"History" lesson?

I'm not a "tech" guy.  I use a computer at work because I have to.  I don't get cable tv, don't own a cell phone, and don't really trust things that i can't fix with a welder or hammer.  When you stand in a supermarket with millions of dollars in inventory and can't buy anything because the computers have crashed........... Which points out where I think most modern machinery will fail to stand the test of time.  Is it really that hard to move a lever from point a to b?  Do we need a computer to tell the solonoid when to do it for us, and two microswitches to tell the computer that it happened?  And should the whole thing coast to a stop if any one of those parts fails?  I can't imagine trying to design and sell a new tractor today, because they won't do much that a 1960's tractor can't do (about when modern hydraulics came into being).  They don't even seem to do it with less fuel.  Couldn't they be more efficient if that was a priority? All they can do is try to make them more comfortable, more stylish, easier to run if you don't want to learn how to be a real operator.  And bigger, always bigger. 

I agree with both of ya! Squatch...I too was held up in line at a store once because of the puter crash...the clerk was old enough that she could still count money and add everything up for the sale! and ya know what? the company fired her because they had no record of the sales, except the extra money in the drawer! PffffT! me thinks that over all...computers will be the down fall of our country! ya'll have already seen what has happened in the military and the white house with them! dust is the worst enemy of them, and what's in a field? most any farm equipment that have computers and safety switches I try to stay away from! they only costs the consumers more money, and that's why they are designed that way! the anufacturers had to do something, cuz they weren't making money fast enough, parts weren't wearing out fast enough! when I was working on my disk earlier this year, the mounts that held the scrapers were broke, I discovered they were cast iron, the old ones were steel and could be welded if needed, but the company had them changed so they would break more and they could sell more! when I told the parts man about it, he said: "yes...we sell a lot of these now"! this is why we need to keep the older stuff working as long as we can! the money I try to make is for ME! not some goat head behind a desk that wants to buy a new Porsha every year/month!

That must of been a real old-timey store you were in, Shameless.  When it happened to me a while ago, nobody could have figured it out, cuz prices aren't marked on anything except the shelf.  And, unless I had exact change, we'd have been screwed because nobodys drawer would open.  And, nobody in line ahead of me planned to pay with cash, anyway, just plastic.

Tax = the burger that shameless ate when he cooked them before you left. You didn't know part of the beef for the job was included in the cookout..... or maybe there wasn't a tax after all.

Squatch...them stores scanned the items (told the puter what they needed to re-stock with) but they had to punch in the $$$ amounts too!

It's funny that you mention an electric tractor, Dan.  I've had thoughts on the same line.  I've had to learn a little about hybrid and electric vehicles because of my involvement in the fire service.  I also work at a resort as the golf course equipment manager, and can tell you that the major manufacturers of gc equipment are developing all-electric machines.  So maybe the tech will make it up to farm tractors someday.  The sticking point is batteries.  The ability to put a machine in the hay field for all day, at full power, isn't there yet.  I suppose you've read about the fuel cell tractor that AC experimented with back in the day?  It's in the Smithsonian now, I believe.  So, we're not the first to consider the possibilities.  I did some reading a few years ago on steam power.  Some "new" technology was being developed during the fuel crunch of the 70's.  Could a bio-fueled (wood pellet, maybe) steam engine do what we need?  The oil will run out, or be withheld from us, eventually, and we're still gonna have work to do.  I bet somebody will figure it out.

Dan73 wrote: Batteries are a very interesting problem with respect to tractors. The entire focus on battery power right now is power to weight ratio.

It's not just power-to-weight ratio, it's 'power density' ratio, and survivable duty cycle under high discharge rate with the caveat of weight, safety, and ability to be reliably recharged fast. The ability to put a high energy density into a practical battery safely does not exist yet at a magnitude comparable to a gallon can of any common liquid fuel.

Dan73 wrote: I wanted to put the hydraulic pump on my d17 on the belt pullie mount so I could shut it off when I didn't need it. I didn't only because I would have had to do alot more custom mounting and I couldn't find a listing of the actual engine to pullie speed.

