Do they even make small, gasoline powered tractors anymore? The only thing I’ve seen that comes close is the so called “sub-compact” tractors that are basically glorified riding mowers and don’t come with three point hitch, probably no PTO either, and I wouldn’t even try to haul a wagon full of square hay with them. The next size up are the mid sized ones with roll bars and they’re all diesel.
Bobcat makes the CT2040 but I have no idea if it’s gas or diesel.
Why not buy one like that? My 8N will probably outlast me, lol. You can do all the repairs yourself.
>8N
They don't make them any more, but you can still walk in to any Ford dealer and get OEM parts for them.
That's what I meant, I bought a used on on FB marketplace.
I saw an 8N for $1200 on FBM.
Like said, it's an affordable 25hp tractor.
The great thing about an 8N/9N is how cheap they are. It okay to abuse it and work it hard. Take care of it but you can do everything you need with it and not feel bad.
Alternative fuels. Ethanol, biogas, propane, natural gas, drip gas and wood gas. Biodiesel is more of a southern climate thing. Not many feed stocks worth doing north of florida. Ethanol is a lot more per acre. I went and visited a farmer in Ohio who showed me how to convert tractors to natural gas and how to compress it on the cheap.
Also cost, diesel engines are not common in the US outside of heavy industry, most of us are poor.
> how to compress it on the cheap and run on it
A version of the ford was kitted for natural gas. We have it on the property. Should would love to hear more about the conversion.
He used a log splitter as his compressor. Might not work in my case, I have an older lower pressure well. About 30 psi.
He used hydraulic fittings for most of it with a bleed off line so he can remove it from the tank without a high pressure blow out. Two hydraulic check valves, worked a lot like those old piston water pumps. Ram goes up, pulls gas in, ram goes down, check valve slams shut and it it pushes it out past the other check valve keeping it out. Had a rod attached to it that flipped the controls every time it reached the top or bottom. Ran off an AC motor with a lovejoy coupler. 10 years old, no repairs aside from a few seals. The bottom is kept in a bucket he would fill with water and drain when he wasn't using it.
I might try a water cooled paintball compressor.
He used propane bottles a lot and kept it under 300 psi. That way you can use a lot of cheaper propane regulators. He also had high pressure stuff for a geo metro. His chevy 3500 ran on low pressure in a huge ass propane bottle. One of those upright ones, I think 200 gallons. He could drive 40 miles on it. I'm thinking 1800 psi in welding gas bottles or aluminum co2 bottles.
The volume to gasoline ratio at 1800 looks to be somewhere around 5.5:1 or 6:1 when I use boyles law. I mostly use an online calculator. So a 6 gallon container at 1800 psi puts out near a gallon of fuel with my well head gas (1250 a cubic ft).
Most of his stuff came from Nash fuel. He had a high pressure regulator from there thats a brass bell looking thing, a J type shut off propane regulator like on a fork life and a mixer. Everything had a carb.
Had a 30 HP ford tractor he ran on low pressure gas. 4 100 lb propane bottles all connected together, running the tractor for 3 hours of medium duty work.
I'm mostly looking at sub 25 HP motors and maybe my massey ferguson 135. I think the smaller co2 bottles at 1800 psi would work pretty well with small lawn equipment that runs on honda clone motors.
That sounds like a lot of work and pain in the ass to avoid buying gasoline or diesel.
I want to do it in case I can't get fuel in the future.
I live off grid on a small hobby farm. I'd rather do this method than electric. Far cheaper and less conversions involved. Plus I want to avoid tons of batteries that will fail one day. Sure an electric motor will outlast a gas one but I doubt the batteries will outlast my 135.
Same. Solar is nice for lights, electronics. Heating is better left to NG. It comes out of the ground for free, made by the earth.
Add a NG electric generator and you have backup power.
I have a small honda thats on its way out. I think the valves went bad. Runs on NG. Have a champion that from a poor NG conversion broke a head bolt off and needs reamed out. 1200 hours and no issues.
I think a hit or miss is what I need with a converted to CDI ignition system. Easier to service than a finicky 100 year old ignition system that you most likely can't get parts for.
Most likely a more modern hit or miss from the 40s with an enclosed crank case.
Or convert to points of a very common type then stock a lifetime supply. I do that with my vintage motorcycles (Harley Shovelheads take Chevy inline six points.) Buy spare coils too. Easy enough and you can of course run solid copper ignition wire.
Check Smokstak forums and Yesterdays Tractors for parts and tech data for ancient engines.
There are gas and oil wells around here that have the old gas-powered pumps with the large flywheels. None in operation, that I know of.
Arrow c-46 engines are what ive seen but they go for 10-20k. I'm thinking a smaller 1-4 HP hit or miss converted to NG. Like an international harvester LB or a fairbanks z from the 1940s.
Higher speeds, closed crank case and overall better cooling, oiling etc make them long lived engines. The earlier model can last just as long but require more upkeep. Especially cleaning the open crank case.
LP doesn't go bad in storage and is high octane. When you have a source you can drive cheap for life.
Nash and IMPCO have done vehicle conversion parts for many years.
I mean by 'it' we have a natural gas well on the property, and op's tractor.
Explosion proof compressors are supposedly 5 grand. I'm not sure of the retrofit to run on NG but I'm curious. If you run out in the field, can you switch to regular fuel to get back?
If you convert it right it can be trifuel. propane, NG and gasoline. usually means an adapter and not a spud in or modifying the carb.
