Tire options

[jyoutz]

I have had a small JD tractor for the past 20 years. Later this year I plan to upgrade to a L3901 HST with loader and 5' rotary cutter. My needs: I live on 20 acres in northern NM at 6800' elevation. My land is flat to gently rolling with grass and scattered pinyon and juniper trees. I use the tractor to: maintain 2300' of gravel road and clear snow (sometimes 2+ feet). I mow about 10 acres of native grass with a cutter, do general loader work, and plow/till a large garden (about 1/4 acre in size). I also feed a few steers and move/stack large rectangular hay bales (500-750 pounds). I was wavering over the L4701 and L3901, but have decided on the 3901 due to size working inside the barn and garden. The 4701 is just too large for my purposes, and the 3901 is still a huge upgrade from my small framed JD. I want to go with R1 tires for best traction, but I mow and maintain the native grass like a lawn, and I don't want to tear it up. Would the R4 tires be a better choice? Will I have enough traction with them for the snow plowing and garden work? I will not use this tractor on the lawn around the house (I use a riding mower for that). For either the R1 or R4 tires, I plan to have them filled with liquid ballast for stability for loader work and snow plowing.

 

[Rdrett]

I went with r1 tires for traction and happy I did.

On the L series you man run into these issues. Double check these facts if anything concerns you.
With r1 tires you can use the factory adjustable stabilizers. R4’s you can not.
R1 tires have adjustable tread width and can be adjusted wider than r4 tires (more stability).
R1 tires have rims that wheel weights can be installed. I am pretty sure R4 rims don’t have holes to mount steel wheel weights.
R1 tires have plenty of room for tire chains. I am pretty sure r4 tires don’t leave room for chains.

R1 tires do okay on not damaging the ground as long as it is dry and you don’t make sharp turns especially in 4 wheel drive.

Answer on tires really depends on what you need the tractor to do.

 

[AllDodge]

Don't put fluid in the front tires, the fluid will damage the grass more in the front

R1 tires will damage more so then R4.
R1 gives more traction then R4

Plowing your better off with R1

 

[Big Gee Tn]

If you’re going to use the tractor as a tractor ,I would go with R1.I made the mistake of getting r4 and regret it .Just ordered as set of r1 today.

 

[SidecarFlip]

My only comment is mowing 10 acres with a 5 foot chopper will be an exercise in overtime. 60" (actually 58" blade) on 10 acres is pretty small.

 

[SDT]

I went with r1 tires for traction and happy I did.

On the L series you man run into these issues. Double check these facts if anything concerns you.
With r1 tires you can use the factory adjustable stabilizers. R4’s you can not.
R1 tires have adjustable tread width and can be adjusted wider than r4 tires (more stability).
R1 tires have rims that wheel weights can be installed. I am pretty sure R4 rims don’t have holes to mount steel wheel weights.
R1 tires have plenty of room for tire chains. I am pretty sure r4 tires don’t leave room for chains.

R1 tires do okay on not damaging the ground as long as it is dry and you don’t make sharp turns especially in 4 wheel drive.

Answer on tires really depends on what you need the tractor to do.

Bingo, Rdrett.

You covered it well.

SDT

 

[chim]

My only comment is mowing 10 acres with a 5 foot chopper will be an exercise in overtime. 60" (actually 58" blade) on 10 acres is pretty small.

Since you're using a small JD now, I'd guess you are using a 5' wide or less mower. My BIL mentioned something that we don't always consider. Adding a foot to the mower width is adding a full foot to the cutting width. As SidecarFlip noted, the mower doesn't cut the full width of the deck to begin with. Then you need some overlap to avoid "skippers". After the first pass, a 5' mower may cut as little as 4-1/2' on each successive pass. With the same overlap, a 6' mower adds the entire foot to every pass.

I only have experience with R1 and R4 on 4WD tractors. I have R1's on a small Ford (1992 - present) and R4's on a B7500 (2002 - 2012), L3200 (2012 - soon sell) and an L4240 (had about a month). I also had a pair of the old diamond pattern turfs on a 2WD Cub LoBoy the first couple years after we built here. Those turfs on 2WD were worthless for traction.

These tractors were different sizes, so I can't say how each would perform with different tires. We have a creek in the front yard and it occasionally floods. The R1's on the little Ford do work very well for traction, but mark the yard the most if the ground is soft. The R4's on the B7500 were easier on the lawn. I could get on the area that floods quicker with the B7500 with the R4's even though the tractor was heavier. It seems the L3200 was even more friendly in that area. I suppose as the tractor and tires grew larger the tires had more contact area with the ground for weight distribution.

I don't have occasion to run in the mud very much, but the R4's wouldn't be my first choice if I did. The Ford with the R1's has always been impressive in the snow and what little bit it was in the mud. The B7500 worked well in the snow with stock R4's. I grooved the tires on the most recent two tractors. Traction was good in snow with the L3200 and I'm still waiting to see how the L4240 doe in the snow and then the yard.

Some people have touted turfs as better than anything else for snow. I had thought of trying them. The L4240 was bought used and it had R4's. Had I gotten a new tractor I probably would have finally had myself talked into turfs.

