The beginnings of my tractor project

[faucettb]

Here's the beginnings of my tractor project. It's starting out with all the running gear from a 3/4 ton 75 Chev four wheel drive truck less the motor.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q172/faucettb/subrubanframe-1.jpg

All the running gear is there except for the motor. I've got a choice of a Ford 300 six with a four speed tranny or a Dodge 318 V8 with a heavy duty 727 auto tranny for the power plant. Either one will go in front of the Chev's 4 speed tranny and 205 transfer case.

The 3/4 ton 14 bolt rear axle may be replaced with a dully 1 ton axle I have. I'm probably going to shorten the frame to make steering quicker and will probably make it a solid axle both in front and back. Some sort of axle pivot will be used for the front axle, but this will be a slow speed rig so putting power to the ground is, like any tractor, way more important than highway suspension.

It will probably end up with dual braking systems by simply using two brake cylinders so any spinning wheel can have to brake applied to aid traction.

It will have a hydraulic 3 point hitch and I'm looking for a power takeoff to hook to the secondary tranny to run a mower, tiller and post hole digger. It will have hydraulics and later a bucket loader added. The final idea is to have a rig I can move snow out of the driveway and grade out the gravel I haul in. I'm also planning to build one of the little CADDigger's I bought plans for a couple of years ago.

Right now I have a pretty good shop with a 175 amp miller mig welder, a Smith cutting torch/welding set, a 30 ton press, a 40 inch brake/roll and shear that will do up to 16 gauge, a 16 ton pipe bender that will bend up to 3 inch, a 1/2 inch drill press and a nice motor hoist. Add in a compressor, some air tools and plenty of wrenches and I'm looking forward to this project. I'm retired so just build as I have extra funds so I'm a little slow. I'm still learning to weld and cut.

[denrep]

Greetings faucettb,

Can't wait...

I vote for the 300 Ford with fouw speed.
The 300 has a lot more lugging power than 318, plus you get 6:1 granny gear with PTO.

14 bolt axle from 20 and 30 series are essentially the same. Now is the time to start calculating your desired overall gear ratio.

Move yourself and the computer to the motor-home; you won't have so far to go between work, sleep and posting. :laugh:

Good luck with your project - We'll be waiting.

[farmersamm]

This will be neat.

[Oldtimer]

Looking forward to seeing your progress. I don't think my attention span is long enough anymore to tackle something like that.

[farmersamm]

Pivot on the front will be pretty important. Main idea is to keep the front drive shaft as straight as possible. Too much movement either way will eat u-joints. I believe it's the reason that a lot of FWD tractors have hydraulic front drive systems. I would think that a centrally(or as close as you can get) located pumkin would be ideal.

I'd sure like to have a crack at a job like this, but I don't have the time, or money And I don't have the expertise..

I'm sure going to follow this one.

[faucettb]

Pivot on the front will be pretty important. Main idea is to keep the front drive shaft as straight as possible. Too much movement either way will eat u-joints. I believe it's the reason that a lot of FWD tractors have hydraulic front drive systems. I would think that a centrally(or as close as you can get) located pumkin would be ideal.

I'd sure like to have a crack at a job like this, but I don't have the time, or money And I don't have the expertise..

I'm sure going to follow this one.

Thanks for the hint farmersamm, that's a good thought.

I got most of the stuff already for the project so there's hopefully not going to be a lot of money involved. I have scrap steel resources that will save me a bunch and I live in farming/logging country and have been looking at an old combine cab I can get free for the hauling for the cab on this.

The pumpkin on this Chevy is offset to the passenger side. I'm thinking about using a piece of 4 by 6 heavy wall tubing attached to the top of the spring purches (welded/bolted) on this spring over axle with a notch cut out for the pumpkin and a two inch or three inch rod for the pivot with pivot stops set so it would only flex about the same amount the leaf springs allowed it to in the original frame. This would allow no side to side movement. This should keep it from eating U joints to badly. The rear will be solid as in most tractors I've looked at. I've been looking at several log skidders to see how their front axle is set up and plan on copying somewhat that system. There will be no springs left on any of the axles. If I cut it to match the axle and weld to the axle like an axle truss on race trucks it should be plenty strong enough.

I've thought about doing a center frame pivot and hydraulic steer as in most front end loaders, but for my use and experience level that's more than I want to get into.

Geared thru two tranny's It probably won't make any difference which engine I go with and I do like the idea of being able to shuttle shift between forward and reverse easily with the three speed auto hooked to the four speed truck tranny. As far as gear ratios I haven't really thought about that, but even with the three speed auto plus the 4 speed standard hooked to the 2 speed transfer case I should have plenty of tractor crawl power. Lets see 3 time 4 is 12 times 2 at the transfer case is 24 speeds forward.

Besides my oldest Grand daughter is bugging me to fix the half ton1969 dentside Ford pickup for her drive to high school rig. It's a six with a four speed and a low geared rear end and I'd feel fairly safe in here driving that. It's got a sick 240 in it now and I've got that lovely new 300 sitting on an engine stand waiting to be assembled. It would be good experience for her to, under my guidance put together the engine for her truck.

