My DC3 working

Here is a direct link to my DC3 working.

My first post of this tractor working may have been difficult to access the video. If you saw it already, feel free to ignore this post.
My DC3 working

Looks good. Is that second or third gear?

Were you only running one rear weight when pulling the centenial ?

2nd gear. When plowing the end rows, the ground was so hard the plow would not penetrate to its set depth. There was one spot of the end rows where the plow sucked in and had to go to 1st for a few feet.

There was a few spots in the 90 acres where it would pull in 3rd but 2nd was the gear of choice.

The DC really needed a gear between 2nd and 3rd. Another gear between 1st and 2nd would have also been good. Farmall H and M had 5 speeds and four cylinders and this is the reasons farmers voted with their pocket book to make it the tractor brand of choice in the early 50s. A six speed DC would have made major inroads in the market of the A Deere and the M Farmall. I personally think the 2 cylinders hurt the six speed Deere sales.

Chuck, I was running two weights on the land wheel and none one the furrow wheel.

Ron,

You are so right about more speeds. Just 1 more would have made a world of difference, sales wise. Case tractors cost almost exactly the same, but offered less gears, so the farmer felt he was getting less. Not too hard to figure out, but Case management was too stupid to see it. Don

From a marketing standpoint, I can understand that Case was at a disadvantage with 4 speeds. But it is not quite that simple from an engineering and practical standpoint.
The simple fact is that Case engines produce their power at a significantly lower RPM and still make comparable fuel economy. Thus, their carburation and timing are closer to optimum throughout their power range. They thus get better fuel economy at partial load and lug much better. This means that they need fewer gears to get equivalent fuel economy. Also, their lugging ability means that they don't die nearly as easily when overloaded, and can continue to run overloaded for longer periods of time than their competition. Think of Case's lugging ability as a primitive case-o-matic drive; it delivered the same advantages.
Fewer gears have the added advantage of less complexity, fewer failure points, and lower manufacturing costs. Lower manufacturing costs in the transmission meant that Case could put that money elsewhere in the design and still sell a machine at a competitive price. This resulted in very robust, long lasting, and user friendly machines.
However, the biggest disadvantage comes when these machines are used with PTO powered implements that need to be pulled at a precise speed to be efficient. These include unpowered combines and bailers. You could change wheels to get intermediate speeds, but field conditions make more of a difference with these implements than with tillage implements. Also you can't just adjust the width of a bailer to compensate for the tractor's available power like you can the width of cut, or the depth of a plow.

I was not attempting to demean a D series Case tractor by any means. They were incredibly well engineered and still useful after 60+ years. My assertion is that they were simply out featured by the competition. In my interviews with old Case dealers, many of them came to loathe the DC as they just couldn't sell them after 1952 even with the new seats, 4 inch pistons, foot throttle, etc. There were still new DC's being sold in 1956 at severe discounts.

Several years ago I read that Case engineers offered to put another gear in the 4 speed transmission for $15 cost and Leon Clausen said no. He was not very smart, if that is true.

Our family farmed for years with a D and DC4 (still have them) and 1st was too slow and 2nd was too fast for baling hay. Don

What I was trying to say is that DCs were NOT out featured by the competition (until at least the mid 50's). More gears is not a useful feature with these tractors unless you are running PTO powered trailing equipment (I am talking about fuel efficiency here, and even then the difference is small because of how case designed the tractor). Don, I am certainly not trying to argue with you on this point at all. However, most of America was not yet using newer PTO powered equipment until the mid 50's. Also, neither powered equipment nor ground powered equipment have the same power matching problems that PTO powered equipment does, but they are also not as efficient. And Clausen wasn't necessarily wrong to not add another gear. It would have meant retooling the factory and foundry for a tractor that would be going out in a few years. This allowed Case engineers to focus on the hundred series, and I am glad they did, or else Case might not have survived the 50s. The only flaw that I can see is that Case tractors were not what people thought they wanted. They may have been what people needed at the time. Also, they might not be ideal for today.