Transmission Gears Swap?

[Mortgaged]

Well I've been using my 184 for over a year now and really love the tractor, especially the size, quietness, and 3 point hitch. However, I've come to the conclusion that the gearing on this thing flat out stinks and I really wonder what the IH Engineers were thinking? Being an Engineer, I'm sure it was the beancounters that forced them into the standard gears!

1st gear is great and no complaints. Ok, sometimes it can be too fast when you're trying to do finish blade work.
2nd gear: Oops! Did they forget to make this one different than 1st? Ok, it's slightly faster and the one I use almost all the time which effectively makes this a SINGLE speed tractor. Seems like the tractor could easily handle a little more gear for just about everything I use 2nd gear for.
3rd gear: Sllliiiippppp the clutch for a few seconds and hang on! By 3rd, do they mean 3x faster than 2nd? What the heck???? Seems like I only use this when joy riding down the road or when I get to a straight run in my yard and cut the throttle to near idle to keep it under control. I don't have a wide open field to run the tractor in so this gear is almost worthless. Also the tractor doesn't have enough power to do anything beyond EASY work in 3rd. I'm sure you all understand!

I would love to have a creeper or hydrostatic, but that isn't going to happen. Which brings me to my idea/question:
8-10 years ago I was tinkering with making a pulling tractor out of my cub cadet and bought some parts from Midwest Super Cub. I remembered they had a lot of transmission mods for pulling and visited their site again to browse a bit and do a little research.

What I found was that I can change any of the standard 3 gears to essentially any combination that adds up to 52 teeth. Details on their site. I think this is going to be my default project for this transmission sometime late this summer or early fall. I am either going to speed up 2nd gear by 1 or 2 teeth, and will definitely take a couple gear teeth out of 3rd. This is not inexpensive, but the goal is to get something that will make 2nd and 3rd a lot more useful.

Better yet, they offer a 4 speed conversion to turn the transmission into a true 4 speed. Yes, this is quite expensive, but just think how nice it would be to have a 4 speed! I would leave the current 2nd alone, and drop in a new 3rd spaced right in between the huge gap between the current 2nd & 3rd. I'm ordering the 4 speed conversion video to at least check it out.

Thoughts on either of the above? Has anyone heard of anyone trying this out? I searched around a bit, but couldn't find anything.

[bob in CT]

The 4 speed kit means no reverse.

[outdoors4evr]

I have always wondered why reverse is faster than first.
Third gear is a road gear for transportation purposes of getting to a different field. No real "work" applications for this.

Specifications (for a 184 with 8.3-24 tires at High Idle governed RPM)
1st: 2.9mph
2nd: 3.8mph
3rd: 8.6mph
Rev: 3.2mph

The creeper option is where the real work happens. The creeper divides each of these numbers in half.
Rototilling and snowblowing requires this option. (Really hate backing up with creeper engaged)

[LeeC]

I really wish I had swapped out third gear when I rebuilt my Cub's transmission as I find it to be useless for my purposes. If I understand Midwest Super Cub's offerings correctly, the 2/3 slider can only be either one or two teeth count different between second and third. If I ever rebuild another Cub transmission, I will switch out the standard 16/26 slider and replace it with a 16/18 slider (plus the appropriate lower gears, etc.).

[Mortgaged]

No reverse definitely won't work. How do they get away without it in pulling? In general you have to reverse the tractor to hook up to the sled, but I guess you could have some helpers push it backwards when needed. I've only watched "amateur" pullers and not the high end guys so maybe they do it differently.

Exactly LeeC! I'll only want to do this once, so getting the correct gear combination will be the trick.

Outdoors: I thought the creeper was closer to a 3:1 reduction? Or is this just carryover misinformation from the creeper used on the Cadets?

[LeeC]

I calculate an 18 tooth top gear should produce 4.6 mph using the specs provided by outdoors4evr.

[gitractorman]

You should do some more research before just jumping in to the online gear selections. The gear sets in F-Cubs, Lo Boy and Cub Cadets are all the same, except that there were several gearing changes throughout the production period. So, there are different gear sets depending on the years of production. There were not many changes, but I know there were at least two. I believe the original 154 lo boys had a problem because 1st gear was a little too slow, and 2nd gear was a little too fast for mowing. I know the same problem existed with Cub Cadets at some point, as I can remember using one (I think a 1975 Cub Cadet 1200) that 1st was too slow and 2nd was too fast for mowing. Anyway, I'd do some checking to see what you can find.

[outdoors4evr]

I don't have any specifications on the creeper reduction. The creeper ratio isn't listed in the specifications page of the manual.

[BigBill]

Second gear in my 154 is a tad slow when mowing. Third gear is a waste it's not a farm tractor speeding to the next field.