KENDELL - I beg to differ, on a GD, foot uses the clutch/brake, quick flick of the wrist to get from gear-to-gear. Don't need a creeper on a loader, in fact a tiller is about the only thing I think a creeper is necessary on. I've blown a LOT of snow with the 72 & QA-38 with 8 & 10 HP engines without a creeper.
I suggest the hydro because it would save a LOT of wear & tear on the clutch when crowding the bucket when loading up from piles of material. And when scraping up loose material it's also nice to have the slower speeds available with the hydro.
Am I getting sent to My room for not agreeing now?
MATT - a WF frt axle fits on a 100 but I think the WF axle spindles raise the frt end or something. I know it's been discussed, Maybe Art or Kraig can remember.
A 682 w/blown engine for $100 sounds like a GREAT start to a dedicated loader tractor. Just about ANY engine could be dropped in from a K-series Kohler with parts from a 1282 to an Onan.
Back summers when I was in college I worked for the local township road dept. and spent a lot of time on a CASE 530 Construction King tractor/loader/backhoe. We used small limestone ships on out oiled dirt roads, made them almost like blacktop, MUCH better than the sand used years before. We had a C65 Chevy truck under the Krause spreader box to spread the chips with. I weighed one load one afternoon. If I'd have had ANY idea the load was so heavy I wouldn't have driven on the scale for fear of falling thru the wooden platform. Truck weighed about 12,000# empty, maybe just a bit more, and I had over 22,000# of chips in the box. I forget how many buckets that was with the old CASE, something like six to eight, but with the direction reverser, and the torque Converter used to keep the tractor pushing the bucket into the HUGE pile of chips each bucket was full to over-flowing, and I could load the truck in about five minutes.
MATT - Thing to remember about most loader work is the levers for the loader spool valves are side-by-side, one hand works them both, the other hand can work the hydro lever & steering wheel, if You need to stop or slow down hit the clutch/brake pedal.
Others just had this same conversation yesterday or this past weekend on the RPM forum and the outcome was "It depends on what You get used to running".
My two loader tractors, the Super H & M are both "Gear Drive". Not CC's but they still count.
