Champion 730A on hills

Just checking if it's normal to need dropping down to 4th or 3rd gear on hills with a 1986 730A? Had a rough time on one slope with a gravel truck and pup trailing behind me. Not sure if I caught a whiff of slipping clutches or not.

You should be able to make most hills in 5th or 6th. I'd look at your fuel filters - my 720A was running rough recently and swapping them out fixed it.

Could the foam-filled tires and ripper attachment be adding enough weight to slow it down on hills?

My 730 was never overpowered either.

My 720a has a ripper on it and water-filled tires, and it handles hills just fine in all the gears. But I've also run a couple of Galion graders that were pretty beat up, and with those you'd be lucky to get third gear working decent enough to pull a hill worth anything.

Real question is whether the engine drops a pile of RPM or if the torque just starts stalling out with the machine barely moving. In other words, is it the transmission slipping, or is there an engine problem?

The issue seemed to be torque stalling more than anything else. I had a gravel truck and pup right behind me, so I was pushing to keep moving as fast as I could, but we were crawling up the hill. Without that traffic I would've just dropped down to a gear where it was pulling properly. It was a pretty steep grade though. I noticed what smelled like something burning—maybe clutch plates or oil—but it cleared up once we got over the top. On flat terrain and gentler slopes there's no problem at all. I can run 7th gear fine, but when I go over half throttle in 8th I get some tire hopping that's probably the foam filled tires acting up, but it's not a big deal since I'm not on the highway much anyway.

I had a similar issue with my 730 where it was blowing oil out the transmission vent while driving, though I didn't experience any slipping. We fixed it by extending the vent line and adding an air tank mounted on the back of the cab. The vent line goes in at the bottom and the vent outlet is at the top, so any oil that sprays out gets caught in the tank and drains back down into the transmission.

I need to check the oil level next time I'm out there. I remember reading somewhere that regular oil and filter changes are pretty important on these machines. Could old oil be part of what's causing the problem?