With a WD, WD-45, and D17, B, C, CA, or smaller D-series, you won't see any substantial improvement by mechanically disengaging the hydraulic pump, because it already disengages itself hydraulically- the unloading mechanism shuts off the pumping load once the unloading pressure is reached, and when it does, 98% of the pump's torque load is disengaged.

Dan73 wrote: I fully agree a 100hp tractor running hard all day is alot of power and it would be a massive amount of batteries.

When we identify tractor power, we use very simple factors that describe the load- either drawbar, PTO, or belt horsepower, and then to describe any power-unit's efficiency, we identify how much fuel is used per horsepower-hour to get the indicated output. Nebraska tests work exactly this way, and in doing so, establish a level benchmark that identifies power output in all three categories, under a continuous-duty cycle, and they measure fuel consumption required to make the power unit develop that output.

Let's take an example of A 100hp tractor... the Two-Hundred. In the Nebraska tests, it manages about 16.5 horsepower-hours per gallon, managed 93.6 at the PTO, and 79 at the drawbar. It has a 48 gallon tank.

I ran my grandfather's round baler behind the two-hundred on many occasions, and while I remember putting fuel in it, I never recall looking at the gauge and seeing it move much after 5 hours in the field. (I use the 5-hour reference because his fields were sized un such a way that when he sent me to do one field, it'd never take me more than 5 to make the round bales, and the next field wouldn't be ready 'till the next day.)

It's been three decades since I ran that combo, so I don't remember how hard it worked, but let's say it used HALF the tractor's capacity... looking at the Nebraska graph, that means it was only running about 12.5hp/hr gallon... if I ran 5 hours at 12.5 hp/hr/gal at a load of 50hp, that'd equate to 5*50 = 250hp/hrs, with a use of 20 gallons. That's probably a smidgen on the low side for horsepower, but probably about right for fuel.

Now, let's convert that to a load expression more suited to electrical format. One horsepower equates to 745.56999 watts, or 0.74569kw. That means one HP/Hr - 0.7456 kw/hr

If 20 gallons of fuel in the Two Hundred was worthy of working 250 horsepower hours, that equates to 186.425 Kilowatt-Hours.

Let's run that calculation backwards around the barn and see if it sounds right...

250 horsepower hours equates to 186.425kw/h, which equates to 636108 BTU.

One gallon of diesel fuel contains, on average, about 139000 BTU. That implies that the Two Hundred only managed to put 4.5 gallons of that liquid fuel energy to the load. Compare that to the 20 gallons (we speculate) was used, and that means the Two Hundred's efficiency of converting fuel to work is only 22.5%... which sounds really lousy, but if it was a cold day pushing snow, we'd find a good use for some of that wasted energy heating the cab, and on a hot, dusty day, some of it was keeping the AC running... but regardless, if it did it on 20 gallons, that 20 gallons of diesel fuel fit in a space that is 20*231/1728= 2.8 cubic feet in volume, and 20*7.1=142 pounds.

Let's say we could do that same work with batteries:

186.5 kw/hrs... a common modern subway train operates in very similar duty cycle, uses a 400hp 3-phase electric motor on an axle, with a 7:1 gearbox reduction, driven by a variable-voltage/variable frequency PWM inverter off of a nominal 600vdc third-rail shoe. At 600vdc, that 400hp electric motor pulls 298kw/hr... that's 50ADC at 600v. Let's scale that down to something in the realm of the Two-Twenty... let's divide it by four, to equate to the 100hp RANGE... that equates to 12.5A @ 600v continuously.

Here's where it gets difficult. The train is nuclear-powered... or coal, or natural gas, or hydroelectric... it's getting it's power from either a third rail, or a catenary wire... so it doesn't have a huge battery bank. Unless you're willing to have an extension cord following you around the field (great for running a sickle-mower...), you're gonna need a trailer-full of batteries to run that tractor for 6 hours. IF you ran it at a level that would be typical for say... a modern PV solar battery system (like Trojan or Saft), you'd drop it down to two banks of 48v for 96v, and carry 78A to an inverter to run that AC motor.

To carry 78A for 6 hours is one thing... to recharge it at any rate faster than a 6 hour wait, is totally another, and to carry it around the field while using it, yet a third.

