HYDROSTATIC VS MANUAL TRANSMISSION? CLEAR WINNER?

let's compare a hydrostatic transmission to a manual transmission tell you the pros and the cons of each did a video like this a few years back times change opinions change I forget things I'll probably forget things in this video too but you can help out leave a comment down below so what transmission did you choose did you have a choice what do you prefer well if you're not sure let's help you make up your mind today all right we'll start out with the hydro transmission okay most popular transmission there is on the market today for compact tractors this is a summit tx25 it is no exception comes with a two range a high and a low hydrostatic transmission so that means once it's in range high or low range all you have to do is push a pedal to go forward and push the other pedal to go backwards on the Kubota all right they have something called a treadle pedal so it's a rocker pedal a front in the back so you push the front of that pedal down to go forward the back of that pedal to go backwards same concept but most others are a twin touch so one to go forward the other to go back now as you start to get a little bit bigger in the compact tractor world you will introduce a mid-range all right so we have the low medium and high and this is not standardized across the board so there's exceptions to that like the John Deere 3E series for example it's a 3 Series but it's still only going to be a low and a high there's no medium range in that one now tractor's like a subcompact like a John Deere 1025r Kubota BX and similar other brands as well are only going to be a two range you start to get to the one step bigger like the summit um or the well the John Deere 2025 is still a two range this one's a two range uh even the the John Deere 2032 and 2038 are are a two range and that one I've talked about before when they did that big redesign back in 2018 I think they they missed the mark when they kept that a two range transmission they really should have made that a three range to properly compete with the Kubota LX series like the LX 2610 the LX 3310 well which are now Bell X 2620 and 3320 and anyway that generation there and that size of tractor this is kind of comparable to a 2025r so not really to be expected with the three range but you get to your three series like um your John Deere 3039r your Kubota l3560 actually even the more basic or plain Jane Kubota like the l2501 are all going to be three range Hydro Transmissions but let's put a little bit of an asterisk on that too because there are going to be some manual options in some of these series as well so we will Circle back to that but let's tell you more about the pros and the cons of a hydrostatic transmission and give you a little point of reference I used to sell used tractors lots of them that was like the main thing that I did I would Buy trade-ins primarily from dealers around the country you know low hour stuff I didn't want things with issues but then I would turn around and resell them and I'm telling you right now folks did not want a manual transmission I would get them in on rare occasion primarily just a couple of specific John Deere series the John Deere 790 John Deere 3005 John Deere 4005 I think it was John Deere 990 really a very limited amount that were hard to find nice specimens very simple machines just kind of a classic tractor I wish I would have kept one for myself because I had some gems but folks want in the compact World a hydro transmission they're just you can't get anything easier to operate and more efficient to operate and so whether you're just trying to hop on your tractor and go super easy but if you're trying to do work with it okay with the front end loader or the three-point hitch you're not worried about pushing a clutch in and selecting the range selecting the gear making sure you're going forwards or backwards all these different handles and levers and knobs that you have to do and then if you want to change your speed because you're too slow or too fast you gotta make adjustments then too right so I mean all you're doing is controlling your throttle making those engine RPMs go up or down to where you need them to be and then just pushing that pedal really hard or just a little bit to speed up or slow down you know it's something that um I'm sure I didn't talk about years ago when I made that earlier video is I think it might be safer I think a hydro transmission might be safer than a Gear Drive and maybe I'm not thinking about this completely but with a hydro transmission again you push a pedal down to go right so forwards or backwards so if you take your foot off of the pedal it it just stops right you're not going anywhere it's it's done not if you're on a hill you take your foot off the tractor could still keep rolling down the hill but it's at least gonna slow down a bit um whereas a Gear Drive you don't have your foot on a pedal it's in gear and it's just going right so if something happens to the operator your foot's going to come off the the hydro pedal right and you're just going to kind of sit there on a Gear Drive you're just going to keep going to whatever until you stop right so there's something in your way that makes you stop anyway food for thought there that's maybe looking at it a little bit morbidly or something I don't know but uh it's a good safety factor to think about too okay let's talk about the downsides it's not all roses okay Hydro Transmissions are more expensive all right so those series that we'll touch on a little bit here that you have the option to get a manual or a hydraulic you're going to see there's a price difference and it could range depending on the brand and the series and everything else but it could be two three grand to go from that manual to that Hydro so you're paying for that premium it's just a more complex complicated system and so therefore it costs more additionally we found out running a Batwing Mower on our large Compact and this is um I don't want to put this all on the hydro transmission but it just kind of brought to light the subject more I think is that if you're running for a long time you know full throttle wide open running that PTO on a hot day like mowing a field like we were doing it's very likely that it's going to run a lot hotter okay those Hydro Transmissions they just run hotter and you can potentially overheat or have to you know stop and let it cool down for a bit before you keep on going not saying that's for sure always going to happen to you but it is going to be a lot more likely um you know on those hot days you got to watch your your temperature needle a bit more to see where it's at compared to a Gear Drive that just generally runs cooler now speaking of PTO horsepower you're going to have some robbed from that Hydro transmission all right the way that they're designed and that they operate is that it kind of everything