I was mowing when...

[lastcowboy32]

This is anecdotal, just based on what I read here.

Seems as though many posts start with, I was mowing when... x happened.

My experience with our 2N is that it doesn't really handle a mower or bush hog very well. The only mower that I'll use on it is our 5' finish mower. Even then, only when the grass is low. I tried it with a bush hog...once...and that was scary.

It strained to lift it.

It strained to hold it up.

It strained like mad to get it going.

Thankfully, it was a borrowed Bush Hog, and we had a bigger tractor to put on it. So I wasn't "invested" in this. I stopped after about 1/2 hour and switched up.

If I had used that bush hog for any number of accumulated hours over the years, I'm convinced that I would be splitting that 2N and replacing the clutch at a minimum, and also risking big/odd failures like broken gears, shafts, etc.

Why?

Well, after my little adventure, I went to Tractordata.com and checked out the N series.

The 9N/2N are tested at about 20 PTO HP. The 8N tested slightly higher at 23 PTO HP.

Most people that mow with bush hogs want something as wide as the tractor...which means at least a 5' bush hog with an N tractor.

Well, checkout the ratings from the Bush Hog website in the attached photo. That BH110 series is new, designed to cut 1" diameter stuff. That's the only series that has a model rated for an N-series tractor.

Now, yes, I know that a 20HP N-series tractor is heavier than a new 20HP tractor... but... they are also 70-84 years old. Also? 1st gear isn't very low, so you can't use ground speed to regulate the load on the driveline...unless you have a Sherman step-down...which was rare.

(also... many people fail to remember that, when you use the step-up...the whole driveline, including the PTO speed steps up... so you're trying to run that bush hog at something like 850PTO RPMs... which is a BIG, BIG load on the drivelines)

Moral of the story is... use an overrunning clutch at a minimum... and any Bush Hog that you buy used? Check it's HP rating and use at your own peril. Also... always use mowers and stuff with the step-up transmission in Low.

 

[Ed S.]

Just to add another data point, my '50 8N handled a 5' rotary mower in an overgrown pasture (weeds higher than the hood of the tractor) fairly well - never felt unsafe (after adding an ORC).

es

 

[HFJ]

(quoted from post at 09:20:34 07/21/23) This is anecdotal, just based on what I read here.

Seems as though many posts start with, I was mowing when... x happened.

My experience with our 2N is that it doesn't really handle a mower or bush hog very well. The only mower that I'll use on it is our 5' finish mower. Even then, only when the grass is low. I tried it with a bush hog...once...and that was scary.

It strained to lift it.

It strained to hold it up.

It strained like mad to get it going.

Thankfully, it was a borrowed Bush Hog, and we had a bigger tractor to put on it. So I wasn't "invested" in this. I stopped after about 1/2 hour and switched up.

you're preaching to the choir with me

my brush hog was attached to my N - once. i tried to raise it and it was nearly a perfect balance between wanting to raise the implement or the nose of the N. happily, i also have a WD, which is happy to pick it up and doesn't do wheelies. my N and my 5 foot finish mower are now an inseparable couple. they are never apart.

This post was edited by HFJ on 07/21/2023 at 06:37 am.

 

[lastcowboy32]

(quoted from post at 06:33:43 07/21/23) Just to add another data point, my '50 8N handled a 5' rotary mower in an overgrown pasture (weeds higher than the hood of the tractor) fairly well - never felt unsafe (after adding an ORC).

es

Height of weeds really doesn't make any difference. It's the thickness of the growth in both senses... the thickness of an saplings you try to take down, or the thickness of undergrowth.

I could take a N with a bushhog through a pasture, after it's been grazed without much issue. The wild parsnip might be seven feet tall, but it's one stem here, one stem there... easy cutting.

I don't gamble, but I would like to see your N take on a thick growth of grass with morning glory woven in and maybe some vetch or clover only about 2 or three feet tall...

It's actually the same thing with finish mowers our son-in-law bought a six foot finish mower. Tried it with his 2N, and he tried it with a 28HP compact diesel. Both of them overheated, if the grass was more than just a few inches tall.

I've done a lot of things with our 2N, once, or for a half hour, that are strenuous on it...but do it on the regular at your own peril.

 

[lastcowboy32]

Our N runs a 5' finish mower great.

We have an old Grimm S8 tedder, runs that great too.

It moves haywagons around.

It rakes hay.

We've tried it a few times on our 10' tedder. It's OK in light hay, but even a 10' tedder on a thick swath makes it grunt more than I would like, day in and day out.

 

[lastcowboy32]

Well... and ... I mean... full disclosure... I do understand that people can still buy an N tractor and mow with it... and even if it needs a new clutch or major repair after a couple years of doing that?

Still cheaper than the glorified lawnmowers being sold as compact tractors for 25k.

 

[Eman85]

I must have some special 8N, have run my 5' King Kutter brush cutter on it for over 30 years. I've run in weeds higher than my head, cut saplings and hit plenty of rocks I didn't mean to hit. I had an overrun clutch on it from day 1 that I bought the brush cutter. Mine never tries to stand up with the brush cutter on it. I have stood it up with a full load of firewood in the carryall box and driven it uphill to the house steering with the brakes.

