West of Mpls MN about 50 miles on Hwy 12 | We have lots of hills and not square fields with lots of curvy headlands. MFWD, 4-WD, and track tractors I have used over the years for row crop cultivating with a 16 row 30-inch cultivator have been a 3594 Case, 9130 row crop special, 8400, 8400T, and a 9330 row crop special. Guidance system has always been the seat of my pants and keeping the three point as tight as possible. After figuring out where/how everything is tracking, I seldom look back.
The all-wheel drive tractors seem to handle the cultivator rather than cultivator handling the tractor and seem go around corners and hold the row better on hillsides without sliding/slipping than 2-wheel drive tractors IMO. The curve had to get pretty sharp before I had to tramp a row or two with the front wheels with the MFWD tractors to stay on the row. The row crop specials worked the best on curves, (once you figure it out) the 8400T worked the best on hillsides (once you figure it out). The 8400 T was pretty useless in curves.
After reading an article in one of the farm publications back in the day about a couple brothers farming in one of the I states row crop cultivating using articulated 8640 JDs, I tried hooking one of the 16 rows on our 8630. That "worked" for less than a half day and was an exercise in futility here...their fields must have all been level as a pool table with straight headlands and square corners.
Edited by CMN 5/20/2024 12:18
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Cultivating rows with MFWD