works together right and so those Hydro Transmissions steal some horsepower to do what they do to get the tractor to move along and so that means there's going to be less horsepower coming out of that PTO shaft to use whatever tool you're pulling behind if it's a mower or a tiller or anything else back there and you're not going to have that same issue with a Gear Drive it's just a simpler transmission Style on there and so you are going to be able to put more PTO horsepower to the ground so to speak and then cameraman Chris my brother brought up a good one as well not every hydrostatic model is going to have cruise control as a feature on it okay and so if you are doing long runs like mow on a Big Field okay or till in a big field or whatever you're doing this big long projects and you don't have cruise control well with a hydro transmission you're going to have to have your pedal down or your foot on your pedal the whole time and at a constant rate or whatever else and so it's the same thing if you're driving down the highway right if you're if you're going for a long distance you're just throwing on cruise control and letting us do its thing versus having to sit there and hold down the pedal the whole time that gets tiring pretty quick we are proud to be sponsored by rim guard Solutions a liquid ballast weight it goes right inside your tires completely hidden we're big on safety on this channel these tractors are just too light and Tippy right out of the factory not only is it going to help with safety keeping those rear tires planted on the ground it helps with loader efficiency and traction too the benefits of rim guard include being the heaviest all-natural liquid ballast weight on the market it's not going to corrode your rims like the old calcium chloride it's not going to freeze and it's available at over a thousand dealers Nationwide find the dealer near you at rimguardsolutions.com okay so let's talk about the world of manual transmissions and you are going to have several at least several different types of transmissions and oh just popped up Chris if you can find that one super crazy remember that one Gear Drive transmission that's like you go up down left right A B select start so people say they don't understand this thing and I don't really get it you got three five seven six eight you got one three three reverse two five five reverse four seven and seven reverse if you're lucky six eight I can't even run that one I don't even want to try but uh crazy video out there if we can find that we'll include that too but a lot of different types got some sandhill cranes up there get some video that there Chris one's breaking off was this Top Gun five of them hey there Buddies boy they don't really know how to fly straight okay so manual transmissions you have a very simple transmission where you have to come to a standstill push in a clutch with your foot then change your gear okay then you have a little bit more Advanced type of manual transmission where you push in the clutch on the fly so if you're moving and you want to change speeds you can just push in that clutch like a car and then change your gear then you have a even more advanced one where you can do all that kind of stuff but then have a little flap handle like a shuttle shift and you can reverse direction or a power reverser they might call it where it seems crazy you're going forward and like into a loader pile scooping up a bucket of dirt or something and you're like time to go backwards and you're going forward you slap that handle the opposite direction and the tractor the transmission does its thing and safely reverses it even though you're going in motion forward it's crazy I didn't trust it the first few times I did it but it works and on the really nice ones um there's going to be an option at least because I've seen this on some John Deere 4 Series that had a power reverser where there's a little dial I think it was that you can actually control the speed that it reverses okay so if you don't want to like totally jerky out of your seat when you go forward to backwards you can adjust that dial so that it slowly kind of slows to a stop forward and then picks up and goes backwards so you have that capability not standard on all of them but I know it's at least an option and then you're going to have the most advanced version that I've seen yet which is what's found on this Kubota M4 where you don't have to push in a clutch period on the Fly you can change with that slap handle forwards and backwards and on the gear select you can just push a little button in that's on the handle that you change gears with you just push that button and electronically clutches and then you can change your gears on the Fly going forwards or backwards it's super awesome I use it more and more and it took a little bit of getting used to and again I think trusting it but it works great it's really awesome I I don't think this one I haven't found any way has that dial to kind of adjust the forward and backwards changing direction or change of speed um I haven't found it really need it though and the more I use this tractor I've had it a year and a half now something like that the more I really like it now one big thing doesn't matter if it's Hydro or manual transmission Gear Drive transmission is if you're going to change the range below the medium the high range you need to do that at a standstill do not do that on the fly or you're going to cause some problems that are not going to be covered under any kind of warranty now of course a lot of the pros of a gear drive transmission are going to be the cons that we talked about of a hydro transmission so they're going to run cooler typically they're going to put more PTO horsepower out compared to a hydro they're going to be cheaper to buy up front and some folks it's probably true it's going to be cheaper to maintain down the road if you had to rebuild a hydro transmission that's likely going to cost a lot more than it is to rebuild a manual or a gear drive transmission I want to say though that for a modern compact tractors and most folks that are buying these now you're never going to get to that point okay I mean folks are putting 100 hours or less a year on these tractors and sell them off after sometimes five years ten years 20 years whatever it is even if you have 2 000 hours on here that's typically not going to be when you have to replace or rebuild a transmission on a hydro machine and so if you are doing those big fields right tilling mowing dissing whatever it is even snow plowing snow blowing a long driveway you kind of have built-in cruise control with the gear drive because again coming back to that safety Factor when you take your foot off the pedal on a hydro you come to a standstill well that's kind of cruise control on on a Gear Drive because you put it in gear and it just goes so you don't have to worry about pushing