How to brush hog with a Ford 8N tractor

[Music] this thank you [Music] [Applause] second gear so [Music] hi chad here with purple color life in today's video how to brush hog using your ford 8n tractor this video is specifically geared for someone who's brush hogging for the first time or not familiar with how the ford 8n tractor works as far as the pto the lift and using something like a rotary brush cutter behind you now the information in this video should be valuable to you if you're using a ford 2n 9n or 8n like this one and something like this woods dixie cutter this is the model m5 and again this is behind our 1948 ford 8n now if you just got a ford tractor that's an 8n 9n or 2n and you just got yourself a brush hog congratulations you can do a lot of great work with this but the first thing i want to mention before you ever get started is this overrun coupler if your tractor does not have this overrun coupler on it i highly recommend you go to a tractor supply or a farm and fleet store or a rural king and get one of these what this does is you know this this flywheel of the blades is back here spinning and it's heavy so when you turn off the pto this has still got some momentum some inertia and on the forward two ends nine ends and eight ends the pto is directly connected to the transmission so you can push the clutch in hoping to immediately stop because there's an obstacle in front of you or a baby fawn deer and you don't want to hit that well when you push the clutch in because of all this inertia going on this isn't going to stop immediately it's going to keep spinning and that will actually push the tractor forward even when you want it to stop so the overrun pto clutch keeps that from happening when you push the clutch in it'll let this continue to spin without spinning the pto of the tractor it's a huge safety feature that i highly recommend the first thing you get before you ever use the brush hog on your ford tractor the downside of it is if you've got that nice decorative cap that screws over your pto you won't be able to use that anymore unless you remove this over running clutch so here's the basics of how to run a brush hog behind your 8n tractor make sure you to stay tuned through the rest of this video where i talk about you know getting ready to brush hog and things you should do like checking your grease oil fluids making sure everything's ready to brush hog but if you just want to get right into it how are you going to do this here's your clutch pedal your gear selector is here and your pto lever and your brakes those are the things you're going to be engaging the most when brush hogging another thing you'll be using here on this side of the tractor is your draft control this is what raises and lowers the three-point hitch to raise and lower your brush hog to go around obstacles like stumps or rocks so we're going gonna go ahead and start the tractor by turning the key on making sure we have enough throttle to start we're already warmed up so we don't need to choke we're gonna push the ignition starter button here you can see we're running make sure that we have good oil pressure the first thing i'm going to want to do is lift this up so that i can move to where i'll be brush hogging so i've got my draft control in the upright position looking here to my left is my clutch pedal and my pto engage lever right here so i'm going to push the clutch in engage the pto for now i'm going to leave the transmission in neutral and then when i let out the clutch you'll see the brush hog will start spinning and raise now since i don't want to brush hog in that upright position while i'm traveling i'll disengage the pto put my tractor in gear and that will let me back up to where i want to start brush hogging if you have not already watched our video called how to start and operate your ford 8n tractor i'll put a link to that one up above and down below in the description that'll give you a general overview of how to start and run the ford 8n 2n and 9n tractor probably the most important thing to note about the ford 8n 2nd 9n tractor is this pto lever this is what engages the pto so you push the clutch in turn the pto on let the clutch out and that's what starts that pto spinning but what's unique about these old ford tractors is our hydraulic three-point lift will not raise without the pto engaged so what that means on something like a brush hog is when it's down on the ground like mine is today in order to even lift the arms up i've got to first push in the clutch and engage the pto which means anything that's underneath the brush cutter is gonna be spinning around with those blades so if you're sitting on gravel it's gonna hit that gravel and spin it around if you happen to be stuck on a stump it's gonna need to spin keep continuing to hit that stump as the lift raises so i'll give you an example of that now you'll see that the brush hog is completely on the ground imagine it's been sitting here overnight over the weekend or during the week now you're ready to do some more brush hogging so with the pto turned off i can lift my draft control over here all i want that's never going to lift up on these old ford tractors the pto has to be engaged so what you do is you lift your arm up over here this is your draft lever push in your clutch engage the pto but you'll see what's going to happen is in order to lift those arms the pto has to be spinning so the brush hog is going to run as it's lifting so this is exactly why as tractors progressed over time in the late 50s 60s and 70s instead of having the pto that had to run through the transmission and through the clutch system they had multiple clutches so you had live hydraulics which meant you didn't have to have the pto running to lift the arms up and they had live pto which meant you didn't have to be moving for that pto to kick on so the other thing you'll see when i'm brush hogging is unless i'm in neutral every time i let out the clutch in gear in order to turn on the pto to mow or to lift the brush hog i'm also going to be moving forward now let's talk a little bit about the connection we've got the arms of the tractor connected here you'll see we have an extra thing here this is a sway bar and it connects to a point back underneath the axle there again this is something that if your tractor does not have i highly recommend adding you can add these brackets underneath the axle using the existing axle bolts in most cases and that allows you to put that sway bar on to keep things from moving around so the three points of connection for a three-point hitch are the left arm the right arm and the top link you can see the top link is mounted there and then you're connecting your pto shaft to there before you do any heavy duty work like this you want to obviously check your oil level check your fuel level gas tanks up here under the hood we use a stick with a little line on it that lets us know the minimum fuel level you can see we've got plenty of fuel a couple things in the front you want to check your radiator fluid amount make sure you