Wife's New TC40DA

[jinman]

We had some snow recently. Great time to go out and "work". I do have two questions.
1. In high gear and rabbit setting. It can't back up a small grade. When I shift down to low gear and turtle...no problem. Maybe this is normal, I don't know. What do you think?
2. It smokes a great deal upon startup. Only has 4 hours, so is it just a matter of getting broke in? Or is it cause of cold weather? I have to pull it out of barn ASAP as not to kill the horses from exhaust.

1. High-rabbit is definitely a road gear. I have a steep road going from my house to our lake (a little over 1/4 mile) and the tractor has a hard time starting up that hill in high-rabbit. No problem in high-turtle, but...

2. High-turtle will bog down on fairly steep hills when carrying a load of dirt in the bucket. I have one run that's about 25' long and probably a 20% grade. That's about as steep as I can go and I have to hit it running to maintain. Otherwise I have to shift down to low-rabbit.

When cleaning out my pond, I found that with a huge heaping load of silt and going up very steep banks, I'd have to shift down to low-turtle just to pull out of the pond. Two examples are attached. Notice the tracks going up the far bank in the first picture. That's a low-turtle hill I guarantee. The bank in the second picture I could climb in low-rabbit.

Oh yes... Smoking is common on startup. If you cycle the glowplugs a couple of times or if you had a block heater, it would smoke less. Here in Texas, I hardly notice smoking except on the coldest days. Those days my diesel pickup also smokes much more.

 

[lhfarm]

We had some snow recently. Great time to go out and "work". I do have two questions.
1. In high gear and rabbit setting. It can't back up a small grade. When I shift down to low gear and turtle...no problem. Maybe this is normal, I don't know. What do you think?
2. It smokes a great deal upon startup. Only has 4 hours, so is it just a matter of getting broke in? Or is it cause of cold weather? I have to pull it out of barn ASAP as not to kill the horses from exhaust.

I ask the same questions here when I got my TC40DA a year ago. You will quickly learn the combinations of range and hi/lo to go/do whatever you want.

I waited until this summer to remove the loader for the first time to do some bushhoging. Mike's (PineRidge) instructions make it a 5 minute deal. And I love driving this tractor with the loader off! Taking the loader off for some tasks is really the only thing I would have done differently. This is a great tractor and you are going to love driving it.

 

[Doc_Bob]

1. In high gear and rabbit setting. It can't back up a small grade. When I shift down to low gear and turtle...no problem. Maybe this is normal, I don't know. What do you think?
2. It smokes a great deal upon startup. Only has 4 hours, so is it just a matter of getting broke in? Or is it cause of cold weather? I have to pull it out of barn ASAP as not to kill the horses from exhaust.

1. Normal is my guess. High gear is for flat ground, no load.

2. Take a pic of the smoke. I assume it clears once the machine has warmed up? What color smoke?
Bob