Most useful attacments for a compact tractor?

My dad just bought a new tractor, and he’s giving me one of the 3 other ones he owns. Yay!!!

It’s an old Ford 8N, which I believe should have a category 1 3-point hitch. I’m planning to buy some attachments, but am unsure what I should get. Advice?

I have 14 acres of woodland + pasture. The soil is glacial till, so it’s rocky. I have loads of projects in mind. To make it short, I need to be able to cut ditches, maintain a gravel road, move rocks/firewood/sand/gravel, and plow snow.

In looking around the web, I’ve found several people say that that tractor is too small for a front end loader to be worthwhile, as it puts the weight on the front and you lose traction, while also making the tractor more difficult to maneuver. Makes sense to me, but I still would like to be able to dig/carry stuff, so I’m thinking of getting a 3-point carryall platform to help move the rocks/firewood, and a dirt scoop (aka slip scoop, slip bucket, or rear bucket) to move soil.

Has anyone used a dirt scoop? Can they dig into compacted soil?

I’m also looking at a box scraper, rear blade, and landscape rake, but I can’t afford to buy all 3. Which would be best for my purposes if I could only get one? How big a box scraper/rear blade will that tractor pull? The ones I’m looking at range from 4 to 6 feet.

Any other toys I can’t live without?

After googling up some pictures, I’d have to agree that it looks pretty small for a loader. But unless you get a 3pt hitch snow blower, I don’t see how else you’re going to move any amount of snow with it. When I was a kid we had a Fordson Major with a loader, and those aren’t all that much bigger. Mind you, I don’t remember how well it worked, either. I know Dad used it to push snow about and to clean corral and such, but I was still pretty young when it got replaced with a larger machine. And come to think of it, there’s a 3pt hitch snow blower sitting out back behind a shed somewhere… Hmmm, might be a lesson there somewhere.

I’d say it’s too small for you. You need to give it to me. I’ve been wanting an 8N. You can bring it down to TN any old time.

StG

I’ll go hop on and drive it down to you. I should get there around Thursday. (some Thursday anyway- probably not this year!) :slight_smile:

Gorsnak, my dad said they used it with some sort of front blade to plow snow on the farm for several years, so hopefully it will work. I’m not exactly clear on how it worked, as he described something that mounted all the way back on the rear axle and used the hydraulics in the back and pulleys to raise the blade.

I’m ok if it doesn’t work for plowing though, as I do have a small walk-behind snowblower that I’ve been using for the past several years.

Here’s a pix of a front mounted snow plow on an 8N

I’m not sure that a loader is impossible, but the size of the bucket would mean you’d only carry a couple of wheelbarrows worth of stuff in it.

With a loader, for traction and safety, weight on the rear axle is required, either wheel weights or something heavy on the 3 pt linkage to counterbalance the full bucket. Learn to drive with your thumbs outside the steering wheel rim. Hitting a rock with a front wheel while the axle is light can cause the steering wheel to instantly spin to full lock, catching your thumb in a spoke and dislocating it in the process. I not quite got to that extreme, but my thumb was very sore. Dad laughed and reminded me he’d warned of this.

The 8N looks similar in size to a Fergy 24. A Fordson Major is a step up in size, ie 25/30 hp vs 40/45 hp. It’s a useful size to get about on, but I’d not expect too much. I’d say a carry tray would be a good first thing. A light rear blade is good too; you can grade roads and use it to push out small stumps and rocks by backing up into them. To do this the blade needs to be able to rotate 180 degrees and be strong enough not to bend its beam. Use a combination of backing up to dig the blade edge in and while keeping the reverse pressure on, lifting the linkage in small amounts. This will help provide traction too, allowing more push.

See if you can borrow or hire the other gear to try it out before buying.

To dig a new drain, we’d rotate the blade so it’s almost parallel to the tractors long axis, lower the front edge so it would dig in when the linkage was lowered (shorten the top link). With a small tractor you’d only manage a few inches at a time. It’s hard following the same line several times, but practice helps. Plus we were using a 4wd 65 hp with a very heavy blade. YMMV :smack:

Rear blades use their weight to dig in, so in hard ground lighter ones can’t do much except smooth off lumps. To maintain forward motion, you need to use the postion control lever to control the linkage height so the blade doesn’t dig in too much, this has the dual effect of transfering some of the blade weight to the rear wheels and so improve their traction.

Congratulations, the 8N is a cool little tractor.

