How Fast to Drive a Tractor (and how it relates to PTO rated engine speed)

hi this is Mike with tractor my QA had a bunch of questions today about rpms and ground speed Ron Saif and Bruce all had questions about how fast can I go how fast do I need to go Ron is I wanted to know about he's pulling an implement what what gear to be in and what RPM to be in Seth about using a loader gears and rpms and then Bruce was asking about tillage what RPM do I want to be running pulling a disc harrow and a rule of thumb how many horsepower per how many bottom plow and let's answer that one first rule of thumb for whole farmers on how many horsepower for bottom plow is is 20 horsepower per bottom so if you've got a a single bottom plow 20 horsepower will work for that to bottom 43 bottom 60 and so on now there are a lot of variables what kind of soil you're in makes a difference what kind of condition your tires are in makes a difference four-wheel drive makes a difference but but that's that's the rule of thumb on that but I've gotten a lot of questions and I think I may have missed one or two of you that were asking me what rpm do I need to be running my tractor and what gear do I need to be in and let's cover that today first off with rpm every tractor has a rated engine speed and that is the speed that the engine spins that makes the tractor have the horsepower at the PTO it's rated for rated engine speed so to find out what your tractor rated engine speed is either look at the tachometer and usually there will be a mark there like a red mark and this tracker they don't have that which is kind of surprising but if you don't have it there your owners manual will tell you what rated engine speed is and so if you're if you're doing anything that requires power crank that tractor up to rated engine speed if you're if you're running a loader if you're pulling a brush hog if you're pulling any kind of tillage equipment be at rated engine speed and and the more work you're doing on the tractor the more important it is to be at rated engine speed don't worry about hurting your tractor I'll tell you when I was a factory wet rep with AD Co corporation one of the first things we did was worked at Pittsburg Kansas farm show for State Farm Show on a hundred and three degree day right before the show we needed to get a tractor from Columbus Kansas to Pittsburg Kansas is probably about I want to say maybe 20 22 miles and we decided the dealer didn't want to truck him the tractors there so we hauled a bunch of guys out hopped on the trackers and roted them or drove them on the open road from from from Columbus to Pittsburgh it was a hundred and three degrees no canopy on the tracker I'm running wide open and I mean wide open I had that thing just nailed as fast as it would go and and the tractor did fine got to the show fine no problem didn't damage it a bit Mike was was I was I was a different color when I got there was kind of a pink from the Sun and I was deaf probably where my hearing loss started so it didn't hurt to track her at all though so you if you're out on the open road make sure you put your flashers on you can run wide open it won't hurt the engine or the tractor at all they're designed for it I think you do more damage when you're using a loader or especially in tillage or anything like that if you're if you try to feather it and run it low speeds and be easy on the tractor crank that thing open and let it make its power and go for it and and rate it engine speed is where you want to be now as far as ground speed if you have a hydrostatic drive and you have let's say you have a three range hydrostan you have three which is fastest - which is medium and one which is lower you'll have to range which is high and low if you're doing work you always want to be in the lowest gear of hydro you can with the paddle down as far as you can in other words there's probably an overlap or you could be in let's say you have a two-speed hydro you could be in two with that pedal barely push down and be running the same speed as in one with the pedal all the way down especially in hot weather go with the lower gear lower number gear and and pedal down because that pedal is pushing oil through the system and the more oil that flows through the system the less chance of it getting a hot I see people all the time running tractors it'll try to just barely push that pedal down and you hear a lot of wine and and they're running in in the high numerical gear and they need to crank it down a gear and push that pedal down so hydro keep that pedal down as far as you can to maintain your speed now on a gear drive transmission most of your work is going to be done between four and eight miles an hour that's that's what's considered the working range for most farm related activities and so if you're shopping for a tractor the more gears you can get between four and eight miles an hour the better but most of the time an 8-speed transmission you'll have enough gears in there to get you where you need to be on some of the older tractors that had fewer gears it was hard to find a gear that worked for your field it either be too fast or too slow but the neuro transmissions you're usually fine if you can get a 12 speed that's better than an eight speed now if you've got a tractor and you're finding you're not having enough gears I can tell you from experience when I worked with an Co corporation a long time ago we sold a tractor with a 36 speed transmission it had six gears in three ranges and a and a shift on the Go Power shift and had all the gears of guide ever won and we sold one to a customer and he took it out to the field and said it doesn't have enough years for me we couldn't figure that out and finally the service rep and I went out there and the service rep crawled under the tractor and the linkage had come loose and and he thought he had 36 gears but he only really had six gears so we put the linkage back together and the guy was happy from that point forward so if you find you don't have enough gears make sure your linkage is all connected but but most of your work is going to be done between between four and eight miles an hour so the long and short of it put her up to PTO engine speed now after you've been around a tractor awhile if you're out clipping pastures in August and you don't really need the horsepower or if you're just moving around some stuff and you don't need all that horsepower for lifting with your loader you can crank it down below PTO rated engine speed and be just fine it won't hurt the tractor but if you're doing work crank it up to PTO engine speed and you'll you'll do the best thing for your tractor in and make it work the way it's supposed to thanks for watching

Channel: Tractor Mike

Views: 48,580

Keywords: how fast to drive a tractor, what rpm to drive a tractor, what speed to drive a tractor, what is rated engine speed, what is pto speed, how to drive a tractor, how to drive a tractor for beginners, how to drive a tractor john deere, what transmission to get in a tractor, tractor transmissions, what gear drive tractor, how big a plow to get, how wide a plow to get, how big a plow can my tractor pull, how many bottom plow can tractor pull, driving slow hurt tractor

Id: obhuTf0EAXI

Length: 6min 37sec (397 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2019