(quoted from post at 05:58:09 09/06/20) It's too bad IH didn't sign up to use the Roll-a-Matic frt end the two farmers that created it offered them. Their original prototype was on a FARMALL B.
As long as you approach hills pretty much straight up or straight down a narrow frt end is capable of negotiating steep hills. According to most posters on this site I should have been dead, crushed by a tipped over Farmall M with a loader on it, over 50 years ago. Just plan your path and work ahead of time and if there's ANY steep slopes approach them cautiously.
Yep, I'd put the NFE under any M. Far as a WFE not getting stuck as easy as a NFE, You guys are kidding right? I got our NFE Farmall 450 stuck pretty good a couple times, one time cultivating was memorable. Got the '51 M stuck too with NFE and loader. And to the amazement of many here, got the 4010 with WFE and 11Lx15 flotation tires stuck more times that all other tractors combined. We had a lot of sloughs that were not tilled, could farm thru them all spring and get some rain and on the second cultivation you drive down into the slough and your buried. Spring fieldwork with duals was a great way to end up having to walk home, the duals toward the wet spot would stop pulling, other rear wheels turn you right into the deepest part of the wet spot, EVERYTHINGZ you do to keep out of the wet spot just makes things worse. Including stopping and trying to back up, turning and hitting a brake to turn, raise the disk or leave it down, actually seems leaving it down gets you farther into the wet.
If you have washed out holes or ditches a WFE may let you get across them when mowing grass waterways or road banks that the two narrow frt tires on a NFE totally drop into, but I've seem that same thing with a WFE snap spindles many many times.
How many of you have noticed that in over 50% of cases, someone who'd rolled a tractor once, does it again, and maybe a third time?