"CR" wrote:

I have the D8L -SA build sheet somewhere, I just have to find what box it ended up after a few moves and potential moves. I believe the L SA’s were exchanged for Deere 9400T’s when they came out if I remember the story correctly. The company was also shipping them to be used at their NSW Australia farm operations as well.

Juiceman ripping in a growing orchard... that sounds like a good way to remove all the buried drip or sprinkler lines. I guess my grandfather tried that in an Almond orchard that wouldn’t take water ( furrow irrigation days) in the late 60’s with a D7 and the driver said he looked back and saw the ripper pulling out trees as soon as he put it into the ground. Later they used a AC-Oxnard 400 with only the center shank behind the D4D or 7U.

True, even for a flood irrigated orchard, plenty of underground cement pipelines here. That is when a good mapping system and marking is required. The last 6’ ripping done here with a D8H, the operator (not ours)
Kept going to his vehicle about every 4 passes; well, let’s just say he liked his tall cans of beer! My brother and I laughed, considering how much alcohol this guy was sucking down, he never did any damage to the main lines or trees! Drunks usually drive extra careful we figured...
My little D68U is being prepped to rip narrow olives. That was my reasoning for your toolbar beam and curved shanks CR. Shoehorn that tractor down the rows after harvest. Thanks!

CR that last picture in the cab looking out at the other 2 machines is great You’re really covering some acreage there!

"Mangoman" wrote:

Thanks for all the info Wombat. What is this marine clutch? Pardon the newbie questions but it has a conventional powershift transmission that uses planetaries for gear reduction but no old school countershaft type transmission? And the marine clutch is in ot out and no slippage like a normal TC? And what about the 76V and 36 series? Were they the same way or similar to an old 14A etc...?

I have to be honest, have never pulled one of these out, I suspect it was a planetary type drive with multi plate hydraulic clutch(s), was always engaged in either high or low with no neutral. When sitting in the seat there was a two way electric switch under right hand to select high or low, hence would have to have been electric over hydraulic control. Forward or reverse was selected through the normal three speed transmission as well as any modulation, just dropped the revs and pulled into 1st gear.

I don't know who in the US are the D8L SA Guru's, Ian Mundle in Qld would be the most knowledgeable person here in Oz. I sold the tractor I imported to a contractor who did a lot of line ripping for pine plantation establishment. He found it was incredibly stable contour ripping on steep slopes, as a result some contractors then wide gauged some D9N tractors for the same work, they engineered the housing extensions, dead axle etc to allow it to be done.

When line ripping and doing heavy drawbar work with these tractors, you learn very quickly what fuel consumption is, I found it was not hard for them to burn between 70 to 80 litres per hour. DD D8H and D8K tractors were a long way behind the production rates of the D8L SA tractors. I have heard but not been able to verify there were a handful of D9N tractors in the last few out of the factory, for some reason I have two production numbers in my head, 56 and 74, neither may be right, would be good to know the actual number and history etc of these tractors.

Wombat

One weakness was they did not handle high tongue weight well. In the 1980's something called a Yielder no till seed drill became some what popular in dryland wheat and barely seeding. A 20 foot wide model held more than 20 ton of seed and fertilizer plus the drill was a heavy thing itself. A operation running D8H 36a's decided that was not enough tractor and rented a D8L SA tractor to pull one. Was a consent battle to keep the rear rollers/idlers in D8L. Did not take many years to decide that was not the seeding outfit they wanted.

"Ray54" wrote:

One weakness was they did not handle high tongue weight well. In the 1980's something called a Yielder no till seed drill became some what popular in dryland wheat and barely seeding. A 20 foot wide model held more than 20 ton of seed and fertilizer plus the drill was a heavy thing itself. A operation running D8H 36a's decided that was not enough tractor and rented a D8L SA tractor to pull one. Was a consent battle to keep the rear rollers/idlers in D8L. Did not take many years to decide that was not the seeding outfit they wanted.

And they were driving it as fast as it would go, I'm sure that didn't help.

You will have concluded by now I have a real love affair with the D8L tractors, they are in my mind and experience are the nearest thing to a money printing press, I am yet to meet anyone who owned one that didn't make really good money. They were the most profitable tractors that I ever owned.

FYI some odd ball things were done here in Oz to tractors for blade ploughing etc, some D9G and D9h tractors had the torque converters removed and just direct coupled, I think they might have been a beast to operate, Deas might know more about them. I think a few tractors were also fitted with Masabi (spelling?) radiators on top of the cabs for extra cooling. Over the years the size of tractor just grew as mines disposed of old D10 and D11 tractors they have been put to work pulling blade ploughs.

Wombat

"Skinner" wrote:

CR that last picture in the cab looking out at the other 2 machines is great You’re really covering some acreage there!

Actually there are 4 D8k’s in the picture, there is one on the far RH side, but as it got resized by the B.B. it kinda dropped out of the picture.

Juiceman, those shanks you got were previously used ripping down the center of the orchard, there was one in the front and those were right behind about 12-18” apart on a drawn tool carrier. Sounds like they went to a good home instead of the scrap yard:) That’s what my brother was using that 21j for, took the sun shade off, ran the exhaust through a flex tube down to the bottom, and rerouted the air intake.


When I saw D8 and ripping I was think more along the lines of the 4-6’ shanks you’d normally see behind a D8 for planting an orchard. A lot of the solid set sprinkler systems they put in here were done using a D6C and a modified v ditcher, so they are not really that deep. We also have a lot of old concrete lines out there that are shallow, as in less than a foot due to all of the land leveling done after they bought that property.


In regards to the more modern high drives with direct drive, yes they are still being used just not as a swinging drawbar machine. They are now used for deep ripping with a 4 barrel ripper and a 6-8’ deep ripper shank.

Hi, Wombat.
I don't know about fitting direct drives to tractors for deep ripping or root plowing but I did hear that Don Mearns from Ipswich fitted transmissions from Cat rear dumps, I think either 785s or 789s, to a couple of re-powered D11s to give a locked-up gear for root plowing - along with a heap of extra cooling for the transmissions added on the roof.

Just my 0.02.