How to Shift Gears on a Tractor

You have purchased a new tractor to maintain your landscape or your garden and you soon find out that it is different than driving your automobile in a variety of ways. One of those is in how you change gears in it. Shifting gears on a tractor is much different than on a car.

• Learn what all the shift levers between your legs are prior to starting the tractor up. You will find a manual shift lever, perhaps a multi range lever, a power take off (PTO) lever, and maybe a two to four wheel drive lever.


• Start with the manual shift lever in the neutral position. The most important difference between your cars transmission and the tractors is that the tractor DOES NOT have a synchronized transmission. What that means is that in your car you shift gears to attain a different speed range. In a tractor you MUST stop the tractor prior to making any adjustments on any of these levers. Otherwise you could do serious damage to the transmission or the levers.


• Look at the manual transmission and you will see it has the different gears marked off usually four forward and a reverse. Just as most automobiles do. Just make sure you stop, depress the clutch prior to shifting.


• Take a look now at the multi range lever. This takes your tractor from slow and powerful to faster and less powerful. For instance you may want to plow the garden and need power and no speed. Put the multi range lever into low for power and the manual transmission into first or second and plow away.


• Checking the PTO lever you will usually see one to four or five positions. The PTO is for the different things you will normally use off the rear of the tractor. Those would be mowing units, disking tools or sprayers and the like. This lever transfers power to the back to run these utility implements.


• Keep in mind that whenever you plan to use any of the gear levers on your tractor that you MUST completely stop the tractor, depress the clutch and then shift the lever to a new position.