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LenRahilly
02-09-2007 09:25:54
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Re: I'm in love with the H... in reply to Matt Page, 02-07-2007 07:02:56
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When I was a kid in the 40s, I thought the H was the most beautiful tractor in the universe. Raymond Loewy's design outfit had come up with a masterpiece. I still think that as a design, it has to be about as good as they come--line, balance, color, proportions, and so on. My father finally bought a used H about 1950, and I agree that it is a lovely machine. But....it didn't have the moxie of the tractor it was supposed to replace--the F-20. The old bird was designed for steel wheels, which waste nearly half the power of the engine. When the F-20 was given rubber tires, it became a real charger; that big engine provided enormous amounts of torque to pull through heavy spots. The H has a much smaller engine, and gets it power from engine speed. There isn't much leftover torque there. On the other hand, the F-20 is one of the most uncomfortable machines ever made--the seat sticks out behind on a stalk that bobs up and down like a see-saw, and there is no good place to put your feet. The H is SO-O-O civilized by comparison. The flat platform is a delight, the seat is comfortable, and the pedals are well-designed. The two slight inconveniences I remember well are the throttle control, which can be hard to reach if you are half turned in the seat to watch a machine that needs monitoring (like a combine or a baler which can clog sometimes), and the gearshift lever, which sometimes annoys the calf of your left leg in low or third gears; also, it may make you bump your arm on the wheel when making a quick shift into the forward positions--unless you develop the habit of turning your hand upside down and "lifting" the lever. The H is a very nice utility tractor, because it is relatively light, has good power, and seems more agile than an
F-20. I used to mow into the zig-zag of rail fences, and found the H about as easy to use as the F-12 we had used before the H came along. A minor drawback of the standard H gearing is that fourth gear is too low for hauling--you often wanted to get maybe 6 or 7 mph on a gravel road with a load of hay or grain, but fourth gives only a little over 5 with the engine roaring at top speed. In fifth, there isn't enough torque to pull a loaded wagon on a gravel at 5 mph. There was available from the factory a 7 mph fourth gear, as I remember, and that would have made a nice transport gear for dirt roads or farm tracks. I always believed that the IH engineers saw a chance to save some money by designing fifth gear as they did--it is nothing more than a sliding dog clutch like the ones used in early 3-speed car transmissions. Oliver, JD and probably others did it right by making 5th do about 8 mph, and 6th around 12--plenty fast for the roads of late 30s and the 40s.
I should add that I loved roaring down the road in fifth gear on the H--it's like being out in the wind in an open race car--but today, when I get a chance to drive one of these tractors, I usually find that there is enough wear in the steering to bring on some pretty heavy shimmying at full-throttle, so it's not as much fun now that I am old and--I hope--wiser.
Well, it's fun to talk about these things, even if it is just empty palaver.
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