The "Economy" PTO setting is my new-favorite baling hack

[will-max dairy]

We bought our Mahindra 6075 about five years ago now... and I always knew that it had a geared PTO feature. There is a lever on the left side to the rear of the seat that shifts the PTO between "Normal", which is 540PTO RPM at 2000 engine RPM and "Economy", which is 540PTO RPM at 1500 engine RPM.

According to the manual, this is to save fuel when running "easy" implements.

Well, I never thought that a baler was "easy"...so I have run the Normal setting all of these years.

The other day, I was running our 7 foot haybine with the tractor, and I needed to slow down for some thick, down, tangled and heavy hay...like 2-3 ton per acre late July hay with dead first growth blown down by a recent storm into the clover and trefoil undergrowth... It was annoying to be driving 3mph while the engine was screaming at 2000 RPM to run the haybine. So... I tried the economy setting... what a difference... it made slow, frustrating mowing bearable.

So... when we baled that hay, I experimented with that setting on the baler. After all, the baler is all about the flywheel... if you have the flywheel up to speed, it's not working your tractor's PTO hard... right?

It ran the baler just fine for the load that I baled first, with my grandson riding... and we could talk while the baler was running... which is key with a four year old riding while baling... you are baling 3-6 bales per minute; while fielding 4-10 questions per minute... "Papa, why did that bale miss the wagon?..." lol

For the bulk of the baling that day, I set up my wife and father-in-law with instructions on running with the Economy setting.

They both reported that it was a much better experience... the tractor just hummed along all day long; while they talked and strategized of which windrow to bale next, etc.

I did hear a little "chatter" from the PTO transmission at times, but I hear that on the Normal setting as well... and I suspect that it's going to be easier to hear it over the engine, when the engine isn't so loud.

 

[Fred Werring]

We bought our Mahindra 6075 about five years ago now... and I always knew that it had a geared PTO feature. There is a lever on the left side to the rear of the seat that shifts the PTO between "Normal", which is 540PTO RPM at 2000 engine RPM and "Economy", which is 540PTO RPM at 1500 engine RPM.

According to the manual, this is to save fuel when running "easy" implements.

Well, I never thought that a baler was "easy"...so I have run the Normal setting all of these years.

The other day, I was running our 7 foot haybine with the tractor, and I needed to slow down for some thick, down, tangled and heavy hay...like 2-3 ton per acre late July hay with dead first growth blown down by a recent storm into the clover and trefoil undergrowth... It was annoying to be driving 3mph while the engine was screaming at 2000 RPM to run the haybine. So... I tried the economy setting... what a difference... it made slow, frustrating mowing bearable.

So... when we baled that hay, I experimented with that setting on the baler. After all, the baler is all about the flywheel... if you have the flywheel up to speed, it's not working your tractor's PTO hard... right?

It ran the baler just fine for the load that I baled first, with my grandson riding... and we could talk while the baler was running... which is key with a four year old riding while baling... you are baling 3-6 bales per minute; while fielding 4-10 questions per minute... "Papa, why did that bale miss the wagon?..." lol

For the bulk of the baling that day, I set up my wife and father-in-law with instructions on running with the Economy setting.

They both reported that it was a much better experience... the tractor just hummed along all day long; while they talked and strategized of which windrow to bale next, etc.

I did hear a little "chatter" from the PTO transmission at times, but I hear that on the Normal setting as well... and I suspect that it's going to be easier to hear it over the engine, when the engine isn't so loud.

I was thinking something like that would be handy as I was tedding hay. I like to run the tractor at about 1200 rpm, so the hay just gets stirred, not thrashed. So to get any kind of ground speed, I have to run a fairly high gear. Usually 7th on a 69 Ford 4000. I does start scooting right along when I'm going downhill...

 

[will-max dairy]

I was thinking something like that would be handy as I was tedding hay. I like to run the tractor at about 1200 rpm, so the hay just gets stirred, not thrashed. So to get any kind of ground speed, I have to run a fairly high gear. Usually 7th on a 69 Ford 4000. I does start scooting right along when I'm going downhill...

I was actually thinking about this again, as I watched a neighbor drive by with a 130-150hp International tractor to run a small square baler. I wonder how much fuel that thing uses to run the engine at 2000 RPM... or whatever... to get 540PTO RPM.

I would be tempted to get a 1000-540 spline adapter (because most IH have both on the back)... and run the baler off of the 1000 RPM shaft, and let that big old monster just idle around the field.

 

[will-max dairy]

Although... there IS... the flywheel of the tractor itself to think of, and how much strain it's taking off of the engine...

 

[JohnRowehl]

I was actually thinking about this again, as I watched a neighbor drive by with a 130-150hp International tractor to run a small square baler. I wonder how much fuel that thing uses to run the engine at 2000 RPM... or whatever... to get 540PTO RPM.

I would be tempted to get a 1000-540 spline adapter (because most IH have both on the back)... and run the baler off of the 1000 RPM shaft, and let that big old monster just idle around the field.

Have a friend that has a 1466 for a small hay operation. Told me the price of smaller used tractors in his area that would have been adequate were so much higher at the time. Don’t know if he uses an adapter for the 1000 pto shaft or not.

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

I was actually thinking about this again, as I watched a neighbor drive by with a 130-150hp International tractor to run a small square baler. I wonder how much fuel that thing uses to run the engine at 2000 RPM... or whatever... to get 540PTO RPM.

I would be tempted to get a 1000-540 spline adapter (because most IH have both on the back)... and run the baler off of the 1000 RPM shaft, and let that big old monster just idle around the field.

Doesn't use as much fuel as you think. It only uses enough fuel to make enough power to run the baler and overcome basic parasitic losses. If the injector pump was pouring in the same amount of fuel that the tractor uses during heavy tillage, the engine would run away under a light load like a baler. It will be more than your little 4-banger, but not THAT much more.

Running it off the 1000 doesn't make that much difference in fuel consumption. I think we'd run 1800-2100 with the 856 on the baler, Only reason to run faster was to get a little more "oomph" out of the thrower to toss bales up on top of a loaded wagon. The tractor runs at a more consistent RPM at the higher RPM, which is what you want for a baler.

But hey if it works for you, you do you. Just be aware when the tractor starts spitting "black oil" out the exhaust that there's nothing wrong, yet. It's just that you've been loping the tractor around and not running it at the operating speed/temperature it was designed for.

 

[showcrop]

Balers needing a lot of power is a common misconception. Tens of thousands of small farms were baling hay with PTO balers behind 35 HP tractors for years before 60 HP tractors became the norm.

 

[will-max dairy]

Doesn't use as much fuel as you think. It only uses enough fuel to make enough power to run the baler and overcome basic parasitic losses. If the injector pump was pouring in the same amount of fuel that the tractor uses during heavy tillage, the engine would run away under a light load like a baler. It will be more than your little 4-banger, but not THAT much more.

Running it off the 1000 doesn't make that much difference in fuel consumption. I think we'd run 1800-2100 with the 856 on the baler, Only reason to run faster was to get a little more "oomph" out of the thrower to toss bales up on top of a loaded wagon. The tractor runs at a more consistent RPM at the higher RPM, which is what you want for a baler.

But hey if it works for you, you do you. Just be aware when the tractor starts spitting "black oil" out the exhaust that there's nothing wrong, yet. It's just that you've been loping the tractor around and not running it at the operating speed/temperature it was designed for.

Parasitic losses include hauling 13,000-14000 pounds of tractor around. I've been around big, old tractors all my life. I don't have to think about how much diesel they use... my arm remembers it well... from pumping the diesel tank on dad's farm, lol.

I don't see the tachometer move at all, when running on the Mahindra's economy setting.

As far as operating temperature goes, is that a joke? The tractor's temp gauge sits pegged at the same operating temperature the whole time. The economy setting is at 1500engine RPM, a factory setting.

My brother has an 856, an old international that I love, but even though he runs it at full RPM to bale, he's replaced the engine a couple of times... hours are hours. Also, the Mahindra can bale fields that the 856 cannot, because of the lighter weight and 4WD. Up here on the hill country with 40" of precipitation per year and clay soil... those big, heavy monsters just leave bigger fuel bills, deeper ruts and standing hay instead of baled hay on a wet season.

 

[will-max dairy]

Balers needing a lot of power is a common misconception. Tens of thousands of small farms were baling hay with PTO balers behind 35 HP tractors for years before 60 HP tractors became the norm.

My wife and I, when we started farming ourselves, baled a few thousand bales of hay per year with a Ford 600 and a Jinma 284, which I affectionately called "The Kung Pao"... The Ford 600 did just fine running the baler. The Jinma could, but those little diesels are SO tiny. You can fill their radiator with a large convenience store coffee cup (kidding... sorta..). The Jinma had to be babied to keep the engine temperature down.

 

[will-max dairy]

Have a friend that has a 1466 for a small hay operation. Told me the price of smaller used tractors in his area that would have been adequate were so much higher at the time. Don’t know if he uses an adapter for the 1000 pto shaft or not.

I've seen that same effect about tractor prices being inverted, relative to size/power. Compact and Utility tractors are used on gentleman's farms, hobby farms, nurseries and such... adds to the competition for pricing. I've been at auctions and watched an IH1466 go for half the price of a little Ford 1720 sitting next to it. Each has their use.

