Allis Chalmers 175 purpose

Anybody know what the purpose of the 175 was? It seems like a chore tractor but everywhere I see it listed as row crop, would it pull a smaller planter or tillage equipment? Maybe pull grain wagons?

Hard to believe what people consider a small tractor these days. We never used anything bigger that a 30 HP tractor to a 4 row planter or a 20 HP one on a hayrake. The 30 HP tractor also did all of the baling while also pulling a wagon. The B with 2way plows was used to plow all the small fields while the SuH and 2 bottom trailer plow did the larger fields. This was in the early 70s and we had over 400 acres of corn then and plowed for all of it. It wasn't until we put a V8 into a M did we have a big tractor and that was only used for tillage. 

Bloodline backwards: 175-62 HP...….170-54 HP...…..D17- 53 HP.....WD45- 43 HP......all of these were based off of a 28 inch diameter rear tire with outboard final drives. This allowed for full row-crop clearance and kept a relatively low stance/profile, although certainly not a utility tractor.  A 175 would do the same work as any larger 60 HP tractor if they both weighed the same. I grew up on a 170 and D-17 S4, both with 16.9 x 28 rear tires. A neighbor/cousin had a 2510 John Deere with 13.6 x 38 rear tires. The Deere had zero advantage over the A-C tractors as the 16.9 tires had a little more footprint of tire on the ground for traction. Then, there was the matter of a small displacement Deere engine running at 2,700 RPM versus the orange engine that only ran 2,000 RPM.

Edited by DrAllis - 21 Feb 2022 at 7:40am

When the AC 175 tractor was built throughout the seventies a lot of farmers were still using 3 bottom plows and pull 10 foot wheel disks which was a good match behind a 62 horsepower tractor. Plus a lot of that brought an AC 175 tractor when that tractor was new was probably upgrading in horsepower to begin with. Back then in the seventies square baling hay was still the most popular way to put up hay and a 175 was more than capable of pulling a square baler. Plus when Vermeer came out with it first round baler the 175 had plenty of horsepower to handle it. I bet on a lot of 35 to 45 cows dairy farms back in the seventies the AC 175 was the big tractor and it pulled a one row silage chopper to put up silage with.
   I always thought a tractor like an AC 175 tractor back in the seventies when I was in high school a tractor that size would be huge upgrade in horsepower on our family farm since our biggest tractor was a MF 35 diesel tractor. It was not until 1985 I got a 67 horsepower tractor for our farm and was big enough till another horsepower jump to 85 horsepower with a cab/AC in 1999.

Thanks guys!

I remember going to the JD dealer with Dad to look at a new 4 row planter (490 with dry fertlizer) and 4 section harrow on a Clark cart. The salesman kept telling dad his WD 45 would not pull the planter filled with starter fertilizer and would have a hard time with the harrow. Dad bought the planter and harrow. He had no trouble pulling the planter. What he did have trouble with, he never washed out the fertilizer boxes. They worked the first year but the second year they were froze solid. Dad had taken delivery of the dry fertilizer so he ran it thru the end gate seeder. He did wash out the seeder but we still had to hammer on it a little bit to get it to work the next spring. He had the 45 overhauled and the mechanic put a "heavy duty" governor spring in it. It would then easily out run the series 1 d17 on the road. The 45 was dads favorite tractor. So you see there were some "improvements" you could do to those small gas tractors to make them better.