Comment by adamcharnock
7 hours ago
Honestly, I still had to practically stand on the clutch with mine!
I'd teach someone to drive it and say, "now push down on the clutch". They they would heave and struggle, then eventually succeed and look victorious. I'd say, "well done, it is now half way down! But that's all you need for now!"
EDIT: To fully explain: It has a two-stage clutch. You half-press it and it disconnects the wheels from the engine. If you fully depress it all the way to the floor, it additionally disconnects the power-take-off shaft (PTO) from the engine. The PTO shaft is a spindle on the back of the tractor which drives things like your flail mower, wood chipper, etc.
EDIT 2: Edit 1 was for the general audience, not the parent commenter ;-)
Why was the clutch so heavy? Did it serve some purpose or was it just due to the limitations of the technology at the time?
I have certainly driven cars with lighter and heavier clutches (I live in EU, automatics weren't popular until recently and are still far from ubiquitous) but I couldn't tell you why every model just doesn't get a light clutch for comfort. A diesel Subaru I drove had a particularly heavy clutch as I recall, so at stop lights I would pop into neutral instead of holding the clutch down for an extended period.
To deliver very high torque, the clutch plates needs to be pressed very hard together to generate enough friction. This also means that it take a lot of force to pull them apart, if you use a simple lever, as older machines do.
Modern machines may use complex mechanical linkages to make the clutch easy to pull apart but still maintain a firm contact, but that also means higher cost and fragility. Or they use pneumatics or hydraulics to assist, sorta like power steering.
That, and design tolerances. A fancy clutch can be light and strong (think ferarri) but farm machines need to work in the dirt/rust and so need larger tolerances. So heavier springs and bigger .... Bigger everything. A slipping clutch in a Ferrari is annoying. A slipping clutch on a tractor means a missed harvest.
> The PTO shaft is a spindle on the back of the tractor which drives things like your flail mower, wood chipper, etc.
... and kills/maims anyone with lose clothing trying to step over it!
Oh, god yes.
I mowed using a Farmall H on a family farm when I was about 12 y/o. I don't remember ever having deadly serious conversations with family members up to that point in my life. All four grandparents, aunts and uncles-- it seemed like everybody-- sat me down, looked me dead in the eye, and told me sternly and bluntly "you turn off the PTO and see the shaft isn't turning before you get off the tractor. Every. Time."
All of them knew somebody who lost an arm or leg or got killed when they got pulled into a PTO.
That was probably the first time I'd ever been given the opportunity to operate a machine that would fucking kill me if I shirked on respecting it. I will never forget the tone of that communication.
Without going too far into the weeds here, IMO this experience is representative of gun rights, zoning, and all sorts of other differences between urban and rural.
Rural kids are put into situations where they are expected to rely fully on themselves, with life-or-death consequences, from a young age. When your pre-teen is driving a machine on their own that could easily kill them or those around them, giving them a .22 rifle is just... normal. It's not at all the same situation as a kid the same age who lives in an apartment and who may have never been in a place where no one would be close enough to hear them if they screamed for help.
I can't wrap my head around the idea that a large number of people who live in cities seem to want to extend childhood through age 25. My daughters are 12 and 17, and between them have over fifty animals directly depending on them for survival. It's just... foreign.
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