|
| We ran a pair of CIH small 4wd's from 88 until 98. Planted with 12 row, then went to 16 row, had them on heavy ridge till cultivators, grain cart, 20' roadside mowers, and a pull type 60' Best way sprayer. We also worked some ground with them on a ripper and basic tillage. In addition we had them on 13 yard scrapers moving dirt.
We had the front steer axle on them, but rarely used it, I didn't like the way that it came back around on the ends trying to get back into rows and how it handled on terraces.
We traded out of them and went to 8000 series Deere's. We liked the smaller stature of the tractor, it was easier to get around with, the cab was nicer, 16 sp vs 12 and the 16 shifter nicer. Nicer controls and easier adjusting hydraulic flow. I've not looked at many of the new 4wd's now to compare the convience and features vs the large mfd's so I don't know if they have kept up or not.
Planting with the 4wd is no problem unless you want bullet straight rows. If you have terraces it will go right around them. Grain cart is no problem, the one you mentioned that I was not happy with was pulling a sprayer with our 4wd's. Your fields might be different, but we had a lot of terraces, contours, point rows etc. The 4wd was big, clumsy and ran a lot of crop down ahead of the sprayer, even to the point that going around contours we could not keep the tractor and sprayer both on the row at the same time.
Maybe if you buy used the 4wd will be cheaper, but if you compare apples to apples new, with all the same features I doubt there will be a nickle's worth of difference in the cost. I question if you are no till why you would need the big hp. We pull our 16 row planter with an 8130 now and it plays with it. The same tractor is on a 1050 Kinze wagon right now. I don't think the 4wd's will hold their resale value as well as a large mfd. Using the higher hp on the mfd's is a matter of what you intend to do with it. If you want to pull something bigger and/or deeper then you might need more traction. In our case we're pulling equipment that is just slightlly larger, but we're pullling it faster with the extra hp.
We tried tracked machines and for certain uses I think they are the best, but for us where we put our tractors on scrapers when we're not farming and move dirt we get in situations the tracked machines don't handle well. Mainly building lakes and ponds, crawling in and out over the edge. A quad would be better, but that's way bigger than we need right now. The mfd's are actually a little better on the scrapers than the 4wd's when it's not flat and straight running. On pond dams if you happened to get onto something too steep, sliding down hill and needed to steer up you were in trouble because the first thing that happens when you turn the wheel it will kick the rear end down the hill leading the scraper down and then making it turn back up behind you, in some cases we got awfully close to turning a scraper over. Same thing if you have a short auger on your combine and catch on the go, a 4wd running close to the end of a header is an accident waiting to happen unless everyone is very alert, get too close and try to steer away and the first thing that happens is the rear end of the tractor gets closer yet.
I'm not authority on it, other than we've had both in our operation and I don't forsee going back to the small 4wd's. Get one out and demo it, that's always the best way to see if it will do what you want. Email works if you want to discuss anything in more detail.
Good luck | |
|
Trading MFWD for a 4-Wheel Drive
