6610 opinions

I might go look at a Ford 6610 later and am curious if there is anything specific to keep an eye out for. It is supposed to be in excellent condition with cab and fwa. I don't know the first thing about them so I'm looking for opinions. What I want to use it for mostly is a feeding and haying tractor in winter. Are they good starters in the cold? It will be parked in a shed with electricity but it's nice to know if the electricity goes out will it start or not. In the summer I have a sprayer that has a hydraulic pump. How well do they put up running hydraulic pumps and motors?

I've had a 6610 cab tractor 2WD for several years, it's been a good tractor with plenty of power pulling my round baler and 15 ft batwing mower. If it has dual power make sure it works and the shifts are firm, check the heat and ac, I have to add a little Freon to mine each year and the unit in the roof needs cleaned, doesn't quite get cool enough on a hot summer day. Check to see how the transmission shifts, the plastic shifter bushings under the cab get worn and have to be replaced from time to time, if the shifters have much slop in them the bushings are getting bad.
Mine has 4000 hrs on it and I had some over heating issues with it during the summer so I'll pull the radiator over the winter and have it checked, already swapped the tstat and sender. Mine's a bear to get started in cold weather if it's not plugged in.

Now for the down side, if I had it to do over I'd have gotten a 6710 or 7710, 6610-7610's are lower profile with the cab setting down close to the chassis and uses the standard profile hood, adding heat and ac pacts components close together under the hood making maintenance more difficult, changing the alternator was a pain, to change the tstat and sender I had to remove the hood. With the cab setting low on the chassis gaining access to the top of the transmission and lift top is near impossible without raising the cab. Although mine has plenty of power doing field work it's a little under powered in road gear and falls off pretty bad on hills, I could see this being a bigger issue on a 4WD model.

My advice is find a late model black strip 7710, these are great tractors with plenty of power and the higher profile cab and hood make it much easier to do maintenance on.
The 7710 is rated at 87 pto hp but most of the later black strip models we dynoed made around 100 hp. The extra hp will come it handy on a 4WD model.