Ive said before were looking for another tractor for our farm and we were looking at a 4430 JD ive heard nothing but good about them, Now i have found a 4450 with 3000hours and is in amazing shape and its MWFD, IVe heard good things about them, I was wondering what would be the better tractor out of the 2 and has anyone ever used a 4450??
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JD 4450 or 4430??
- Thread starter CAT MAN
- Start date
83GMCK2500
Active Member
The 4450 is an amazing tractor. I've seen those with 13k hours that had loaders on them in a feedlot, rode hard put away shitty.
My dad had 2 of them, my uncle had one. My dad used his to plant and dig spuds. The ONLY problem with them is plowing, not enough weight in the front with a full suitcase and calcium in the tires. My dad is quite the fabricator, he met with some guys at the dealership and determined that building a bracket to mount another set of weights above the first would not void the warranty. With the double stacked weights those tractors are unstoppable. C'mon NAR you've got to have good things to say.
I wish my dad was a member on here, he could write pages about how good the 4450 is. I cannot believe you found one with that low of hours, WOW. My uncles had over 9,500 hours, ran like a swiss watch. It ran a Freeman 200 Hydraulic PTO baler, so ran at ~1,800 RPM for a lot of hours. Damn that tractor was an amazing machine.
My dad had 2 of them, my uncle had one. My dad used his to plant and dig spuds. The ONLY problem with them is plowing, not enough weight in the front with a full suitcase and calcium in the tires. My dad is quite the fabricator, he met with some guys at the dealership and determined that building a bracket to mount another set of weights above the first would not void the warranty. With the double stacked weights those tractors are unstoppable. C'mon NAR you've got to have good things to say.
I wish my dad was a member on here, he could write pages about how good the 4450 is. I cannot believe you found one with that low of hours, WOW. My uncles had over 9,500 hours, ran like a swiss watch. It ran a Freeman 200 Hydraulic PTO baler, so ran at ~1,800 RPM for a lot of hours. Damn that tractor was an amazing machine.
A 4430 is a good solid tractor. We had one for years, put over 13000 hours on it. That said, buy the 4450 if you can stand the price. They are better in quite a few ways that aren't noticeable at casual glance, like the heavier front end and spindles, and rockshaft and 3 point lift ability and hydraulic ability. Quad or powershift? 3000 hours is a nice low hour machine, hard to believe even, so check it over good. The MFWD is also nice, except that if you have it set for 30 inch rows it won't turn as tight as a 2wd. Can live with that though for the extra floatation and pulling and ride. I will never buy another 2wd tractor. We had a 4250 and a 4450. Both were great tractors, had over 12000 hours on them when they left us. The 4450 grandpa got with 2800 hours on it when it was 2 years old. It was a quad range. We never touched the engine or trans on it. In fact we would still have it if we hadn't had some fun with the bank. The 4250 was a powershift and it had 6000 hours when we bought it. I think was had been a loader tractor at a feedlot, so it had a lot harder life than the 4450 had. Around 11000 hours it needed clutches in the powershift, and the mfwd clutch. Engine got rebuilt around then too cause it blew a headgasket and got a little hot. The top end still looked good though, it didn't get new pistons or sleaves cause they were still good. Just got head work and a new crank cause the coolant made a bearing spin. Overall still for the hours we had in it not that bad, just not as good as the 4450 had been.
Yeah it took me a while to type that I was on the phone too...
83GMCK2500-How big a plow? We ran 4 bottom JD in furrows no problem on ours. Dad ran a 5 bottom MF in furrow on the 4450 a bit and it pulled it ok but it was front end light. I made some brackets to bolt on the sides of the weight bracket so we could add 5 more on each side. That helped a lot. Thing was though the leverage of that longer plow was way hard on the rockshaft and we ended up having to do the seals on it after running that plow. Even with the weights it could throw the tractor around some.
Then I bought a on land 3 bottom MF parts plow and swapped all the stuff over from the in furrow and pulled 6 bottoms on land with the 8100. Much better. The MF plow is kinda neat in that it is 3 bottoms and then you keep bolting frame sections on to make it bigger.
We hardly use it now though except if we really need to plow stuff down. Use the soil commander disk ripper instead. Thinking about getting a strip till machine now. I miss plowing but I don't miss the water running off the field.
83GMCK2500-How big a plow? We ran 4 bottom JD in furrows no problem on ours. Dad ran a 5 bottom MF in furrow on the 4450 a bit and it pulled it ok but it was front end light. I made some brackets to bolt on the sides of the weight bracket so we could add 5 more on each side. That helped a lot. Thing was though the leverage of that longer plow was way hard on the rockshaft and we ended up having to do the seals on it after running that plow. Even with the weights it could throw the tractor around some.
