Farmall 656 trans/differential parts

Hi all, my brother is considering a Farmall 656 and someone told him they were a fairly good tractor its hard to find parts for the transmission and differential is this the case?
GB in MN

Parts for any tractor in the yesterday's tractor category are going to have parts that are no longer available from IH. Some new
old stck will be found, but some must come from salvage. There appears to be about 11,000 made, and they do not have (to my
knowledge) issues with drive line components. Jim

Thanks Jim I'll pas that on to him tomorrow have a good thanksgiving
GB in MN

The rear ends were not troublesome but they are subject to abuse and poor maintenance just like any tractor around 50 years in age. Be thorough in checking it out.

I have a Farmall 656 gear tractor (not a Hydro model) and find it a great tractor being my largest IH tractor. I bought it mainly for
being a hay baling tractor in front of a New Holland 311 small square baler to be up higher above the chaff and dirt. It didn't work out
all that well as the gearing is somewhat too fast even in first TA low for the heavy hay fields I have in my bottom fields with the
windrows being too large. I have found other suitable uses for the 656 on the farm and it is certainly an IHC tractor I can count on when
needed. The one thing I would caution you about is that the gear shift mechanism does accumulate a degree of wear over time (my 656 has
6000+K hours on the tach) and an old time local IH mechanic told me you could have transmission locking up issues if when shifting between gears and when leaving
one gear for another always go to neutral and move the gear selector fully to the left and right before going to the next gear. I believe
that must have something to do with getting the shift rails aligned correctly for the next gear. I have never had an issue using that
information from the old timer.
Another issue I will mention, there have been numerous discussions on this forum about using higher octane fuel and low ash oil in the IH
six cylinder tractors and a 656 falls into this category. I don't want to start that discussion again, but I use straight 91 octane
gasoline (non-ethanol) in all my tractors including the 656 from my farm fuel tank and only the CaseIH low ash engine oil as specified in
the 656 operator's manual and other IH publications in my 656, Hal.

They did at one time have and issue with ring gear to carrier rivits , I know that the few that sold around here were back at the dealers for work on the ring gear and carrier. . The only issues i have addressed on 656's is engine problems clutch and T/A's and SHIFTER problems and brakes , i hate working on the brakes and having to look for the shims . as most are bought used and the cove shims are long gone and after ya get everything repaired replaced you find you need the SHIMS to space out the cover , Myself i only had three customers that owned a 656 , the rest i worked on were bought by a couple different tractor jockeys that i did work for and most of that work was valve jobs clutches some new T/A's and SHIFTER repair . One of them had a small salvage yard that had four 656's in it and once i ran out of pieces and parts from picking those salvage tractors clean as a Thanksgiving turkey for what i needed to make one ready for the sale we had to start hunting for parts outside . Luckily the ones that were in salvage had all the brake shims and i removed all of them and tagged them and hug them up for future use and over the years they got used .

With roughly 41400 Farmall models and 8700 utility models I don't think parts will be an issue.

Thanks all for the replies and information its appreciated
GB in MN