It is the nature of a chemical-plate (wet, mat, AGM, or dry cell) battery to occupy space, be heavy, discharge slow, recharge slow, and eject explosive gases. To use chemical plate batteries in an application successfully, the discharge/recharge rate must NOT be exceeded, and it must be handled with care to prevent being physically distorted or damaged.

While the 20% efficiency ability seems hideous, from a technological standpoint, it's difficult to defeat the energy-density value of a liquid motor fuel and it's conversion mechanism, against a battery-electric system.

Look at it from a very practical and simple viewpoint: A guy can take a totally-discharged diesel tractor, and recharge it's 40 gallon battery in under 5 minutes, and be heading back into the field, and there's no hazard of explosion.

Dan73 wrote: I was reading the thread about putting a v8 into a B debating to myself if there was a practical way to test an electric tractor with that same type of conversation.

Guys do it... many have done it with the Allis G... and if you're using it for an hour every three days running four passes with a cultivator down a truck-garden plot, then plugging it into a solar array for the rest of the week to recharge the golf-cart batteries... it's a great setup. Spinning a square-baler's flywheel while dragging a hay-rack with a thunderstorm coming over the prairie is an entirely different story.

Dan73 wrote: I have enough barn roofs to have a small solar power plant but I don't see a way to make it pay for itself unless I can store and use the power myself.

This is the problem with anything electrical, not just PV solar... and even moreso, anything ENERGY. Energy storage efficiency is the key.

If you dismiss the electrical concept, and just look at it as being able to gather HEAT from the sunlight, you have a much better chance of safely storing energy. Let's say you wanted to heat and cool your house year-round... what you would need to do first, is insulate your house in such a way that the heat gain in summer, and heat loss in winter, were both minimized. THEN, you'd need to make your environmental management system remove heat from your house in the summer, and put it in some storage medium that will efficiently 'trap' it, so that you can release it in the winter.   Mathematically, your storage medium would need to be able to accept all the cooling energy, and return it as heating energy, in a sine-phase 90 degrees' offset from your home demand. During the late spring, as the world around you was warming up, your storage medium would be approaching it's coldest point. In late fall, the storage medium would be reaching it's hottest.

Here's one way you could do it:

"Honey... I need to get in shape... I'm gonna build an enclosed olympic swimming pool". Install a heat-pump between pool and house. Size pool so that from 64 to 85F, the pool's energy volume EXCEEDS your house's total heating or cooling energy demand (whichever is higher). Heat pump will be more efficient the larger the pool is.

Run your heat pump and circulatory pumps off solar... basically direct... so no battery storage is necessary. Put up a wind generator, so that when the wind blows, your heat pump can run too. on a still, dark night, your heat pump won't run, but if you did your insulation work and energy-loss math properly, it won't matter, 'cause the house can't warm or cool fast enough to be noticed 'till sun-up tomorrow.

Dave nice posting. Electric motors are more efficient then a diesel engine. It deals with the torque curve electric motors have most of their torque from almost zero rpm to full speed. So you don't have the loss of leaving the power band. I suspect on a tractor that isn't much of a gain because the diesel is geared to the torque curve for peak efficiency.
You have some great suggestions on heating right now I use wood so I am pretty much free of oil there just the fuel to cut and split it up.
I took part in the tour de sole solar and electric car race back in the mid 90s my college had an electric car that weighted close to the same as a production sub compact car it was pretty heavy for something customers built to be light. We had 10 deep cycle led acid batteries about the size of a 100hp tractor battery.   We could charge the pack from dead in 8 hours and it would give us a range of 110 miles country driving on hilly roads in New England at a typical speed of 40.   The calculation we did at the time showed that the car running on electronic power off the grid was running equal to a gas car getting 90 to 100mpg. I don't remember just how the conversation was done but the race organization had put alot of research into the conversion calc. The better cars in the race ranged from 75 to 100mpg. A hybrid can't get there because it has to carry two drive systems or a combination drive system which is not ideal for either power source.   We saw this in the race we trailered a diesel generator which was very efficient and lost alot of performance.
Now here is the real kicker. Westinghouse had a lithium aluminum battery that was used in electrice lawnmowers.   It would have given us a range of 450 miles with the same 8 hour charging time. And the weight of the pack was lighter so the mpg conversion would have been better for an electric car. I really don't think weight is as much of an issue with a tractor.   We tried to get a battery pack from Westinghouse at the time but with no explanation they simply closed the division making the battery.   These batteries where used in lawn mowers for years in the early 90s. No idea what happened to them but they where real and did work.
So I think if you where willing to let your tractor charge over night after running it for 5 hours it might not be as bad as you think. Now I agree that won't power directly off my barn but with grid attached solar if i have the demand for the solar off peak time I should be able to pull from the grid at night and push onto it during the day while I run the tractor.   I lithium ion batteries can do pretty well for power density we all know the current lifespan issues with them some of that is over heating because cell phones don't manage power well they want them to be traded even two years. There are some new battery technology out there as well coming up the pipeline assuming that big business oil interests don't lock them up.