I got this idea for this tractor from an old article in Mother Earth News about a fella that built a tractor using two pickup four speed tranny's, a big truck rear end with a set of tractor rims and tires welded to the truck center section and a big Chevy six engine. His was just a two wheel drive, but here where I live on a steep hillside the four wheel drive would be better. Besides the fella that lives next door gave me the big 3/4 ton Suburban after he pulled the motor out for his pickup. His son had rolled it and he couldn't afford to fix the body damage. My grand daughters and son helped me strip it out.

The old 1 ton Dodge motor home is probably going to donate the frame and dually rear end the motor and tranny. I'ts a pretty hefty straight frame which will make a bettter tractor frame than the Chev. The gear ratio on the one ton dodge rear end is the same as the Chev so that won't be a problem.

Anyway with winter coming on rapidly it's becoming a spring project now. I'm also doing a springover repower of a Suzuki Samari that's in the heated workshop for the winter. It's getting a 16 valve 1600 engine out of a 96 Tracker along with the Suzuki auto tranny. Going from 60 hp to a hundred or so should really perk that rig up.

I just picked up a small sandblast cabinet at the local thrift shop for 40 bucks, been looking for one for a while.

Anyway thanks for all the help guys and please let me have any ideas you've got, I sure appreciate them. This is the kind of country I live in.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q172/faucettb/Around%20Home/ClearwaterbreaksbyOrofino.jpg

[farmersamm]

That looks like HARD country in Winter. Damn beautiful in Summer though. Be a nice place to live.

Have to sell the cows though. Be rollin' down the mountainside all the time:laugh:

[RJ Lindblom]

Farmer that is why the first generation of tractors used hydraulic. Since the mid 80s front wheel assist has been mechanical meaning there is a driveshaft from the transmission to the front axle.

Its rare around here to see a hydraulic front wheel assist.

[farmersamm]

I've never been too close to the FWD's, but I did hear folks talk about them. Mine are both 2WD.

I stay out of the field when it's wet, and generally don't put an implement on the back that is large enough to require the added pull from FWD. But I don't have the scale operation that you guys have up there.

I'm always a little leary of tractors at auction that have duals, weights, and calcium ballast. Somebody drove those babies into the ground I figure.

[Mack]

Hey Farmer,
You wouldn't have to sell the cows, they just develop longer legs on one side. Then they only roll down the mountain side when they face the wrong way. Make hamburgers out of em and the patties will slide over to one side of the pan. Really, I read it somewhere.:laugh:

[farmersamm]

BTW, are they using something like a CV driveshaft these days?

[farmersamm]

Hey Farmer,
You wouldn't have to sell the cows, they just develop longer legs on one side. Then they only roll down the mountain side when they face the wrong way. Make hamburgers out of em and the patties will slide over to one side of the pan. Really, I read it somewhere.:laugh:

:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

[RJ Lindblom]

I've never been too close to the FWD's, but I did hear folks talk about them. Mine are both 2WD.

I stay out of the field when it's wet, and generally don't put an implement on the back that is large enough to require the added pull from FWD. But I don't have the scale operation that you guys have up there.

I'm always a little leary of tractors at auction that have duals, weights, and calcium ballast. Somebody drove those babies into the ground I figure.

The MFD comes in really handy when doing loader work.

[faucettb]

BTW, are they using something like a CV driveshaft these days?

The front driveshaft on the 75 Chevy has a double u joint on one end and a single on the other. All these drive shafts will have to be modified as both the wheelbase and the tranny/transfer case will be in different positions than was stock. I think that was called a double carden driveshaft at the time.

This is going to be a fun project and I plan on running a big enough hydraulic pump that I can run a hydraulic PTO to run a good sized aftermarket rotary mower on a 3 point hitch. I see that Surplus sales has the PTO hydraulic motors listed in their catalog. I'm not sure how a standard PTO would work running off the 3 speed auto tranny in front of the standard 4 speed.

I'm also looking at building a snowplow for the front. We don't get a lot of snow here, but two feet is not out of the question in a hard winter. My place is only situated at 1350 feet above sea level, but, every once in a while we get a hard winter. Add to that I live on a pretty good hillside and getting in and out of my short driveway can be a real problem. Thats's part of the reason for the four wheel drive. I've got both a set of triple rails from my trucking days for the dual rear ends and plenty of singles for the front to provide plenty of traction.

I really want to be able to use standard 3 point hitch attachments such as post hole diggers and mowers with this outfit. I'm building a seperate backhoe from a set of Cad digger plans and though I bought their small tractor plans I already have most of the stuff I need to make the four wheel drive tractor. I kind of balked at the cost of the four hydraulic motors the Cad digger plans called for. I think they like 45 cubic inch motors and those were pretty expensive even from Surplus sales.

I may use the straight frame from the old 73 one ton motorhome that has the duely rearend under it now rather than the Chevy 3/4 ton frame. It's not going to have any springs with a solid axle and the front axle will just be a simple pivot axle pivoting from the center of the axle. Not springs there either. I'll use a suspension seat for comfort and this is not going to be a high speed rig in keeping with tractor type uses.