My colleagues friend is a contractor that switched to Deere when the original Crystal became obsolete. They requested a demo to see if it is suitable to replace an aging 7800 as a harvest tractor for the silage trailer, dumper or land leveller but
Zetor dont seem too eager.
It probably has to do with the fact that the Crystal still has a Forterra rear axle, which is too light for contracting in Holland where drawbar loads exceed 3 sometimes 4 ton. And even 6.8 ton with 14.000 liter single axle manure tanks when a 3 ton weighing disk injector is pushed into hard clay instead of being lifted. All that is unheard of when the design rules for the UR2 and even the UR3 were assembled, but today, 50 years later, load collectives are changed day and night.
Heck, when a contractor put Michelin X bib under his Volvo BM tractors 30 years ago, he started snapping halfshafts... Zetor built a Forterra with a meagre 6 ton rear axle and called it HD, basing that on design rules of the original Crystal of 1968, then on 16.9-38 bias tires.
Interestingly, Zetor DID put heavy duty rear ends in its UR1 range. My brothers Deutz D6206 has DIN 6xM18 x 205 lugs where my 3011 has 8xM18 x 220 lugs. Therefor the Major was introduced with a light duty Carraro rear end, while the 4011 bull gears ended up in todays Proxima 120 and it still isnt shy in its class
My 5718 has Bib X 16.9R30 and has MORE TRACTION than the 5245 4wd on Vredestein bias tires of the same size.
In last weeks tractorpull, a friends Ursus C-385 A and my 5718, both on BibX with very little air, competed together in the 15 ton class. I put 700kg frontloader counterweight in the 3pt and a zip tie around the cold start button. Everybody was amazed how just under 10 ton of Eastern block iron kicked ass to a Same Leopard 85 and an international 1246 ballasted to exactly 15 ton. Thats the difference modern radials make with 1968's bias tires. In fact i pulled with poor result in the 3500kg class with a pair of Vredestein duals but their stiff sidewalls didnt even flex with 0.2 bar in them, so the Michelins couldnt do their job. Without those bias duals i layd more power to the ground
The crowd was amazed that our engines just didnt die, and that we equalled 15 ton combinations by just proper tires with 0.3 bar in it...
So my point is: Even modern wide ratio radials make for totally different load collectives than when the original Crystal was designed 50 years ago.
Zetor is getting ready for a serious comeback in 2016/17 with Motorpal common rail on the engines, and a DSG gearbox.
The Czechs will come... but they will come prepared