The box scraper (box blade) works well for maintaining gravel driveways. I should think that the smaller one would work better with your 8N. The size is related to the horsepower of the tractor innit?

Not sure what you’re wanting to accomplish with a landscape rake, but you can make a fairly handy thing from a piece of chan-link fence which can be used to smooth dirt.

Hubby also uses a hay fork quite a bit - not just for hay; for example, he has a homemade metal rack for firewood which he can carry from the barn to the house (after loading with cut firewood), using the hay fork. Even if you just get the spear, there are creative ways to use it in general maintenance around the place.

I also think it’s a bit on the small side for a dirt scoop. I do like your idea of the carry-platform.

I don’t suppose Dad still has this hanging around somewhere?

Unfortunately he doesn’t. I suspect it was similar to the one in dynamitedave’s link, as you can see the mounts runnung under the tractor.

Re. the landscape rake - I suspect I might need it to smooth out the results of trying to maintain the roads with the other implements, but I have no idea what I’m doing. Your chain-link fence idea sounds like it would work. Now that I think about it, I seem to recall people using old box springs for the same purpose.

Thanks for the tips, dynamitedave. The price on this tractor is right, and I don’t mind having to take many trips to get anything done. It’s still much easier than the wheelbarrow + shovel I’ve been using!

Thursday is right around the corner. And it’s my birthday! It would be the perfect time to surprise me with an 8N. Or if you want, you can come and mow my 14 acres. I’m thinking of putting in a couple acres of field corn to feed the corn stove I’m thinking of buying. You could plow for me, while you’re here.

Free beer and pizza and I’d kick the dogs off the couch for you.

StG

masterofnone: I think Hubby has one of those home-made fence thingys up at the barn. If so I’ll take a photo for you. If you can weld, or know someone who does at a reasonable price, it’s not a big deal to make one.

Laws-a-mercy! 14 acres doesn’t need a Ford 8N, it needs a monster Farmall and a 10-foot bush hog. :stuck_out_tongue:

NinetyWt - Well, if you want to bring me a Farmall (or a nice, new Kubota) and a 10’ bush hog, my birthday is Thursday. :smiley:

Surely there must a a white elephant swap coming up…I could give you a 100 year old broken cream separator in return!

StG

Happy birthday!

Unfortunately, we got rid of the only tractor we didn’t like. That leaves us with the monster Farmall, a Massey-Ferguson and my hubby’s favorite little 4WD Kubota.

Speaking of 100-year old cream separators -

we should each go thru the old barns & outbuildings and see who comes up with the most outlandish old thing.

We used to have a little paddleboat in the barn which Hubby’s grandpa made - Gramps used to use it to aerate the old town lagoon! :eek:

A small tractor can handle a dozer blade on the front for snow, even if a loader would be too much.

Landscape rakes are highly neato. They can move a lot of material, over the short distance between a high spot and a low spot. Having wheels on them can make them easier to control.

A boom pole is another nifty accessory. Turns you into a crane. A small tractor can probably lift more than you can, and out there at the end of the pole.

There’s a weirdness in trying to grade roads and future yards and whatnot. A dozer blade or a rake that is outside of the space between the wheels amplifies the variability in the grade, because as the tractor tilts to and fro, the blade or rake moves even further. If they could be mounted between the front and rear wheels, their height would be the average of the two axle heights. There’s usually not much room where a belly mower would go, and I haven’t seen such a rake or blade offered for a small tractor. But this does teach one why real road graders are long and have their blade between the axles.

BTW I have a Kubota B6200, which is a 15 HP, 3 cylinder Diesel with 4WD, a dozer blade (hydraulically lifts and floats, and angles left and right) and a Cat 1 hitch, weighing (I think) about 1600 lbs. I have an auger, a ripper/subsoiler, a platform, a boom pole, a rake (without wheels unfortunately), and a weight made from a 30: square of 3" thick steel.

Will a dozer blade on such a small tractor be able to cut into soil?

I can weld, so that fence thing is no problem. I plan to weld up a wood carrier of some sort to hold wood on the carryall platform also.

I may also get boom pole. Initally I thought I didn’t have many uses for it, but the more I think about it, the more uses I come up with.

The boom pole does have all kinds of uses and is relatively inexpensive or easy to fabricate. The dozer blade can work but you really need wheel weights or some dead weight on the 3-point to get the best use.

Looks like the dirt scoop would be useful for rounding up wayward roosters. Maybe with a hook or two welded on there.