Cub horsepower

[cubkid]

How come the Farmall Cub was only made with a little 9-10 horsepower engine? Are they strong enough? I want to get a cub because they look super cool, and seem like they would suit our 3 acre land well. I'm not concerned about the HP, but I was just wondering why they only a dropped a 10 HP 4cylinder engine in these puppies....err, I mean Cubs thanks.

[Lurker Carl]

Small tractors have small engines. Big tractors have big engines.

When the engine is more powerful, everything else has to be beefier to handle the extra oomph and you get a larger tractor.

[Carm]

The Cub is perfect for your needs. The horsepower, while low is being produced from a 60 Cubic Inch engine, therefore it has more torque than an equivalent HP lawmnower engine. The Cub will do a great job for you, especially if you like to work on/with the vintage equipment. Parts are available and information on this site and others is free and flows pretty easily. Welcome to the Forum.

[Rudi]

Welcome to the Forum and I hope you get your Cub real soon

I now have 3 of these little beauties, and I can tell you that they can do an awful lot of work. For 10 hp they can out plow, out haul, out mow any ot those so-called GT series overgrown and overpriced lawn mowers. I have a Craftsman 12.5 hp lawn tractor and it is not 1/20 the tractor my Cubs are.

Also the HP is not rated the same and is similar to comparing apples and mangoes. The B&S or Tecumseh engines are rated at developed HP with NO load and the Cub's 10 hp is measured at the drawbar with a load. Check out the Nebraska Tests results, which will indicate just how much work a Cub can do. Remember, these tractors were designed for 40 acre or less farms whose primary crops would be tobacco, corn, cotton and of course the usual truck garden variety of crops as well as potato's.

They were also designed to last only 7 years. Now almost 60 years later they are still running strong. How many ride on mowers would last 60 years Probably not one

So for your 3 acre field, the Cub is ideally suited and it wouldn't even break a sweat doing anything you want it to do on your property. You do have to keep in mind though, the Cub is not a 4 wheel drive 80 hp tractor and it does have it's limitations. However, so far I have not come across too many so far. I have 25 acres of mixed wood lot, gardens and meadows/lawns and the only thing that has stopped me was a 40 foot maple that proved to heavy for my Cub to yard to the road

[Carm]

Well put Rudi!