Gearclash

Farmerfixem, here is the West Branch East of Sioux Center this morning. 4th time in 10 months it’s looked like this.

I’d feel a little more like supporting the NRA if they paid their top exec something less than 1.5 million or whatever it is now. I’m not too excited about supporting the weirdness of the libertarians either.

Just a comment about Artway. Not to say they are junk, BUT. I was looking at stalk choppers 12 years ago, when I was getting into the custom stalk baling business. I looked at an Artsway just out of curiosity, and noted how much lighter the driveline was than the Balzer choppers were that I was interested in. I ended up buying a used Balzer 1500 with a windrowing hood. Except for the rock shaft and wheel arms failing, which is a problem solely on the windrowing models, it has been a solid machine. Balzer uses a heavier knife than Artsway, and the knife is mounted on a bolt with bushings on it rather than a D ring, all of which makes the Balzer better at chewing up wet stalks at a pretty good clip. I’ve shredded stalks so wet it smelled like fresh silage.

Iv’e made the Hi 1 to Lo 4 and back shift on the go countless times, pulling a big square baler. That shift will make you curse IH roundly. TA was weak in that tractor so I didn’t use it. Edit to add, the gear range for running the big square was from Lo 3 to Hi 2. It was not unusual in a variable crop to need to jump between 3 of those 4 gears, not counting the TA. It was a good day when the 1066 got retired from that duty in favor of a Maxxum.

I hear you, real well. In concept no worse than a 13 or 18 speed road tractor. But I get first dibs on breaking the knee caps of the idiot that thought the speed transmission should be sequential which blasts the otherwise good idea to bits.

I believe the monetary system does matter because a nation that is a sovereign currency issuer cannot go bankrupt overnight. There may be inflation to some extent if the government needs to create a great deal of money at once to pay its obligations. I do not understand well at all how the Euro is distributed between countrys in the Euro zone, but I strongly suspect that the shared currency is causing problems that otherwise would not exist. Greece is an example.

Not sure why the US would have an issue with the banking system of a country whose gdp is 1/4 of the gdp of the state of Iowa. It just doesn’t pass the sniff test. Oldtanker, I agree that socialized healthcare (and socialism I general) can kill a country’s financial system. The question is how quickly and that I think depends on the monetary system.

Examples? In the case of Venezuela, other countries are left to pick up the mess. Kinda late to “liberate” them.

Sounds like the government voluntarily resigned after they could not make healthcare reforms that were thought necessary. I wouldn’t be surprised that the biggest part of their problem is that they are using the Euro, rather than their own sovereign currency. Using an outside currency creates financial problems for a country, especially one that is heavily socialist. See what happened in Venezuela.

SDman’s comment of several different factories making the same product differently also happens with Chinese tires. Local tire shop found out why not to use Chinese tires on wheel loaders because if you put two on the front of a wheel loader, the loader may not sit level even though the tires are the same brand and model. If they came from different factories, the OD might be different.

Since this thread has wandered in to tractors that will make you combative rather that people, I will mention that I know a (crazy) guy who bought a Belarus many years ago. It had a loader on it and he wanted to lift a feed bunk that was froze down. Evidently the Russians know how to make good hydraulic pumps as he could get the rear wheels in the air and dance the back of the tractor around. He had an abrupt let down when the bell housing broke.

About the turn of the year I took my 856 off the mixer wagon to deal with some MCV issues. Turned out that there were several spools sticking, resulting in poor steering and TA malfunctions. Limped along in an unheated shop cleaning up and reassembling the MCV. Also added a clutch booster, now why didn’t I put that on years ago?? Then decided to change the hydraulic oil and filter. At some point I realized that things weren’t quite right with the old hydraulic filter. Turned out that the “retainer”, as they call that piece that holds the inner end of the cartridge in place, was missing. Duhoh! That lets oil bypass the filter. Not cool! Most likely that is why the MCV gave trouble. Got that rectified, put it all back together, refilled the oil. Struggled to get the MCV pump to prime. It did prime but was obviously getting air in the oil flow. Hitch pump refused to prime at all. I was bummed. I asked a guy I know what he thought about it, and he wondered if the cover on the hydraulic filter was leaking. He was right. Bugger was letting air in and causing all sorts of mischief. I pulled the cover and filter, cleaned everything up again, hammered the bolt holes in the cover down as they were pulled out quite badly, and put the cover back on with flange sealant. MCV primed right up, so did the hitch pump. No more air the MCV flow either. The junkyard fugitive is back to work! Thanks to those on this site who offered assistance!

A horse for every course. Common to run 7300s behind MFDs here, tractors as small as 7140s. Some guys are running 9500s on something like a Magnum 305, also a few guys running 10500s behind big Massey MFDs. Also common to road a fair bit with tractor and tank. Some flat, some rolling ground here.

What are the chances there is drag somewhere in the drive train? It wouldn’t take a whole lot to knock the top 25% off the power on 80 pto hp.

Look like manifolds for a radial engine.