Then I bought a on land 3 bottom MF parts plow and swapped all the stuff over from the in furrow and pulled 6 bottoms on land with the 8100. Much better. The MF plow is kinda neat in that it is 3 bottoms and then you keep bolting frame sections on to make it bigger.
We hardly use it now though except if we really need to plow stuff down. Use the soil commander disk ripper instead. Thinking about getting a strip till machine now. I miss plowing but I don't miss the water running off the field.
83GMCK2500
Active Member
I'll have to ask my dad. I was small enough to sit on the armrest (lowered) of a JD of that series and ride comfortably...feet didn't reach the floor of the tractor. Oh, both of ours and my uncle's were 15 Speed Powershifts. Gawd I hate the 3-4 cluster change at 1,800rpm running that damned baler. NAR, have you seen those auxilliary fuel tanks that mount above the main weights? That is where my dad got the idea for the double-stacked weights, and where he put them.
For referrence my dad had:
310 Backhoe
2020
4230
4240??? (I'll have to double check)
2x4450
4850
+ a couple of ones around 4230 size for other field work
My uncle had:
4020 (damned fine tractor) Cultivator or Freeman 200, also had a 3-wheel Darf rake on the front.
4230 (Model 8827 Allen Rake)
4040 (Model 8827 Allen Rake)
2x4440 (Freeman 270 Baler)
4450 (Initially another Freeman 200, but graduated to Auto Align 4SR Bale Scoop)
4455 (Moved the Freeman 200 to this one because this tractor only had 2 remotes:mad2
4555 (Hesston 4790 3x4 Baler)
4960 (Hesston 4790 3x4 Baler, this tractor would give me half a stalk everytime I started it up. What a big beautiful bale making machine, I loved it. I know the 60 series is frowned upon for the frame length, but it made a helluva baling tractor.)
83GMCK2500
Active Member
Price on equip. I do not know, NAR will have to chime in here. I just wanted to say :drool5:.
So really it has 11000 hours. That's still about the price range you find those in though depending how decent shape they are in. I found one nearby here that has under 4000 original hours and they want 48 for it. If it's in really nice shape and they have rebuilt the trans and engine and front end clutches then it's worth that. Really once you redo all that stuff it should run another 10000 hours. Check it over closely.
busdriver75
Busier than hell...
we've had both the 4430 and a 4450. the 4450 handled much better than the 4430. nicer cab as well. NAR mentioned some of the advantages of the 50 series over the 30 series.
as far as price goes, i did a quick search to compare, and i think a tractor with 11000 hours on it, and about 2700 hours on a rebuilt motor, i think 25-30K is a fair price depending on condition of the tires.
EDIT: i use tractorhouse.com quite a bit to find and compare equipment that we're looking to purchase. seems pretty handy.
as far as price goes, i did a quick search to compare, and i think a tractor with 11000 hours on it, and about 2700 hours on a rebuilt motor, i think 25-30K is a fair price depending on condition of the tires.
EDIT: i use tractorhouse.com quite a bit to find and compare equipment that we're looking to purchase. seems pretty handy.
http://omaha.craigslist.org/grd/970141189.html
Check that out, not sure if it has a cab but for that money it might be worth a look. I know iron prices can drastically vary from state to state.
Check that out, not sure if it has a cab but for that money it might be worth a look. I know iron prices can drastically vary from state to state.
busdriver75
Busier than hell...
that one could have about a million hours on it for that price! either that or somebody just needs to unload it before the end of the year.
83GMCK2500
Active Member
4450, stop ****ing with us, buy it and post lots of pictures. 
You don't know if you want MFWD... What will you do with it? The only downside to MFWD is turning set at 30 inch rows. Well and rebuilding the clutches every 10000 hours, but that is reasonable. Otherwise it's better everywhere. Even when it's off it makes it ride better and goes through holes with a small bump that would have made the 2wd bounce you into the roof. Better flotation on wet or sandy or loose ground. The first thing we tried when we got one was rollerharrowing behind the plow, really soft ground. With MFWD turned on there was so much less slip it was amazing. Sold us on it right then. Not to mention the front tires were sinking less than half as much. Last few years we had ours we were baling and other things where it didn't need to fit the rows so we had it set out at 88 and it rode so nice, and that way it turns good too.
4450, stop ****ing with us, buy it and post lots of pictures.
LOL hold on there 83, were going to use it to disk and bailing hay,We are leaning towards the MFWD so i will see what is up today im going to talk to him about it..:thumbsup: