I haven't even gotten to the point of drawing anything out, but the general idea is to have a hydrostat front axle. It's a 1964 (I think) ih444 with a c153 engine I am restoring. It belonged to my grandfather and use to have an old farm built loader which was ran off of a pto driven pump. The loader and pump are long gone. The definite plan for the tractor is a new loader and pto pump and tank. Im spoilt to a little 30hp kubota we have at work with a loader, 4x4, and hydrostat transmission. Seems you can load the bucket to were the tractor wants to tip and it will still crawl through soft ground. Same can't be said about the IH, even with the fluid in the tires and wheel weights.
So, the idea is to over build the d60, adapt the power steering on the tractor to the axle, couple a hydraulic motor to drive the axle which will be power by the pto pump, build simple forward and reverse controls to be foot operated on the right side of the tractor under the brake pedals.
I know it kinda sounds like a Frankenstein deal, but there would be several benefits for my uses.
-extra traction when needed.
- I live in a real hilly area, so the wider axle would help.
-I prefer a hydrostatic transmission when using forks and moving stuff in my shop. So put the tractor in neutral and only use the the front axle for movement.
-if I put an electric auxiliary pump on the tractor, the could use the loader and still move the tractor in my shop with starting it. Sounds dumb, but my house is in my shop, along with my wife and two kids, who apparently get irritated when they get woke up in the middle of the night from me starting a tractor for 30 second to move something off my welding table.
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