Diesel can run on just about any oil
>The only thing I’ve seen that comes close is the so called “sub-compact” tractors that are basically glorified riding mowers
sub compact tractors are loosely defined as being in the 17-25hp range, and even most of those have 2 or 3 cylinder diesels these days. That Ford tractor in the OP image was ~24HP if I remember correctly.
Once you get up to modern tractors in the same HP range, they're all diesel
Why would you pull a wagon of hay bales?
Ive lived on a farm 62 years and have never done that
>have lived on a farm for 62 years
>have never cut hay and baled it
I somehow doubt that.
Generally, when I make square hay bales, the reason I do so is to feed animals. It defeats the purpose of hay if I leave the bales to rot in a field, so I load them on a wagon so that I can take them to a barn loft for storage.
>Generally, when I make square hay bales, the reason I do so is to feed animals. It defeats the purpose of hay if I leave the bales to rot in a field, so I load them on a wagon so that I can take them to a barn loft for storage.
>Not stackcruisin
Why even live.
Well we did squares 50 years ago only we bucked em on back of a 5 ton flat bed truck 2000 a night. I was paid 5 cents a bale. If we fed livestock we used the pick up
>gasoline powered
>tractors
what in gods name, why? just buy a small diesel tractor, like an old belarus or zetor and it will last until there is no more entropy
Petrol tractors built after 1960 are objectively gay.
.t direct injected Perkins
other tractors don't have tigers
Yes, tractors worth owning are diesel.
In other news water is wet.
there are plenty in the 25hp range, all of them are diesel powered though. Gasoline isn't great for tractors, as the nature of a diesel engine is much better suited for a tractor then a gasoline. some brands who make them off my head are
>Kubota
>Tim (formerly Branson)
>farmtrack
>Massey Ferguson
>Solis
I have a Branson 2500hl, it's been great for the 300 odd hours it has. only problem I have had with it was when the implement lifter shaft broke (it was overloaded), but the warranty covered it. my father has also put gasoline in it a few times, and after draining the fuel system it has been great.
In order for your question to not be dumb you gotta give some justification why gas not diesel here
What could a gas compact or sub compact tractor do a diesel couldnt?
I think the problem is op.
old tractor collector and restorer here, to answer your question, no, nobody makes small gasoline tractors, here is a history lesson to explain.
one of the reasons why a lot of tractors were gas in the first place was the fact that building diesel engines was expensive, and the pre 60 tractor market was dominated by small, usually family owned farms which couldn't afford an expensive diesel powered tractor, also on the point of small farms, is that diesel engines are much more reliable, but, way harder to work on, which made them less desirable as most farmers wanted to work on their own stuff, not take it to a dealer.
the post-60 tractor market was very different though, with many smaller farms being swallowed up by larger farms, increasing power demands from tractor manufacturers, at the same time technological advancements were greatly reducing the cost of engine manufacturing, with these two facts combined it was obvious that the logical next step was to produce larger diesel powered tractors, of course not all tractors post-60 were diesel powered, but they were gaining a signifigant share of the market, by the early 70s the majority of larger tractors were diesel powered, while a lot of smaller 40hp< tractors were still gas, due to the previously mentioned factors, but leading into the early 80s increasing urbanization and the complete destruction of the small farm led to the small tractor AG tractor market being non existant, and a lot of the old tractor manufacturers, IH, ford, allis chalmers, oliver, etc. were going out of business, this left a hole in the market which was filled with foreign manufacturers, like kubota, which decided to reinvent the small tractor as an urban tool, and due to that, things like the right to repair and cost didn't really matter as much, and that leaves us basically at the present day.
tldr- diesel tractor was too expensive and hard to work on, market stopped existing, japs started selling turds to urbancucks
An interesting read with more detail than the story I got.
Dad has a 1965 Ford 4000 gasoline tractor. He said back then most preferred gas because there was a lot of negative sentiment that diesel tractors were unreliable to cold start during winter, and it wasn't until the mid 60s that advertising of cold-start assists like glow plugs and block warmers began to sway the perception. I'm willing to bet that price and difficulty to work on was a bigger part of it and "can't start in the cold" was the cope excuse many used
Yes, absolutely that was a factor, I wasn’t really thinking about that because I live in a very warm climate, but diesel engine starting was one of the biggest issues driving up costs, many manufacturer tried to fix this issue their own ways, mainly IH with their gas starts diesels, and cat with the gas pony motor, of course this just feeds back into the cost point with both of these being way harder and more expensive to manufacture than their gas counterparts.
>I'm willing to bet that price and difficulty to work on was a bigger part of it and "can't start in the cold" was the cope excuse many used
I'm willing to bet hard cold starting was a bigger factor than you think. Imagine going out to start your tractor every day in the cold winter months and having to fight with it every day in order to do your chores.
I have some diesels I plug in every day and they live next to outlets with block heaters on timers so that they are ready to fire up when it is time to go. A lot of people wouldn't have that luxury back in the day. I have one spot where I have no electricity and I have an old Farmall M tractor there for that specific reason. It is gas and starts right up in the cold. No fuss no muss.
I missed out on a deal a couple years back. I should have jumped on it sooner but I let it get away. A Michigan 35AWS loader with a gas engine. It would have been the perfect chore loader for that one spot. Fired up easy and been a 4wd loader right where I need a 4wd loader at times.