have enough coolant inside there and then this front bracket opens up and lets you see the radiator to make sure there's not all kinds of debris on that as you brush hog especially if you're not if you're in a field with some wheat or milkweed a lot of stuff gets sucked in there by the fan you want to make sure you keep this clear so that the tractor does not overheat a couple other things you want to check this is your transmission fluid right back here behind the brake pedals and then right here is your air cleaner and that is an oil bath air cleaner so it pulls fresh air in pulls it through the oil and feeds the engine the oil acts as a filtration system to get all that dust and debris out of the air so you want to check that now i've been using this tractor to brush hog for around 20 years now but i'm sure there's a lot of people out there that know a lot more about these tractors and brush hogging with them than i do so if you're one of those experts out there that like to chime in something i missed in the video or something you've learned from experience please go ahead and leave that comment down below reading through the comments is how a lot of people get information in addition to the video so again if you've got information that you'd like to share with the group please leave a comment down below a lot of people ask if you should brush hog driving forward or backing up i say it depends on the area you're in if you're in a big field that you know there's no obstructions you're fine to go ahead and put the tractor in first or second gear and go ahead and brush hog that whole field if you're in an area where you're not exactly sure about the possible obstructions i like to go in first gear driving forward and scan as my front wheels go over top of things so i'll see if i lift over a big rock or if i see a big stump it's easier to see now if you're in an area where it's difficult to see and you don't even want to drive into it you can go in reverse and back easily into like an edge of the woods like this i'm familiar with this i know that there's not obstructions in here so i'll mostly be driving forward through it but i can get some additional leverage or gain into the woods by backing in a little bit further so we'll be doing a little bit of both here and you'll see how both of those backing up and driving forward work a note about a brush hog is those blades are on a swivel so if they do hit a stump for example the blade hits and bounces back keeps it from totally destroying the blade or the pto of your tractor that's an important feature on a good brush hog now neutral and the brakes are your friend i use neutral a lot when i'm trying to raise as you saw the brush hog without moving so i'll leave the transmission in neutral turn the pto on raise my draft control and that allows me to raise up the brush hog without moving then i'm going to lower my draft position until my brush hog's just kind of gliding along the ground with the weight on the rear wheel and you can see the importance of the overrun clutch there if i didn't have the overrun it would be pooling or pushing my tractor depending on whether i was in reverse or forward you want to make sure you give yourself enough throttle to give this pto some speed to help cut through the weeds you'll notice that every time i push in the clutch it slows those blades down so sometimes i go over an area twice you can see here what a great job the brush hog did we started at this line and we've cleared out you know roughly 10 feet of the woods just to keep that a little bit more clean i'm gonna do up in this path a little bit so what i do sometimes is i'll back into an area with the blades barely moving because i've had the clutch in put my tractor in neutral and let it clean the area out [Music] you can see this side of the edge of the wood is really thick it's got a lot of invasives so we'll back into this and do like i did down there we'll mostly back in with the rotary mower going pretty slow then i'll put it in neutral let the rotary come to speed and that'll clear this all out [Music] now there's going to be a lot of moving parts here when it's running so it's important to keep everything lubricated properly if you don't already have a grease gun i'll put an amazon affiliate link down below to a grease gun similar to this one and some grease that i recommend i always use the john deere brand grease i'll put a picture in of what grease i use i don't know if i'll find that on amazon but i'll find something similar you want to make sure you lubricate all the grease zerks you see on this machine there's going to be a couple at each coupling there's going to be a couple in your overrun clutch and then of course the tractor normal zerk points sometimes it gets real dusty in there you have to kind of feel for them you just want to give enough squirts till you see grease coming out we've got two back here at the back for the little dolly wheel we do have a path that goes up through the woods here it's pretty overgrown but i'm gonna see if i can sneak the tractor up through there and at least get it a little bit cleared out since i know that there's rocks and stumps in here it's a little bit uneven terrain i'm lifting the brush hog a little bit higher to keep us up off the ground a little more hopefully this video helped you out if it did we'd appreciate if you'd give us a thumbs up and then if you aren't already following purple color life we'd love for you to click that subscribe button and follow us along tractor adventures rural living boating camping chainsaws firewood log splitting all the things that we really enjoy about living on our family acreage here in northwest pennsylvania thanks for watching we'll see you the next time i've still got lots to do here so i'm going to keep brush hogging spending time on the 8n for me is just really relaxing and i love how the brush hog is like instant gratification i cleared this whole side out it didn't take that much time and you can see a huge difference because of it so if you don't already have yourself a 48n or some type of tractor with implements and you own property i'd put that high on your list to save up for because not only does it make the work more fun it makes the work easy and as several bosses i've had over the years have said always work smarter not harder thanks for watching we'll see you again the next time [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] you

Channel: Purple Collar Life

Views: 12,618

Keywords: Ford 8N, Ford 8n, Ford 9N, Ford 2N, Ford NAA, Ford Jubilee, brush hog, bush hog, Woods M5, Woods dixie cutter, ford tractor, how to brush hog, how to brush hog with a tractor, how to brush hog 8n, 8n brush hog, brush hogging, how to mow with a tractor, mowing with a Ford 8N, mowing with a tractor, 8n mowing, cutting a field, homesteading for beginners, woods dixie cutter, brush mower, ford 8n, purple collar life, brush mower tractor, woods m5 rotary cutter, overrun

Id: lac1uZp258c

Length: 21min 4sec (1264 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 24 2022