Yep, if you need a 3/8" chain, you need a bigger tractor.
I have pulled a lot of things with a K5 4x4 Blazer or Dodge W250 that I could not budge with the 8N.
On the other hand, you will never damage a 3/8" chain with anything less than a semi tractor. Glad you are getting some good use out of the little tractor, and enjoying it. That is what they were built for.
Grandad took 80 acres out of sagebrush and converted it into an irrigated dairy farm in the late 40s he had one 8N with a loader and back blade permanently attached to clean cow pens. He had two more 8Ns which were used for plowing, discing, planting, corrugating, mowing, raking, baling, and hauling hay. The 8N does not have enough power to run a baler off the PTO, but a two cylinder Wisconsin on the baler covers the power issue, at least on the little balers we were using up through the early '80s..
those three little Fords served Grandad well as his only farm tractors up through the mid '80s when he gave up farming at age 80 plus.
I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since I bought it. But it's been running like a champ. It's got some little things to be done to it. The valve cover gaskets are dribbling oil. I suspect it's got those old cork gaskets. I'm going to replace them with some rubber gaskets. It wouldn't be much of a job but you have to take the manifold off to get to them.
Everything is real tight on it. The clutch will cause the tires to dig a hole in the ground and the brakes will lock the wheels up in gravel,....front end is tight and straight,..hardly any play in the steering.
That big ugly ass bush has been pulled and drug back to the brush pile. I'll take the chain saw back there later and cut it up into fire pit size pieces.
There's going to be a lot of clean up fires this fall.
