This is a subscriber-only article
Case IH Quadtracs are a common sight on the continent and in the UK, but the sight of one in deepest Wexford was a shock to many. The beast in question belongs to Walter Furlong and was supplied by Cooney Furlong machinery, the recently appointed Case IH dealer for the southeast.
The big Case was bought to pull a 7 metre Vaderstad TopDown over the operation’s large arable area. It was pulled at about 5in to 6in in the ground and is the main cultivator in a min-till system.
This cultivator has 26 legs, each of which is 80mm wide, making a total of over 2 metres of metal being pulled through the ground at a depth of 6in. This is no mean feat and takes plenty of power. The Quadtrac has a rated horsepower of 628 without boost and a massive 692 with the boost engaged. This power comes from a 12.9 litre common rail diesel engine.
Normal
Sitting into the driver’s seat of the big Case IH, you expect it to feel alien and huge, but it feels very similar to any of the Case IH tractors from the Puma up. The same steering wheel and multicontroller make it feel normal.
The size of the towing pin dwarfs that of most smaller tractors.
Firing up the engine is no different either, but the noise once it is up and running is very different, with a deep lazy rumble instead of a throaty roar which you get from smaller engines.
On the move, the tracked machine is easy to manoeuvre once there is room – this is not a tractor for a small yard.
Once you get used to the articulated steering and slightly strange sensation it causes with the sideways motion, it is a pleasure to drive. Vision from the driver’s seat is good except for the edge of the front tracks but Case IH thankfully has placed sighting bars on the front of the chassis in order to give the driver an idea of the width.
The gearbox is the 16x2 powerdrive used in all of the Quadtrac range. When used with the multicontroller lever, it is no different from any of the smaller tractors in the Case IH range, with the same controller and powershift transmissions.
Sitting in the cab on the red leather seat, there is a collection of technology on display including full autosteer, which is essential when working with a 7 metre cultivator. With this system in place, a working rate of up to 20 acres per hour was found to be possible, over the tractor’s first spring cultivations. At this rate of work, the tracked machine was drinking a massive 100 litres of diesel per hour.
The 240hp Case IH Puma is dwarfed its big brother.
However, when you think about it, this amounts to 5 litres per acre when those work rates were being achieved.
With this sort of ability to cover ground and drink diesel, the Case IH comes with a 1,880 litre fuel tank, which gives it the capability to run for 18 hours with the 7 metre TopDown, covering a huge 360 acres in one long working day with no stops.
That is serious output that is pie in the sky for most farmers, but if the fields are big enough, it is a serious way to cover ground, especially with a late spring like this year.
The Quadtrac covered close to 2,500 acres in its first spring, proving that at least this year it made sense.
The tractor weighs in at a hefty 26.68t, which seems very heavy. However, when you consider that the cultivator weighs 10.3t, you can see that everything is just of a different scale. Being a tracked machine means this weight is spread over four large areas totalling 5.6m2.
This means that there is a force of 4764kg/m2. A standard 10t tractor on 600 tyres would have a force per m2 of about 5,000kg. This is a very rough calculation but shows how the Quadtrac would probably do less damage to the soil than a far smaller tractor.
Having seen and driven the biggest tractor in Ireland, I can see how it makes sense in the operation it is in. However, for all but a very small number of tillage farmers in the country the Case IH Quadtrac 620 and its like will never make sense unless there is a major lottery win.
SHARING OPTIONS: