A few questions about a 350

[Paul45]

I have a 350 crawler/loader and have a few questions

1 what is the gear shift pattern? is it

R 1 3
2 4

2 when would you use reverse gear in the trans. vs just shifting reverser?

3 what is a good hyd. oil to use seeing what the book says is not avalible?

4 does anyone have plans for building a roll cage? Dont want to get hit with branches or have a tree fall on me when cleaing out my just logged woods.

5 I have a control lever next to loader controls that i believe is for a winch, (i dont have a winch) can this valve be used for another attachment example, log spliter, 3 point hitch forklift.

6 did they make a 3 point hitch arms for this? are there plans or pics?

THANKS ahead of time for you great input !!!!!!

[jdemaris]

350s had the gear reverse simply because the hydraulic reverser was an option only and not all 350s had it - until the 350C series came out. The 350C had to have a reverser since it powered the new wet steering clutchs and became standard equipment. So, the gear reverser was taken out of the Cs and newer.

You can use any gear selection you want - but remember this. The hydraulic reverser is weaker in reverse than when in forward. So. keeping the reverser in forward - using gear reverse is actually a bit stronger for extreme heavy work when going backwards.

Any good hydraulic oil is fine - it does not need to be combo-trans/hydraulic for the hydraulic reservoir - but does for the trans and reverser.

Deere oil now is Hyguard- for all the uses. But, standard Hyguard is too thick in cold weather and there is a thinner winter-grade available. In my opinion, the hydraulics work better with the thin oil all the time - and need not be Hyguard.

You'll notice a little pin-indicator sticking out of the hydraulic tank. That is the hydraulic restriction indicator. When all is right, filters clean, etc. - that thing will bounce back and forth like crazy when it's cold -with standard Hyguard. In fact, many either break - or the filter inside the tank blows off from thick oil. If you don't see it move at all - your filter is probably off and not doing a thing.

Also remember, you have two hydraulic filters - a suction filter and a return filter.

[KenP]

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[jdemaris]

They did put three point hitches on 350's although I don't have a pix.

Three point hitches weren't availble on 350 crawler-loaders - just on the dozers. We had many - three point with wide-track around an onion farming area where I used to live.

350 crawler loader was available with these options -

3100 ripper, 7702-C pulpwood carrier, 7702-A fork, 7702-B timber carrier, 7701 angling dozer, and 7700 bulldozer.

[jdemaris]

3 what is a good hyd. oil to use seeing what the book says is not avalible?

4
6 did they make a 3 point hitch arms for this? are there plans or pics?

Here are some photos of the three point hithc as used on 1010s and 350s. Late model 1010s have the same transmission as the 350s.

In regard to hydraulic oil - you don't have to use 303 oil. Deere only did that to standardize one oil to fit all. 303 or equiv. IS needed in the trans/reverser but not necessary for the hydraulics only. For the hydraulic system itself - it is no differenet than a Ford, Case, AC, etc. with a Cessna gear pump and Gresen contrrol valve. Deere doesn't use Deere components in this system. When 350s were new, Deere recommended you use 5W-20 non-detergent motor oil in the hydraulic system for cold weather use - because their 303/Hyguard was too thick. Now, they sell a special "wintergrade" version of Hyguard. Fact is, straight 10W or 5W-20 hydraulic oil is fine and will work better than standard Deere Hyguard.

One photo shows the 540 RPM PTO option which seems to be pretty rare. Most PTOs are winch-drive only.

[Lavoy]

We have a 350B loader that had a 3PT hitch on it when we got it, and PTO. I have known of a couple other 350 loaders with 3PT's over the years as well. Don't remember any more where they were or who had them. The hitch does not show up in the manauls on a loader, I think it is a lot like a hitch on a two cylinder crawler with a loader. They were never in the books, but I have seen several different 420's with #90 loaders and 3PT's. All of them had exactly the same cylinder mounting bracket, so it was not a by chance deal unless the same dealer sold all of them new, which I doubt.
Lavoy

[CatD8RII]

Paul , your shift pattern is correct. 350s kept reverse through the C models. It was part of an option called a winch drive. Like Ken says if your crawler has it youll have a small lever near where the back of your left foot rests. It was always my understanding reverse gear was for use with a winch, that way you could change the crawlers direction without changing the direction of the winch.

[jdemaris]

Paul , your shift pattern is correct. 350s kept reverse through the C models.

No, Deere Co. did not. When the C series came out -the gear-reverse was eliminated as standard equipment and was a special order item only the customer had to pay extra for. It usually came with the winch powershaft option. Standard 350Cs had NO gear reverse. That is why you won't find it in 350C sales brochures, or in John Deere parts as standard.

In reference to crawler-loaders with three point hitches - I've seen several with the hitches and 540 farm-type PTOs. But we tried several times to order-in 350B crawler-loaders new with the hitch and could not order from Deere that way. So, I'm going to assume that some dealers found a way to order the package and add it. I know we did all kinds of add-ons for customers when buying new, and I'm sure many other dealers did also.

