JD hydraulic reset plow question

A friend of mine has a 4010 that he occasionally plows with using a JD 3pt 4-bottom plow. I think he says its an F345 hydraulic reset. The problem is the plow will not trip when it hits an obstacle. He just spent over 4k on major transmission repairs and does not want to use the plow anymore until it is operating correctly. What is the proper way to use this plow? Does the hydraulic lever need to be in the float position? With no hydraulic pressure the plow will trip as soon as its in the ground but if you pressurize the cylinders you can't get the pressure back off and it won't trip. No one around here uses them anymore and the guys that did back in the day don't remember anything. :roll: Someone told him there was something on the plow that was bad (can't for the life of me remember what it was called) and he replaced it but that didn't help anything. We are trying to figure out if this is a plow problem, tractor problem, or operator error. No luck yet on a manual but i'm still looking. Any thoughts or instruction? This place is always a big help and has become my go-to resource for lots of stuff. Thanks for any advice.

(quoted from post at 16:56:24 05/24/09) A friend of mine has a 4010 that he occasionally plows with using a JD 3pt 4-bottom plow. I think he says its an F345 hydraulic reset. The problem is the plow will not trip when it hits an obstacle. He just spent over 4k on major transmission repairs and does not want to use the plow anymore until it is operating correctly. What is the proper way to use this plow? Does the hydraulic lever need to be in the float position? With no hydraulic pressure the plow will trip as soon as its in the ground but if you pressurize the cylinders you can't get the pressure back off and it won't trip. No one around here uses them anymore and the guys that did back in the day don't remember anything. :roll: Someone told him there was something on the plow that was bad (can't for the life of me remember what it was called) and he replaced it but that didn't help anything. We are trying to figure out if this is a plow problem, tractor problem, or operator error. No luck yet on a manual but i'm still looking. Any thoughts or instruction? This place is always a big help and has become my go-to resource for lots of stuff. Thanks for any advice.

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It's actually a F345H which is a big help when looking for a operators manual , which i've just ordered. Still looking for anyone who has some experience with one of these...

Is the accumulator properly charged with nitrogen and functional??

man oh man, these plows sure do sound cumbersome! I'll stick with my spring reset F45.

I've never seen spring reset on an F45. I dont even see it in the parts catalog. Can you shoot us a picture? I'm interested.

The trip cylinders are single acting and have preasure to them all the time lever tide back . There should be a preasure releive valve with a nose that goes into the plug hole under the 2nd remote ot dump oil do not plug the 2nd hose into the remote it won"t trip then.some of them plows had accumulators and some didnot some also had an adjustible preasure valve with a big red knob on it.

Do a forum search for F45 plow. I had a picture up. The F35 was a shear pin plow, the F45 was a spring reset plow. Those two are in the same family of plows, just different parts.

You have your terminology confused. You're correct that the F35 has shear bolt standards. Your F45 has trip standards, but they are NOT spring reset. They are MECHANICAL reset. Spring reset plows usually have two large coil spings that reset the bottom as soon as the obstacle has been overcome. It does not even require the stopping or backing up of the tractor. It is the same function as the hydraulic reset feature. Your F45 requires that the tractor be stopped, plow raised partially and tractor put in reverse to reset the bottom, which makes it mechanical reset.

I thought perhaps you had some sort of aftermarket operation added to the HS or NU bottoms to make them into a spring reset.

I actually own a 3-16 F45. I've been using it with my 70 standard and 801 hitch. I think I like it OK. It has NU bottoms with brand new wear parts. It seems to draft pretty easily, or at least easier than my 1250.

We had 2 of those plows. 1 was a semi mounted 5-16 that had the accumulator(because the Oliver 1850 had open-center hydraulics) and the other was a semi-mounted 4-16(on a JD2440 with closed-center hydraulics) with the valve that required constant pressure from the tractor hyd. system to function.

From your post, I am assuming your friend has the latter that can only be used on tractors with closed-center(which the 4010 has) hydraulics and NOT the accumulator system(a different cat entirely)?

1) The pressure hose(the smaller of the two) simply plugs into the port of remote outlet on the tractor intended for use with single acting hyd. cylinders(some tractor manuals will specify, some won't).

2) The dump hose( larger of the two hoses) from the plow must be plumbed into a return port(using a larger than standard size quick coupler) on the tractor that dumps fluid DIRECTLY into the tractor hyd. reservoir. Not simply into the return port of the remote outlet that the pressure line plugs into. The reason for that is that when the plow trips, the pressure of the fluid in the plow system overcomes the pop-off pressure setting of the plow valve and has to have somewhere to go RIGHT NOW and in sufficient volume to allow the cylinder to compress enough to clear the obstacle. The normal remote outlet port does not provide the un-restricted flow and volume req'd.

3) In operation, the tractors remote hyd. control lever is placed in the detent position for 'lift'(NOT float) corresponding to which ever port on the remote outlet that is being used to supply pressure to the plow system and LEFT there to maintain charge pressure to the plow system. Again, this is why this plow can only be used on a tractor with a closed-center hyd. system).

As we no longer have either the plows or the manuals, I can't remember if there was a lock-out used to hold the remote lever in the lift position during use or not? Seems to me there was.

As I recall, the pop-off pressure of the valve is adjustable in order to vary how much force is needed to trip the plow bottoms.

The manual should be available through Deere publications. Probably would be worth the effort to order one as it gets into more detail regarding setting the pressures. Set it with just enough pressure to keep the bottoms from 'floating' in your hardest ground.

Our plows worked great. Very seldom ever broke a plow point even 4-5 mph with all our large stone. And the time saved in not having to stop and back up to reset a tripped bottom half a dozen times each round really added up. Once he gets everything dialed in he should be fine.

Hope this helps.

hey ron i was wondering if you could give me some insight on using this same plow with the 1850 mine does have an accumulater on it my problem is every time i drop the plow in the ground the back hydralic cyclinder doesent want to stay down and keeps lifting up

We had a 5-16's on a 4010. Worked great nice and smooth when it tripped. Would like to find another one!!!

Lever forward and the big "dump" fitting below the left hyd bank. If you need a pic of that. Let me know the fitting is still setup on ours.