When is the time to confront the elephant in the room ?

[glasshouse]

We did a fuel test
Ford fw60 400hp
V nh 7050 240hp
Both pulling the same plough
Used identical amount of deisel

 

[Bury the Trash]

400hp should've used less fuel relatively because it should be on a wider plough.


implement matching is very important and takes a certain type of knowledge.


but its a poor comparison anyway as it too different ages of tractors. hydraulics have advanced hugely in the mean time as well as fuel economy relatively way better in modern.

 

[glasshouse]

400hp should've used less fuel relatively because it should be on a wider plough.


implement matching is very important and takes a certain type of knowledge.


but its a poor comparison anyway as it too different ages of tractors. hydraulics have advanced hugely in the mean time as well as fuel economy relatively way better in modern.

Well everybody said the fw drinks more deisel but this showed the opposite
Yes i should have a bigger plough, but we were only using it to plough as it was too wet to use the simba solo or discs.
I think it was a great comparison and showed the moaners that the big engine ticking along wins every time
Not the little one revving its tits off
The other advsntage was the fw got through the wet bits no bother whereas the nh got stuck
The furrows then dried out and it all got drillled

 

[Bury the Trash]

Well everybody said the fw drinks more deisel but this showed the opposite
Yes i should have a bigger plough, but we were only using it to plough as it was too wet to use the simba solo or discs.
I think it was a great comparison and showed the moaners that the big engine ticking along wins every time
Not the little one revving its tits off
The other advsntage was the fw got through the wet bits no bother whereas the nh got stuck
The furrows then dried out and it all got drillled

modern transmissions aren't as good as old ones for lugging draft work.
the way power is transmitted is very important especially for some jobs.
needs a good driver though, one that's naturally in tune with the job, not someone who just wants a seat to sit on.

 

[Cowabunga]

Progression to Oxen and horses for power was fine as they didn't need raw materials mined to build and fossil fuels.

They did need over a third of all farmed land just to sustain those horses though. If you count non-farm horses, then horses accounted for two thirds of farmed land use with only a third used to feed people. In the UK this meant large quantities of food was needed to be imported as the population grew. The Second World War changed all that with the imperative to be more self sufficient in food and the reallocation of male labour to the war effort forcing large scale and quick mechanisation and the resultant massive improvement in productivity that continues to this day.

Those that supposed that fuel use was more efficient in some glorious past are in some fantasy land, not rooted in reality. Yes we could do away with the machines we now use and replace them with smaller machines that are less efficient, particularly in labour use, while all other industries and rival foreign food producers are going all out to further mechanise and upscale their businesses.

 

[Cowabunga]

Well we'll agree to disagree then.

This is not about Man engines in Trucks, it's about ensuring we consider emissions when matching equipment to the relative power.

A Tractor Engine has a completely different Torque curve to a truck engine, and maximum torque is well below maximum revs.

Ah. Emissions! Consider my most efficient tractor engine in terms of specific fuel consumption. That's my air cooled 1993 Same Titan. Even though it uses about 10% less fuel per horsepower utilised than a new tractor of the same power today, it actually produced about 60, that's sixty [no mistake] times as much NOx as a new tractor today. Around eight to ten times the particulates at best. About 10% less CO2 though.

Am I going to scrap it and buy a new one of 70hp to do a hundred acres of tedding a year in order to save its emissions? Am I hell as like! The emissions and energy plus the cost to my pocket of building and buying a lower emission tractor for three or four days work is absurdly profligate and nonsensical and besides which, every one of those 160hp and the powershift is needed for the weeks of silage carting it does with 12 ton or bigger trailers, so I'd still need the higher horsepower tractor and I do NOT need a 75hp one.

 

[Cowabunga]

modern transmissions aren't as good as old ones for lugging draft work.
the way power is transmitted is very important especially for some jobs.
needs a good driver though, one that's naturally in tune with the job, not someone who just wants a seat to sit on.

Most modern tractors have 'constant power' engine characteristics and many have a high start-off torque. Combine these characteristics with a semi-powershift or CVT transmission and today's tractors far surpass the performance and productivity potential of older tractors made before 1990 or so with their crash or synchromesh mechanical manually shifted gearboxes with at most one power-splitter step in each gear, combined with some engines that had very little torque rise and reserve.

 

[Cowabunga]

another difference is finance companies ,never never payments .

All the weight that modern transmissions etc brought just increased dead weight, hence the need for deeper working, a vicious circle unfortunately.

For the life of me I cannot work out the link between tractor size and/or power and deeper working. Indeed the trend over the last thirty years has been towards shallow to zero cultivations rather than deeper, even while average tractor power has doubled.

 

[Cowabunga]

running/working a high compression ignition engines at low revs is not good for their long life.

Our old Field Marshall was flat out at 900 rpm yet modern tractor engines idle between 600 and 800rpm. There is nothing whatsoever wrong in running a tractor engine at low revs and it saves a whole lot of fuel while doing light work. No load idling is not good but lightly loading an engine at fast idle does it no harm whatsoever and never has on any generation.

 

[Cowabunga]

We did a fuel test
Ford fw60 400hp
V nh 7050 240hp
Both pulling the same plough
Used identical amount of deisel

I use no more fuel per acre running my MF7490 ploughing with a four furrow 16" plough than I used to with a Ford 5000 and four furrow 12" years previously despite the heavier weight of the modern outfit. Neither utilised anything like their maximum power to do so and I do not plough any deeper today than I did back in the 1970's.

 

[Bury the Trash]

 

[delilah]

Hope the elephant is remembering all this for when someone asks it what HP tractor they should buy.

 

[Bruce Almighty]

running/working a high compression ignition engines at low revs is not good for their long life.

When you drive a tractor around your yard do you rev it in a low gear or use a higher gear with less revs ?

The engine isn't running at low revs on the road to get to the hay field it needs to ted.
Tedding hay probably accounts for less than 5% of the work done by some of our tractors in a year.

Another example,,I'd rather mow with our old Taarup mo-co at 1500 erpm on economy 540 PTO than use our newer JD mo-co that needs 1000 rpm at the shaft and the screaming 2000 erpm to get it there

 

[Bury the Trash]

When you drive a tractor around your yard do you rev it in a low gear or use a higher gear with less revs ?

The engine isn't running at low revs on the road to get to the hay field it needs to ted.
Tedding hay probably accounts for less than 5% of the work done by some of our tractors in a year.

Another example,,I'd rather mow with our old Taarup mo-co at 1500 erpm on economy 540 PTO than use our newer JD mo-co that needs 1000 rpm at the shaft and the screaming 2000 erpm to get it there