All batteries have let me down since I was a small child.
There are electric cars out there such as the Nissan Leaf.
Problem is they only go 60 miles on a charge. To get that to 600
would take a battery breakthrough. Now we keep hearing about advances, like this university is onto a new anode with great potential, another lab with maybe a super nano-cathode, another with a fabulous looking electrolyte. There must be a million places researching batteries. But so far only minor advances, nothing new on the market.

Allis had a fuel cell tractor long time ago. My bet would be on a
fuel cell that runs with liquid ethanol. So you get the high energy density of a liquid fuel, and a common fuel to boot. The current fuel
cells (just like batteries) cannot cut the mustard, so now waiting
for a fuel cell breakthrough. There are gas stations selling E85, good ethanol contaminated by gasoline. Change that to E100, pave the way for the fuel cell. In the meantime make regular IC engines optimized for E100, high compression engines.

As far as the history lesson, let me make sure I got it straight-
Allis-Chalmers, Ford and Farmall had nice tractors and happy customers. But then in a crazy scheme to make them even better they introduced disasters, the reputation killing 190XT, or dud Torque Amplifier and Select-O-Speed transmissions. Just when things were looking gloomy for the suffering farmers, John Deere arrives to save the day with the 4020.
International, Allis and Ford see how great this is and they roll over and die. Across the land there is now green everywhere, doing the work.

Deere had great management strategies and especially a great marketing campaign. Who would have thought of scantily clad women accompanying the new line of equipment at their introduction at Dallas in 1960. Not really a moral way to gain sales but it worked.

I'd take a 190xt series 3 over a 4020 any day...A 7030 over a 4430 and a 7060 over a gutless 4630 twice on Sunday...30 series John Deeres were and are inferior to the 7000 series tractor in my opinion. I have operated them both and feel my opinion is an educated one. 40 series Deeres went to the bigger motor and Allis did nothing to combat that with the 8000 series...Cabs were nicer on the 8000's yes,but they were essentially 7000's with nicer cabs. I would have liked to have seen what would have happened if the 8095 was put into production,that would have been a game changer for AC at least I believe

Oliver tractors are pretty nice, my cousin has a 1655 and I've been around 1650's, 880's and a few others. oh and whites if you can count them as Oliver's. 2-180 white at work replaced a 4630 that grenade the rear end.

It's tough to hear, but I'm just repeating what is said in Waffle Houses out there in the US. And in pre-school when they ask the kids to draw a tractor, if it isn't done with green crayon, the kid gets sent to special re-education camp. And the parents get a visit by Men in Green.

Yes! Allis-Chalmers should have hired Daisy Duke to promote their stuff.
If she could turn Roscoe's guys she could persuade a farmer into buying an Allis tractor.

yep, grandpa and his brother made a few trips to Hurricane Mills to see the demos. even met Mooney once!

when I was in pre school, we had to bring in something orange one day, so I brought a toy Allis tractor. of course I also wore a cowboy hat everyday and the pre school wasn't licensed...

well actually I only had a few Allis things. most everything was green. I knew allies was the best, but having a deere dealership to buy stuff from was appealing. most of the big toy farming I did was with a 220, a 7800 deere and a bunch of 2 cylinders and a R-75 gleaner with a 9600 for back up. with a 4 row 7000 and a 6 row 7300 planter