down a pedal and holding down you just kind of sit there and drink a cup of coffee or whatever you want to do while it's doing its thing so that's a that's kind of a trade-off right so you need to have more operator awareness I do like it a lot I love just putting it in gear and knowing I'm good to go the same speed you do tend to watch your RPM your gauge cluster a bit more because you'll adjust your speed still if I'm Mowing and I get to a you know not every fuel is consistent and if I'm Mowing and it gets really thick you can you can see the engine you can hear the engine start to bog down now in those kinds of cases I made downshift because I want to keep my RPMs up on my PTO to keep my blade spinning on my mower for example right you don't want to lose that otherwise you're losing Effectiveness you're losing cut quality that kind of thing so you still have to be aware as an operator and it doesn't mean it's just going to plow through everything you still got to kind of be selective on what you're doing now while a hydro transmission you do have the hand throttle there to control the engine RPMs on a manual it is nice because you're going to have not just a hand throttle control but you're gonna have a foot throttle control as well and so if you are trying to just really kind of fine tune how fast you're going and you're not you don't have the pto1 you're just kind of moving along or doing whatever you can keep the RPMs down lower like maybe put that hand throttle to the mid level and then if you really need to get a little bump in RPMs for a certain momentary period of time you can push down a foot throttle and it'll rev up the engine RPMs you'll go faster you'll have more hydraulic flow so if you need to you know if you're standing still need to lift a bucket higher and you do it quickly you can just push down that foot throttle the hydraulic response is going to increase and you can lift it up a lot quicker all right so of course they come with a few cons too right and so if you're shifting you have to shift a lot okay and that can be very cumbersome and very annoying and uh especially for loader work I'm still not I still don't like doing loader work all the time with this but I I've gotten a lot better with it I I um it's becoming a lot more tolerable and I probably do the most pallet Fork Work loading and unloading things and moving things around and I'm I'm getting pretty good at it it's it's becoming not a hindrance you know like I'm oh I gotta go get on that big Kubota because it's got a lot of lift capacity and move things around now it's just fine okay um but it does come with a lot steeper learning curve because of every lever and Nod that you have to deal with now also it's going to hurt you in resale value and this is where I want to kind of paint um well do a little bit more explaining all right because let's get back to the the compact tractor world and differentiate that from the utility world all right utility tractors don't come in hydrostatic Transmissions you can only get them with some sort of a manual transmission certain models will have multiple versions of those manual transmissions which you can pay a bit of a premium for or get a bit of a discount I guess if you want to go with a more simple one now there are going to be some models in the compact tractor world where you have a choice as well and that's not all of them I like to use the Kubota standard L Series as a good example because you can get a manual transmission or a hydro Transmission in that series for sure but I do think that you're going to be hurt on resale value not just because it's it's cheaper brand new but because there's going to be a lot smaller Market of folks that want a Gear Drive and a compact tractor just the market says get a hydro Transmission in the compact tractor world and so you could use that as a bargaining chip if you really want a manual and you're looking for a compact Maybe you know maybe it's going to work to your advantage but if you're selling one that's going to work as a disadvantage and you're likely going to have a harder time selling that because there's going to be smaller demand for it overall and now you will see the Kubota Grand L Series the John Deere 4r series gender 3r series two I do believe are going to have multiple Transmissions options as well like a power reverser with that slap handle on there or the regular Hydro transmission too so again you're going to have select choices in the in the compact world with either transmission utility world for sure it's only manual or gear drive transmissions no Hydro available so folks there you go okay hopefully that makes sense all right I mean the pros and the cons to each sometimes you're gonna have a choice sometimes you're not but maybe you're on the fence between a compact or a utility tractor and the type of transmission makes a big difference for you and that sends you in one direction or another or maybe you're just looking at a at a compact tractor but you like the old school you grew up on some farm tractors you just want the simple Gear Drive and that whittles down the available models that are going to be available to you or who knows maybe you just need to know how a transmission works on a traffic because you had no idea and didn't know if they operated like cars or like a skid steer or something else so give you some insight either way I'm sure I missed some pros and some cons so if you have something else to add this channel is about helping other people out in the tractor World a lot of folks that are new to the Tractor world and so just give your opinion give your advice give your input on maybe what pointed you in one direction or another strengths and the weaknesses all that kind of stuff really helps I try to Showcase all sorts of tractors on this channel we've shown all sorts of John Deere's and kubota's trying out the summit now too putting it through his Paces having a lot of fun and so while we don't sell tractors we certainly can help you out with tractor attachments we sell all sorts of them for the front end loaders and the three-point hitch so if you're looking for a tractor tool I'm sure we can help you out prices include free shipping rewards and financing too check it out at goodworkstrractors.com so if you're looking for a new tractor tool well guess what we have over 600 other videos out there so check those out you can likely see some tools in action and see if they're the right fit for you I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to stop by and until next time stay safe we'll see you soon [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Good Works Tractors

Views: 27,170

Keywords: john deere, kubota, good works tractors, goodworkstractors, ttwt, tractor time with tim, gwt, michigan, kalamazoo, john deere dealer, kubota dealer

Id: n71g3uf35Nk

Length: 19min 4sec (1144 seconds)

Published: Thu May 11 2023