Road Gear - what tractors had them?

[Jake Jacobs]

Anyone know what tractors in the late 40's and 50's had a road gear? thanks

[casesteam12]

In the late 30's or early 40's Minneapolis Moline made the comfort tractor that had a modern enclosed cab on it. If memory serves me correctly these would run 40 mph.
Brad

[bocephus_k6]

Friday tractors would cruise somewhere around 50 or 60 MPH...




Brian

[Mike in NC]

Silver Kings could cruise around 45 MPH or so.

[Bob Shannon]

My 8N Ford has an add on Sherman overdrive. Goes faster than I care to drive it.

[slug]

I saw a case L that had a road gear. It was so they could pull the separator from place to place. John

[Mike in NC]

The Farmall F-Series had an add on overdrive.

[HBurk]

Had an F-20 one time with a road gear. Close to 20 MPH.

[HerbyReed]

The Farmall M had a road gear, it was 5th and quite a trick to shift from 4th to 5th without stalling out. The M had no speedometer but we always figured top speed was around 25. A little care was needed on cornering though, with the tricycle front end it would have been real easy to upset that tractor.

[Bud Tierney]

Mislaid my CO-OP notes; it was the Chrysler 6, Dodge truck driveline tractor produced by the farm co-ops in 35/6 up thru postwar, when the design was continued by Custom, and then smaller producers like Jacob? Love and Dave? Friday, up into the mid 50's, as I recall.
It had good road speed, so farmers could move quickly between fields or fields/town.
One advertising gimmick reported was one got a speeding ticket, but can't recall without notes or review whether was supposedly making 25 or 35, but I believe ir was 35.
Custom also used Chrysler Cptn straight 8's in addition to usual 6's; don't recall anything on how fast they 'd go.
Love and Friday added 2-speed rear end to get the reported 55-60; believe highest reported figure I saw was 62

[HBurk]

My Farmall "M" will get about 22 MPH.

[Mark Schneider]

I've heard stories about some North Dakota farmers being frustrated about the slow road speed on the unstyled John Deere A's and B's. It seems they discovered a poor man's remedy by removing the link that automatically shifts the transmission to low range when shifting into reverse. They had found that the road speed in reverse hi-range was faster than any of the foward gears.
If this was true that would be quite a ride!

[Ed Malcom]

when i was a kid a long time ago my dad had a case model RC with an add on road gear.

[ELIDAS]

Originally Posted by Jake Jacobs

Anyone know what tractors in the late 40's and 50's had a road gear? thanks

My Centaur KM is supposed to have a "road" gear. These were used for highway mowing and needed to travel. I would think that 20mph would be "interesting".

[MoRo]

Originally Posted by Mark Schneider

I've heard stories about some North Dakota farmers being frustrated about the slow road speed on the unstyled John Deere A's and B's. It seems they discovered a poor man's remedy by removing the link that automatically shifts the transmission to low range when shifting into reverse. They had found that the road speed in reverse hi-range was faster than any of the foward gears.
If this was true that would be quite a ride!

That musta been the 4-speed transmissions. My dad's '49 A had the 2-stick 6-speed, for which road gear was faster than the "hi" reverse.

I learned to put the main lever about half way into reverse, and the other lever halfway into hi. She'd sail backwards pretty good. Worked nice for bucking hay up to the stack.

[20minnie]

Not sure if Silver Kings had a road gear per say. My understanding is that they were geared for speed. An old man I met once told me a story of passing every thing on the road with a Silver King. However the tractors did not have the low range to pull well and would get stuck fairly easy in fields. Many owners found the solution. They would mount the rear tires with the tread going in oppisite directions. This was to insure that one tire would pull in any direction and spin or walk the tractor out.

[Happy Old Iron]

Silver kings exist with normal, high and very high gearing.
The slowest we had would run only like 12 to 15 mph, the fastest at least 35 mph.

[Molinegb]

MM 's UDLX was rated at 38 Mph. I have a 1940 MM ZTS that has road gear which is blocked out because it came from factory on full steel. Also early MM U's had similar rear gears to the UDLX,UOPN but did about 22 mph.

[MCanady]

What about Allis Chalmers Tractors Promotion they had in the 1930's to sell Rubber Tires. They added High Speed Gearing to some of their Tractors and hired Barney Oldfield and other drivers to drive the tractors on race tracks at Fairs around the country. These were not meant to be sold but some did get sold and I read a story about one that a collector found and restored sometime ago.

[manmrman]

Cockshutt built a base rear-end that would withstand future horsepower increases. Two bull gears with bearings on each side were designed into a four-walled gear case and connected with a sliding spur gear transmission, six forward and two reverse. With a 1.6 mph 1st gear, the Model 40 was the slowest tractor in its horsepower class! This “straight line” (no u-joints) drive to the differential proved popular with tractor pullers long into the future and was even employed on the much later 560 and 570 models