The one place where I have found that a depression will cause a problem is if a wash is in enough of a Vee that the front roller hits the other side like it was a raised place. Running the grain buggy over a wash comes to mind. If the wash is pretty flat no problem but if it is vee'd down look out. Going at an angle helps but sometimes not possible with grain buggy while under combine.

Like Don said, in hard ground conditions sometimes they can vibrate quite a bit.

Tracks, like about everything, have tradeoff's. Some guys like them, some don't. We run 3 track tractors (JD8300T, JD9400T and CH45) and several tire and my operators have pretty well indicated to me at trade time it wouldn't hurt their feelings any if the track machines left before the the tire machines. They all seem to like the CH45 on the grain buggy - that is the main exception.

It is definitely an operator preference thing because i don't care much for the tracks on the grain buggy and everybody else does yet I kind of like the track machines in the field and everybody else would just as soon hook up the tire machines. Best riding/operating/pulling machine we have is the JD9400 with tripple 18.4x46's. Used to have power hop problems till we finally got it weighted down enough. I don't personally see where the 9400T has anything over it at least for what we use them for.

Everybody hates them going down the road - and we have a lot of roading to do. In our area we farm with big tractors in small fields because our window of opportunity is often short. We justify the big tractors by having three distinct seasons when we can run them. This makes for a lot of changing fields and we can be on the road sometimes three or more times per day. I think that is one of the main reasons the tracks are not very popular in our operation.

They ride the very best they ever will when they are brand new and go downhill from there. On a new tractor the rubber has not work hardened so is softer and the lugh are deeper. We had two CH45's for a while that were identical except the one had 32" belts at 80% and the other had 24" belts at 20%. You would have thought they were different tractors. The one with the worn out lugs would actually vibrate enough on gravel washboards it would vibrate sideways towards the ditch when the road was sloped quite a bit. Don't underestimate how much poorer the ride on a track machine is when the lugs get about half worn out. Sure seems hard on the cabs going down the road.

This is the stuff the guys of the track religion fail to mention. They are good tractors and pull really well going straight and in a lot of conditions ride very well but they do have some disadvantages.

John