 

[Bulldog777]

MX4800. If your not mowing your immediate yard with it, you won't regret the bigger machine. If you consider the L4701, you might as well go with the MX4800. The price is almost the same. Just a thought. Tractors are like barns, you almost always wish you would have went bigger.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

[PaulL]

If you're worried about chewing up the ground, the obvious answer is to get turfs. They do chew up the ground less than the others. R4s are in between turfs and R1s. Also, R4s tend to be more durable tyres, they're made for construction sites with nails and stuff around - more plys, stronger sidewalls (also more expensive).

I guess the question with each tyre type is what you can't do. Turfs chew up the ground the least. They're supposed to also be best in the snow. Your garden that you're plowing and tilling is quite small, I can till OK with my BX with turfs (not great, but OK). That leaves plowing as maybe an issue, but probably only if you do it in the wet. Feeding out and generally driving around the farm - what sort of ground are you feeding out on? In NZ we feed in winter, and it's wet and muddy, turfs would be useless for that, and you don't want to get a situation where you can't feed your animals because the tractor doesn't like mud. But if you're feeding in a barn or have some other setup, then maybe that's not an issue for you.

R4s would probably do it all, they apparently aren't too rough on grass. I agree about not loading the fronts, personally I wouldn't load at all and use ballast instead. But that's always my answer. Again, if you're trying to drive over the fields to feed out in muddy conditions, R4s will be a problem.

R1s are the default. There's a reason most real farm tractors have them. They will give you the best traction, they'll also create tractor ruts if you drive them around in the wet (that's how they get traction - they cut through the mud to get traction underneath). How much would you mow the native grasses in the wet - is that when they're not growing much anyway? If you're mostly mowing in spring/fall, and if your ground is reasonably firm that time of year, no reason R1s wouldn't work. As you say, it's not your lawn that you're mowing, it's the fields, so it doesn't have to look like a golf course.

Hopefully that's given you lots of information and made nothing any clearer. It really comes down to a tradeoff between having a real tractor that goes places when it's muddy (if you need that to feed your animals) v's how fussy you want to be over the finish when you're mowing fields.

 

[Missouribound]

Rather than load the tires consider a ballast box. Your tractor will be heavy enough. You will need one for loader work anyway. And if you are going to work on turf you need turf tires.
Any other choice will tear up your yard. And as others have said a 5' mower is pretty small for 10 acres. I mow about 3 with my 5' finish and a larger one would have been nice. Of course obstructions and the Ozark "Baja" terrain affected my decision.
And I have seen here that turf tires do quite well in snow. I personally can't verify that because I moved to where there is none.....and when there is it is rare.

 

[jyoutz]

Thanks for these points to consider. I'm leaning towards R1 tires and just being careful on the grass.

I went with r1 tires for traction and happy I did.

On the L series you man run into these issues. Double check these facts if anything concerns you.
With r1 tires you can use the factory adjustable stabilizers. R4’s you can not.
R1 tires have adjustable tread width and can be adjusted wider than r4 tires (more stability).
R1 tires have rims that wheel weights can be installed. I am pretty sure R4 rims don’t have holes to mount steel wheel weights.
R1 tires have plenty of room for tire chains. I am pretty sure r4 tires don’t leave room for chains.

R1 tires do okay on not damaging the ground as long as it is dry and you don’t make sharp turns especially in 4 wheel drive.

Answer on tires really depends on what you need the tractor to do.

 

[jyoutz]

My only comment is mowing 10 acres with a 5 foot chopper will be an exercise in overtime. 60" (actually 58" blade) on 10 acres is pretty small.

I would like to get a 6 foot rotary cutter, but I'm thinking that it's a bit large for the L3901? I'm sure that the L4701 would handle a 6 footer. Any thoughts?

 

[boz1989]

General rule of thumb is 5hp/foot. Make sure you use the pto hp, not engine hp.

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[jyoutz]

General rule of thumb is 5hp/foot. Make sure you use the pto hp, not engine hp.

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Thanks, so a 36HP (PTO) tractor is needed for a 6 foot cutter. That would mean that the L3901 (31 PTO HP for HST) could only use up to a 5 foot cutter?

 

[SRG]

Thanks, so a 36HP (PTO) tractor is needed for a 6 foot cutter. That would mean that the L3901 (31 PTO HP for HST) could only use up to a 5 foot cutter?

5hp per 1ft, x 6ft=30hp needed, if you follow that rule of thumb

31hp should be fine for a 6footer. You can get away with a little more or a little less, depending on variables (ground speed, height of cut, thickness and height of foliage, moisture content, other things).

 

[jyoutz]

5hp per 1ft, x 6ft=30hp needed, if you follow that rule of thumb

31hp should be fine for a 6footer. You can get away with a little more or a little less, depending on variables (ground speed, height of cut, thickness and height of foliage, moisture content, other things).

Umm. Yeah, I guess it was late when I posted this. My math was bad. So with the HST, the L3901 has 32 HP, so it should be able to operate a 6 foot rotary cutter. I'm mostly cutting native grass and very light brush, no sapling trees or heavy brush.