Need Opinions 4320 to 4230

I have an oportunity to purchase a one owner 4230 with a Deere 158 loader. It will replace my 4320. The tractors overall conditions are comparable.. With the exception that my 4320 will shortly need a clutch, and the hydraulic pump is getting weak. My question is this. How bad will I miss the 15 horsepower, the turbo, and the extra weight. I only have 50 acress of crop ground. Most of the use will be haying. Big round bales in particular, and I do have some hills. e-mail is open

I think for your 50 acre haying operation the 4230 will be fine except they are usually very cold natured. The 158 loader is nice and will reach way up in the air.

You will like the JD 4230 other than being cold natured. 1) The wet clutch is much better. Especially for loader work. 2) The hydraulic charge pump runs all the time so if you are creeping with the clutch pedal the hydraulics stay full flow. Your JD 4320 will run out of oil if the clutch is held down.

You will miss the smooth running engine/turbo that the JD 4320 has but all in all the JD 4320 is a better tractor for using a loader on.

Does the 4230 have a cab ? If so that will be worth it !

Very cold blooded!! It can be 100 degrees in July and if you walk past with an ice cream cone it will need ether! But overall a very nice loader tractor with quad or syncro trans. Not as handy with the powershift.

The 4230 has a better wide front axle than a 4020. I like the operator's station on the 30 series better than the 20 series. There is no comparision between the cabs.

If some of your tillage equipment works your 4320 hard in 3rd & 4th gear, then they may be too much for a 4230.

Has the 4230 engine been overhauled? There were update kits that improved the hard starting problems.

I had a '74 or '79, forget which diesel, with cab. Only problem with it was a clogged radiator. Bought it with 3900 orig. hours and cosmetically completely restored. Engine didn't have a wrench on it.

Mine was somewhat hard to start in the winter till I redid the battery hookup. Rather than run 2ea 6v batteries in SERIES with ground on the right side of the block and the starter on the left, not one of mother Deere's better designs, and as I recall running 1/0 wire, I rewired it.

I put in two 12v series 31 OTR truck batteries of 900 cca each, 3/8 stud terminals and wired them in PARALLEL with 2/0 copper wire. It meant running two big wires under the cab over to the right side to catch that battery, but so what!

With my wiring the batteries were in parallel, which reduced that series resistance to 1/4 what it was as far as the starting current loop was concerned. Then I wired the left battery plus directly to the starter solenoid and the neg to one of the bolts holding the starter to the block both with about 1 1/2 ft. of 2/0 each. Everything was clean, shiny, and tight.

Forget cold weather. That sucker spun up so fast that you had to worry about blowing out the tires on the down side. Ha! Naw not really , but I never touched an ether can again.

I don't know what you call it but I had the shift lever that you could toggle between two adjacent gears in the same range. Worked neat as I could run the row in the higher gear, pop the shift lever to the lower in the turn, and coming out pop it back to the higher gear.

Mark