Tracks on tractors

[Eugen]

I wonder, would tracks help?

[JSinMO]

I wonder, would tracks help?

I’ve had that same thought. I know they had a track and idler setup for the bigger Ford tractors back in the day. That would be a heck of a project on a 600 series!

[Toolslinger]

I think I'd be looking for one of the little Davis trenchers that rode on tracks before I dove into the nightmare that putting tracks on a 6xx would be.
Or you could just find a slightly larger Kubota with loader, and hoe, and get on with life... (heresy, I know... )

[thebuildist]

The problem with with tracks on any Case/Ingersoll is steering. With a big rectangular profile where the tracks are resting on the ground, any turning of the tractor means one of the tracks has to be dragged sideways. The open differential will allow one track to rotate faster than the other, but the innermost track itself has to be dragged sideways in the dirt, and there's a lot of resistance to that, and it will damage any delicate turf.

It makes the front wheels' job all the more difficult to do, especially if they're in soft stuff, or if they're at all resting lightly on the ground.

The thought has occurred to me that you could actually replace the rear transaxle with a pair of hydraulic motor wheels like something off of a skidsteer. But that's a pretty major project/modification, and at that point you'd might as well just convert it into a fully tracked vehicle.


Another thought I had was to build removable tracks in conjunction with the three point hitch. It could be a combination counterbalance and rear tracks. My thought was that you'd adjust the orientation of the tracks via large turnbuckles, (something as large as a 3 pt. top link) and tension/de-tension the tracks by lifting or dropping the 3pt arms. That would make removing the tracks very fast and easy. It would look something like this:

But because of the turning/steering challenges, you'd have to configure it such that the majority of the time the rear bogey/idler wheels are elevated off the ground like this:

For that to work, you'd want the angle/orientation of the tracks to be controlled by moving the 3-pt arms. You could operate most of the time with the rear bogeys elevated, which would minimize steering difficulty and turf damage, and use the 3-pt to lower the rear bogeys whenever you need extra traction. But that does mean you'd have to remove/install the tracks via slow/clunky turnbuckles. But it does seem like it could actually work, though it would be a big, ambitious project.

I can't imagine any way you could do any of this with an LBH.

Bob

[Eugen]

This is how Ford did it on the 8N. Don't know how well steering worked but most likely it wasn't too bad.

I don't mean to hijack @Harry 's thread, maybe we open a thread on tracks on our tractors ideas.

[Timj]

This is how Ford did it on the 8N. Don't know how well steering worked but most likely it wasn't too bad.

Screen Shot 2022-06-09 at 11.38.39.png

I don't mean to hijack @Harry 's thread, maybe we open a thread on tracks on our tractors ideas.

I asked my dad yesterday, he ran one that the snowmobile club had, he said you had to use the brakes to help get it to turn.

[propane1]

This is how Ford did it on the 8N. Don't know how well steering worked but most likely it wasn't too bad.

Screen Shot 2022-06-09 at 11.38.39.png

I don't mean to hijack @Harry 's thread, maybe we open a thread on tracks on our tractors ideas.

I asked my dad yesterday, he ran one that the snowmobile club had, he said you had to use the brakes to help get it to turn.

That’s for sure Tim. Brakes had to be used. And with the narrow front tires and sharp turning, they worked fairly well.

Noel