Note these specs from Deere brochures showing gear-reverse only up through the B series - and not in the Cs.

[KenP]

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[jdemaris]

At the car shows, there are even "judging books" that supposedly show exactly what did and did not come on various models of cars.

When I was a kid I lived just down the road from the Ford factory/assembly line in Mahwah, New Jersey. This was in the 1950s and at that time, Ford only had one size car - just many versions of it. Many local people worked there, mostly on the assembly line. Local story was - if you knew the right person to call, and gave the right people a bottle of booze - you could order whatever you wanted in a new Ford. True or not - I have no idea. My dad bought one new car in my lifetime - a 1959 Ford that came from that factory. It was the most bare-bones car Ford sold. Manual steering, no radio, manual choke, NO electric windshield wipers, three speed manual trans with no synchro in first, cloth seats, "Mileage-maker" 223 cube six, etc. Maybe my dad didn't have any friends at that Ford plant?

I've heard many stories about anomalies. A guy in Texas swore to me that a Chevy dealer was selling station-wagons with 6.2 diesels in them - but GM says it never happened. It was a truck-only engine. I've seen many GM trucks with 6.2 diesels and TH350 transmissions - and GM says it never happened - only auto transmissions used were 700R4s and TH400s.

With John Deere - although I worked at many dealerships back to the 60s, I never really knew how things worked when it came to how an order was done. I was a grease-monkey. As I recall it - we never ordered a Deere tractor by picking options and having something custom-built like was done with cars and trucks. My boss would call Deere - usually at Syracuse, NY. Tell somebody he had a customer that wanted a machine with certain specs. Deere then would do a search of dealer inventory all over the country. Then, Deere would get back to us, tell us what was available, and where, and what the transportation charges would be.

I do know that as a Deere dealership, we did a lot of custom work on new machines. If we could not find a tractor that had what a customer wanted, we'd throw one together somehow.

[Lavoy]

On the two cylinder's at least, the Dubuque factory was pretty good at one off kind of deals. I talked at length with a former Dubuque works employee at a show a couple times. He even told a story of one customer that ordered a bunch of 440's with sidebooms. He ran all Euclid crawlers, so the factory painted a batch of 440's Euclid green for him. Funny, if they happened to be diesels, you could fool a few people into thinking they were little Euclids.
Lavoy

[jd30series]

JD 350C's DID have reverse!!!!! As an option but they were available.

[jdemaris]

JD 350C's DID have reverse!!!!! As an option but they were available.

Yes, as I already stated. When the C series came out - gear-reverse became non-standard and an option only. Gear reverse was usually purchased as part of a package along with the powershaft option.

End result - some 350Cs have it and some 350CS do not.

[CatD8RII]

Please note that not everything in a sales brochure or a purchasing guide is 100% correct



Note the "standard direction reverser" on a 350B . Id really love to find some original order sheets from a dealer listing all the options and codes to put an order in for a dozer.

[jdemaris]

Please note that not everything in a sales brochure or a purchasing guide is 100% correct

It's just a play on words.

Much depends on how specific that sale's flyer is. The words "standard" and "optional" can be misleading. With cars and pickup trucks often optional equipment is fancier and costs more. With tractors it can go backwards. With Deere 350s, the models with reversers were produced in the highest numbers - and subsequently a 350 ordered with clutch-drive instead could cost more instead of less - and was regarded as "optional." I said "could cost more" because sometimes they were cheaper. At times Deere had special sales on 350s - called "loggers specials" with manual 6 way blades and clutch drive.

The main point with reversers and 350s is this. A 350 could be ordered either with - or without - until the C series came out. Then, they only came WITH reversers. They had to since the reverser had to be there to power the new wet steering clutches. In regard to gear reverse - they all came with gear-reverse whether you liked it or not - until around the time the C came out. Then, most were sold with no gear reverse - and at that point - that gear reverse was called, by Deere, an "option."

To make things a bit more complicated, we got bulletins from Deere shortly before the C series was out -about reverser changes and availabiltiy of clutch drive models. At that time, when the late 350Bs were still being sold, they ran higher reverser pressures just like the late Cs did to power the wet steering. 150 PSI instead of 120 PSI.

The reality was -when it came to ordering - the words "optional" and "standard" were usually not part of the discussion. When crawlers needed to be ordered - a search was put out for packages we needed - in crawlers already assembled and sitting in inventory somewhere. At least from our dealership, we rarely custom ordered anything. If we could not find a crawler with the desired features - we added them ouselves. Maybe others did it different; can't comment much on that. I can say the Deere would build machines and then try to force dealers all over the country to inventory them. My boss almost shut down the business due to a fight with Deere over the forced-inventory dealings.