 

[will-max dairy]

Doesn't use as much fuel as you think. It only uses enough fuel to make enough power to run the baler and overcome basic parasitic losses. If the injector pump was pouring in the same amount of fuel that the tractor uses during heavy tillage, the engine would run away under a light load like a baler. It will be more than your little 4-banger, but not THAT much more.

Running it off the 1000 doesn't make that much difference in fuel consumption. I think we'd run 1800-2100 with the 856 on the baler, Only reason to run faster was to get a little more "oomph" out of the thrower to toss bales up on top of a loaded wagon. The tractor runs at a more consistent RPM at the higher RPM, which is what you want for a baler.

But hey if it works for you, you do you. Just be aware when the tractor starts spitting "black oil" out the exhaust that there's nothing wrong, yet. It's just that you've been loping the tractor around and not running it at the operating speed/temperature it was designed for.

Seriously though, the 1000RPM adapter to run a baler is a little overboard. You would have 540PTO RPM at around 1000 engine RPM or less, which isn't a good point on the torque curve.

 

[Leroy]

Balers needing a lot of power is a common misconception. Tens of thousands of small farms were baling hay with PTO balers behind 35 HP tractors for years before 60 HP tractors became the norm.

When we were still farming ran a McCormick 46 baler with thrower with a 49 B John Deere of 28 PTO HP Pulling the loaded wagon. Handled the outfit better than the 1950 John Deere AR of 39 PTO HP that we started using because it was bigger thinking we were going to need the extra HP, wrong the smaller tractor did better on the baler. Now this was before the big tractors of today being back in late 70's and early 80's.

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

When we were still farming ran a McCormick 46 baler with thrower with a 49 B John Deere of 28 PTO HP Pulling the loaded wagon. Handled the outfit better than the 1950 John Deere AR of 39 PTO HP that we started using because it was bigger thinking we were going to need the extra HP, wrong the smaller tractor did better on the baler. Now this was before the big tractors of today being back in late 70's and early 80's.

"Handled it better" how?

We ran a larger tractor on the baler for weight and girth. A small tractor would run it fine but with a rack of 125 bales behind it, you were taking your life in your hands on the hills. That was before we got the larger 9x20 hay wagons that held upwards of 200 bales. You were sure glad you had that 13,000lb tractor out in front of the baler when a full rack was pushing you down a hill.

 

[will-max dairy]

"Handled it better" how?

We ran a larger tractor on the baler for weight and girth. A small tractor would run it fine but with a rack of 125 bales behind it, you were taking your life in your hands on the hills. That was before we got the larger 9x20 hay wagons that held upwards of 200 bales. You were sure glad you had that 13,000lb tractor out in front of the baler when a full rack was pushing you down a hill.

Been on enough hills over the years to understand this.

Weight... and/or 4WD helps.

Also used enough really old tractors (for instance, Farmall M, 460, etc...) that had plenty of power to run a baler, but whew... they were tall and kinda light... sometimes had narrow front ends... and brakes that operated by prayer... I would never put a baler and wagon behind them on hilly ground.

 

[will-max dairy]

"Handled it better" how?

We ran a larger tractor on the baler for weight and girth. A small tractor would run it fine but with a rack of 125 bales behind it, you were taking your life in your hands on the hills. That was before we got the larger 9x20 hay wagons that held upwards of 200 bales. You were sure glad you had that 13,000lb tractor out in front of the baler when a full rack was pushing you down a hill.

Also been part of the unloading crew enough to rue those 9x20 wagons... seems like you would get up at the end of the elevator and the load would go for-ev-er.

Now that I'm my own boss (or my wife lets me think I am) on the farm... I like 120 bales on a 8x16 wagon... our tractors handle them well up the ramp into the hayloft for unloading... and the crew appreciates that each load isn't a marathon.

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

Also been part of the unloading crew enough to rue those 9x20 wagons... seems like you would get up at the end of the elevator and the load would go for-ev-er.

Now that I'm my own boss (or my wife lets me think I am) on the farm... I like 120 bales on a 8x16 wagon... our tractors handle them well up the ramp into the hayloft for unloading... and the crew appreciates that each load isn't a marathon.

You've never met my sister. Those loads went QUICK when she was on the wagon, and she'd do it all by herself. If she could have gotten the bales to go up the elevator stacked 2 high, she would have. As it was it was a solid stream of hay, and 7 minutes of sheer terror up in the mow.

 

[will-max dairy]

You've never met my sister. Those loads went QUICK when she was on the wagon, and she'd do it all by herself. If she could have gotten the bales to go up the elevator stacked 2 high, she would have. As it was it was a solid stream of hay, and 7 minutes of sheer terror up in the mow.

I have a sister like that...she's 63 now, and can still handle hay.

My oldest brother is 72... and he has me call him when we have a couple of loads to unload. He likes the morale boost he gets from knowing he can still unload a wagon.

