a holiday weekend) until someone could take me in this afternoon.
I was at the ER yesterday about the tooth, the whole side of my head had it's own pulse. I don't like these painkillers they gave me, they make me feel super loopy and nauseous.
My tooth is so bad I'm pretty sure they are going to pull it, now whether it's a surgical or regular extraction is the question. If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have none at all. It's my first tooth to be pulled aside from my wisdom teeth several years ago, so I'm not happy, but I'm glad it's the very last molar so it won't be noticeable. I'm pretty sure I don't even want them to try to fix it, it's so painful and there's less than half of it left anyway.

Get this, I broke it eating a salad. Not a crouton either, a piece of lettuce. That's what I get for eating healthy, bacon wouldn't do me dirty like this!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

That sucks in such a big way! So sorry you're having to deal with that.

 

[CntryBoy777]

That just makes me cringe....cause I know how it feels...sure hope ya get rid of it soon....and I know next week can't get here fast enough for ya.

 

[misfitmorgan]

I agree on the N's limitation. We broke a lot of shear pins using the auger to dig post holes. Currently our 8N is nonoperational because someone put a massively over sized loader on the front of it and it ended up somehow bending the steering column and a few other parts so now you can't drive straight and it has two flat un-repairable tires. It has sat for about a year and a half now because the fix is over a grand and we would rather just get a new tractor. IT is a great zippy little tractor for doing things like raking hay but really thats all we found it useful and if you were on a bumpy field oh boy...wear your good bra or your jockstrap.

I haven't been on lately, we've gotten really busy and I just haven't had time. Tonsil surgery is next week, and today is an emergency trip to the dentist since I crushed a molar over the weekend and it has abscessed. We have zero availability for ER dentists on the weekend here, and I had to call 10 different dentists this morning (being a holiday weekend) until someone could take me in this afternoon.
I was at the ER yesterday about the tooth, the whole side of my head had it's own pulse. I don't like these painkillers they gave me, they make me feel super loopy and nauseous.
My tooth is so bad I'm pretty sure they are going to pull it, now whether it's a surgical or regular extraction is the question. If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have none at all. It's my first tooth to be pulled aside from my wisdom teeth several years ago, so I'm not happy, but I'm glad it's the very last molar so it won't be noticeable. I'm pretty sure I don't even want them to try to fix it, it's so painful and there's less than half of it left anyway.

Get this, I broke it eating a salad. Not a crouton either, a piece of lettuce. That's what I get for eating healthy, bacon wouldn't do me dirty like this!

So sorry about the dental issues. Ironically I took a bite of toast and broke a tooth. Bacon was the culprit that ripped out one of my new filling though lol.

The pulling isnt bad honestly. I never had a tooth pulled, lost my insurance so i didnt go ot the dentist for many years then i finally decided i had to go and see what my options were. They pulled 7 of my back teeth in one sitting including one wisedom. I had one tooth they could not get to numb for some odd reason so that one really sucked but still only took maybe 4-5 minutes to get out that one. My gums were sore for a few days but nothing like how my teeth had hurt, i took one pain pill when the numb started to wear off and thats it. I have to go get 4 more pulled and my partial fitted and then i am good on pulling for a few year i hope.