 

[JMOR]

(quoted from post at 08:20:34 07/21/23) This is anecdotal, just based on what I read here.

Seems as though many posts start with, I was mowing when... x happened.

My experience with our 2N is that it doesn't really handle a mower or bush hog very well. The only mower that I'll use on it is our 5' finish mower. Even then, only when the grass is low. I tried it with a bush hog...once...and that was scary.

It strained to lift it.

It strained to hold it up.

It strained like mad to get it going.

Thankfully, it was a borrowed Bush Hog, and we had a bigger tractor to put on it. So I wasn't "invested" in this. I stopped after about 1/2 hour and switched up.

If I had used that bush hog for any number of accumulated hours over the years, I'm convinced that I would be splitting that 2N and replacing the clutch at a minimum, and also risking big/odd failures like broken gears, shafts, etc.

Why?

Well, after my little adventure, I went to Tractordata.com and checked out the N series.

The 9N/2N are tested at about 20 PTO HP. The 8N tested slightly higher at 23 PTO HP.

Most people that mow with bush hogs want something as wide as the tractor...which means at least a 5' bush hog with an N tractor.

Well, checkout the ratings from the Bush Hog website in the attached photo. That BH110 series is new, designed to cut 1" diameter stuff. That's the only series that has a model rated for an N-series tractor.

Now, yes, I know that a 20HP N-series tractor is heavier than a new 20HP tractor... but... they are also 70-84 years old. Also? 1st gear isn't very low, so you can't use ground speed to regulate the load on the driveline...unless you have a Sherman step-down...which was rare.

(also... many people fail to remember that, when you use the step-up...the whole driveline, including the PTO speed steps up... so you're trying to run that bush hog at something like 850PTO RPMs... which is a BIG, BIG load on the drivelines)

Moral of the story is... use an overrunning clutch at a minimum... and any Bush Hog that you buy used? Check it's HP rating and use at your own peril. Also... always use mowers and stuff with the step-up transmission in Low.

ontrair! Me, FIL, son have cut hundreds if not 1000s of acres with 8N & 5 foot hog. Engine only rebuilt once in its lifetime. Have cut fields that had not been cut for last 20 years. Didn't alwys make 5 ft cuts, but got the jobs done.

 

[Jim WI]

While I have not used a brush cutter, the 2N I used to have was used with a 6-foot King Kutter finish mower for about 25 years without any trouble. Note that you should cut often enough that you're not cutting more than 1/3 of the height of the grass at a time. When I followed that rule, the 2N had no trouble mowing the lawn. When the grass got away from me, I needed to mow less than a full width of the mower.

 

[lastcowboy32]

][/quote]

You brought up a great point...one thing you CAN do to lessen the load is cut partial widths. Takes patience, but preserves your machine.

 

[lastcowboy32]

We can all "flex" all day about that one time I steered my tractor with the brakes to save my life.

But I wouldn't recommend it as standard practice.

When I was seventeen, I was hauling a load of hay down the road with an IH 706 to a pasture for fall feeding. Got on a hill about a quarter mile long, didn't realize it was cold enough to be freezing...

When I realized I couldn't stop... or steer ... I flipped the latch between the brakes and skid steered to the bottom of the hill. I'm not sure what was going faster, my heart, or the tractor.

I'm still here.

The 706 is still on my brother's farm.

The underwear I had on that day are long gone.

And I wouldn't recommend it as standard practice to anybody.

 

[lastcowboy32]

Let's also appreciate that not all 5' brush hogs and saplings are created equally.

Even if you look closely at the Bush Hog specs that I shared, you see that the BH210 and BH310 series have 5' cutters.


The BH210 5' cutter is rated at 25HP and 2" saplings, which is close to an N tractor, and probably fine with judicious use.

The BH310 5' cutter is rated for 35HP and 3" saplings, which now starts to get away from what you should be doing with an N regularly.

Saplings are also like grass. Whacking a 2" sapling here or there is easy on a bush hog. When you get into some tangles of Multiflora rose? I've messed with a few of those bushes that didn't have a 2" stem in the group, but they were thick as hair on a dog and the width of the tractor at the base... I generally drive around those with the bush hog and chainsaw or lop them after the fact. Really close to the ground, so I can mow or bush hog them later.

