Farmall 560

I have seen a lot poeple in here talk about how the farmall 560 tractor and how it is junk. I was just wondering why that is?

    In 58 when they first came out they had an underrated bearing in the rearend or tranny cant remember which, IH set up tents in the field or at dealers and fixed most if not all of them and switched to hytrans oil. Other than the diesels needing to use the glow plugs below 50 deg. or so dont know of any problems, the bearing was upgraded after 58 and all the IH early diesels were cold natured. These are early diesels and only have 4 head bolts around each cylinder like a gas engine so bolt torque, head & block surface hafta be correct along with liner hight to prevent head gasket failiers (same with any engine), new diesels tend to have 6 bolts around the cylinder. The gas models are thirsty (mines a 1961 nf gasser) I believe its over 5gal an hour with for bottoms in the ground, mine seems to burn close to that even if its idling. The diesels were very efficient on fuel and have heard of them going 9000+ hours without an overhaul but i have not seen this first hand. The rearend trouble stuck because most IH tractors are a little light in the rearend and that was an era of add more fluided tires, more wheel weights, and crank the smoke screw till you had a 40ft column of smoke out the exhaust. My tractor came with the farm and had dual rear wheels with fluid on inside two wheels and double stack of weights on each side, It is one of my favorite tractors to drive you can drive it with one finger and it has down pressure on the fast hitch. Others may know more or have corrections as my daughters 4-h animals are my excuse to play with tractors (shhh don't tell wife)and I'm a first generation suburban farmer. James

I sold my last IH today and couldn't be happier. They are ok tractors but I've had my fill of them for a while. The TA (especially the manual TA) is awful compared to the power director. Most of the old IHs have shifting problems (easy to get the linkage bound up and get the trans it two gears at once). They are also very un-handy to work on compared to a AC IMO. They did make some great engines though and had true independent PTO and hyd long before AC did.


Edited by m16ty - 29 Oct 2011 at 11:41pm

My uncle had many M's and H's, 806, 1066 and I believe a 1086 that was 4WD. In the mid seventies he bought a new Muir-Hill 101 which was a pretty tough unit (Ford Motor Co. and English made as I recall). He also had a saying about IH TA's by then; every time you touch it, put a dollar in a coffee can as you are gonna need it.

The Red Power forum had a thread about lemons of all colors that was linked from here. They're pretty touchy about the 560 and liked to use the XT as an example of other companies having worse tractors. Of course from their point of view AC never fixed the XT and every last one had a bad rear end. They also said ALL ACs pop out of gear. LOL. I thought the beginning of the downfall of IH was the 400.

Dave in il wrote: The Red Power forum had a thread about lemons of all colors that was linked from here. They're pretty touchy about the 560 and liked to use the XT as an example of other companies having worse tractors. Of course from their point of view AC never fixed the XT and every last one had a bad rear end. They also said ALL ACs pop out of gear. LOL. I thought the beginning of the downfall of IH was the 400.

The XT was a little light in the rear end but they held up fine if you didn't turn the fuel to them. The main problem with the XT was they put a engine in it that was capable of so much extra hp. I've had several XTs and have never had a rear end problem. I don't abuse my tractors either so that may have something to do with it.

i think any tractor regardless of color, that is still working and 50 or 60 years old, is a pretty good tractor .