This is part of the reason that we still do idiot squares... maybe because I love having idiots around. ;-)

Also why we try to keep our haying to "no heroic measures" anymore. At our age, it's medicinal to unload a couple or even a few wagons a day on a few days spaced out over the summer... we just did eight loads last Sunday and had 4 generations involved at various points during the day... but I'm not waxing nostalgic about the 10AM to midnight days growing up with a steady beat of 3 wagons an hour coming to the barn... with my sister and cousins down on the wagon trying to bury the crew in the mow...

Actually... maybe I AM waxing nostalgic about that... It made me who I am, even if I don't want to repeat it at 54.

 

[showcrop]

Have a friend that has a 1466 for a small hay operation. Told me the price of smaller used tractors in his area that would have been adequate were so much higher at the time. Don’t know if he uses an adapter for the 1000 pto shaft or not.

Full time and larger operators need the reliability and features of newer equipment. Home owners and hobby people won't look at anything big, so they go cheap.

 

[will-max dairy]

We bought our Mahindra 6075 about five years ago now... and I always knew that it had a geared PTO feature. There is a lever on the left side to the rear of the seat that shifts the PTO between "Normal", which is 540PTO RPM at 2000 engine RPM and "Economy", which is 540PTO RPM at 1500 engine RPM.

According to the manual, this is to save fuel when running "easy" implements.

Well, I never thought that a baler was "easy"...so I have run the Normal setting all of these years.

The other day, I was running our 7 foot haybine with the tractor, and I needed to slow down for some thick, down, tangled and heavy hay...like 2-3 ton per acre late July hay with dead first growth blown down by a recent storm into the clover and trefoil undergrowth... It was annoying to be driving 3mph while the engine was screaming at 2000 RPM to run the haybine. So... I tried the economy setting... what a difference... it made slow, frustrating mowing bearable.

So... when we baled that hay, I experimented with that setting on the baler. After all, the baler is all about the flywheel... if you have the flywheel up to speed, it's not working your tractor's PTO hard... right?

It ran the baler just fine for the load that I baled first, with my grandson riding... and we could talk while the baler was running... which is key with a four year old riding while baling... you are baling 3-6 bales per minute; while fielding 4-10 questions per minute... "Papa, why did that bale miss the wagon?..." lol

For the bulk of the baling that day, I set up my wife and father-in-law with instructions on running with the Economy setting.

They both reported that it was a much better experience... the tractor just hummed along all day long; while they talked and strategized of which windrow to bale next, etc.

I did hear a little "chatter" from the PTO transmission at times, but I hear that on the Normal setting as well... and I suspect that it's going to be easier to hear it over the engine, when the engine isn't so loud.

After a few days of this, I've revisited the notion...

For mowing with a 7' haybine, this is a no-brainer. I'm saving fuel and not listening to a tractor scream for hours at a time. I can hear the haybine better to tell if a reel tooth, or section is loose... great all the way around.

For baling, I bale heavy windrows at low speed... so I sometimes stand on the deck and left step sideways... the tractor is creeping at 1-2mph...so I don't need to be seated like a race-car driver... sort of like how the old steamroller operators worked... in the economy setting, if the baler is working hard plunging tight-packed 2nd cut bales, I can feel a vibration in the tractor deck with my feet in the economy PTO setting. Putting the PTO back to normal and letting the tractor rev alleviates this. I don't know if its a thing with less energy in the tractor's flywheel, or maybe a resonance thing... but either way... I went back to doing baling in the normal setting

 

[Leroy]

"Handled it better" how?

We ran a larger tractor on the baler for weight and girth. A small tractor would run it fine but with a rack of 125 bales behind it, you were taking your life in your hands on the hills. That was before we got the larger 9x20 hay wagons that held upwards of 200 bales. You were sure glad you had that 13,000lb tractor out in front of the baler when a full rack was pushing you down a hill.

Northwest Ohio does not have many of those hills and what they do have most are not farmed like that. And our first baler was set from factory at 36 inch bales and after a few years we changed the setting down to 30 inch because we did not want the heavy bale to handle. When WE got the thrower it was set for the 30 inch bale as well. And we got it when one year 3 of us got overcome by heat in one summer. And the wagons were the same as we used for loading by hand except for building homemade racks for them and 7 foot by 16 foot except one 18 foot that was too long to be good. Would never have had an overgrown 9 foot by 20 foot wagon. And we could put 4 of our wagons in the 18 foot wide and 40 foot long barn drive to get them out of the weather for later unloading. And that tractor was heavy enough to handle a decen't size load without problems. I am just now a few days from turning 80 and if I was still farming and in the health I had when we were I still would not want any of the overgrown items to mess with and one piece cost more than all of our equipment did.