 

[lastcowboy32]

 

[HFJ]

(quoted from post at 12:11:56 07/21/23) When you get into some tangles of Multiflora rose? I've messed with a few of those bushes that didn't have a 2" stem in the group, but they were thick as hair on a dog and the width of the tractor at the base... I generally drive around those with the bush hog and chainsaw or lop them after the fact. Really close to the ground, so I can mow or bush hog them later.

i love those, they beat the heck out of 99% of the rest of the native growth here. i was lucky that a previous owner kept the high ground cleared until a few years before i got here. cleared it again with a sickle bar that took out everything but one tree. at that point, i established what i would continue to mow.

those roses are a welcome addition to what else grew in - mainly privet and dogwood. i hate dogwood :lol:

 

[lastcowboy32]

i love those, they beat the heck out of 99% of the rest of the native growth here. i was lucky that a previous owner kept the high ground cleared until a few years before i got here. cleared it again with a sickle bar that took out everything but one tree. at that point, i established what i would continue to mow.

those roses are a welcome addition to what else grew in - mainly privet and dogwood. i hate dogwood :lol:[/quote]

I've read in some orchard and tree farming groups that you can collect multiflora rose canes and weave "dead hedges" around your fruit/nut/oak tree saplings, to keep deer from nibbling them off.

There is an old English saying... "The thorn is the mother of the oak"... so I guess they have uses,

but they sure as heck make building fence a nightmare. Birds eat the berries, then sit on your fence lines... poop out the berries in multitudes... and then you end up crawling on your hands and knees with a chainsaw/loppers every spring for a couple hundred yards of fence to clear them out... year after year.

I just bought an Austrian hand scythe with a bush blade... so now I can at least stand and walk through that exercise

 

[JMOR]

We have 3 "bush hog" type rotary cutters and a huge factor in the performance is the gear ratio in the gear boxes. Higher speed blades make more lawn look, but fail miserably in rough stuff!

 

[HFJ]

I just bought an Austrian hand scythe with a bush blade... so now I can at least stand and walk through that exercise

i'll be interested to hear how that does.

i don't have to clear fence lines, i only have to keep trees out from under the power lines and remove the occasional aggressive invader from the edges of my mowed areas. my go-to has become my long handled norlund hudson bay tomahawk. only 4 inches shorter than my axe but it makes a huge difference in close quarters, and nothing i have to deal with in this context will ever get big enough to need an axe.

This post was edited by HFJ on 07/21/2023 at 08:59 am.

 

[Ultradog MN]

Some people worry too much.

 

[lastcowboy32]

I really don't worry about this. I'm happy with the 2N and what it can do.

What would really worry me is thinking back over the years and realizing that to the only use I ever had for it was to mow a thousand acres of dense growth (cumulatively) with a brush hog.

To me, mowing and brush hogging is the most useless task on a farm. I graze or bale as much as I can and save our 2N to help with that. Heck, even now, the only finish mowing I do with it is to mow grass between garden strips... so that's essentially "weeding".

Or to maybe rough cut a piece of the lawn, if we've been doing farm stuff too much to mess with the lawn and it gets ahead of us.

 

[Mad Farmer]

(quoted from post at 05:20:34 07/21/23) This is anecdotal, just based on what I read here.

Seems as though many posts start with, I was mowing when... x happened.

My experience with our 2N is that it doesn't really handle a mower or bush hog very well. The only mower that I'll use on it is our 5' finish mower. Even then, only when the grass is low. I tried it with a bush hog...once...and that was scary.

It strained to lift it.

It strained to hold it up.

It strained like mad to get it going.

Thankfully, it was a borrowed Bush Hog, and we had a bigger tractor to put on it. So I wasn't "invested" in this. I stopped after about 1/2 hour and switched up.

If I had used that bush hog for any number of accumulated hours over the years, I'm convinced that I would be splitting that 2N and replacing the clutch at a minimum, and also risking big/odd failures like broken gears, shafts, etc.

Why?

Well, after my little adventure, I went to Tractordata.com and checked out the N series.

The 9N/2N are tested at about 20 PTO HP. The 8N tested slightly higher at 23 PTO HP.

Most people that mow with bush hogs want something as wide as the tractor...which means at least a 5' bush hog with an N tractor.

Well, checkout the ratings from the Bush Hog website in the attached photo. That BH110 series is new, designed to cut 1" diameter stuff. That's the only series that has a model rated for an N-series tractor.

Now, yes, I know that a 20HP N-series tractor is heavier than a new 20HP tractor... but... they are also 70-84 years old. Also? 1st gear isn't very low, so you can't use ground speed to regulate the load on the driveline...unless you have a Sherman step-down...which was rare.

(also... many people fail to remember that, when you use the step-up...the whole driveline, including the PTO speed steps up... so you're trying to run that bush hog at something like 850PTO RPMs... which is a BIG, BIG load on the drivelines)

Moral of the story is... use an overrunning clutch at a minimum... and any Bush Hog that you buy used? Check it's HP rating and use at your own peril. Also... always use mowers and stuff with the step-up transmission in Low.

I got my 9N near 40 years ago. Soon after purchased a Howse 5' rotary cutter and ORC. Both are still working well. The Howse has had a few sessions with the stick welder to fix cracks or patch. The cutter is 40 HP rated.

The N still lifts the cutter with ease, and it will cut through most everything in 2nd gear. Only really thick tall nasty stuff do I use 1st. It takes care of a small place. Only about 15 acres gets mowed.

This post was edited by Mad Farmer on 07/21/2023 at 10:06 am.