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Note the 1/2 of the wheel has the lugs packed with mud. When your load stops you in a muddy field and those wheels begin to spin, the lugs are pumping mud out from under the tire. Figure about 1" per lug. These tires have about two dozen lugs around the circumference, so the 1/2 turn dropped the tractor one foot. You can't fight it by gunning the engine; you have to shut down. This tractor is hitched to a pull-type disc without wheels and hydraulics to lift it, so it will have to be unhitched, and then the tractor should jump right out of the holes that it made. If the driver had let the wheels spin he would have had the rear end of the tractor flat on the ground in another turn. It doesn't take long to wreck your day, and many farmers have been hurt or killed over the years trying to extricate tractors from this predicament. One farmer I heard about chained a fence post to each wheel, thinking that the tractor would lift itself up and out of the situation. He paid for his inexperience with his life when the tractor flipped over backward instead of going forward. Listen to the old-timers if you fool around with old equipment. It will save you a lot of trouble, and might save your life.
1 comment:
Way back in my early days I worked at a truck farm. The owner had breached the dam to allow clearing out the badly silted irrigation pond. He told me it was OK to take the little Cat down & bulldoze out the mud. Of course he knew more than me, as I was just a kid and "everybody knows you can't stick a Cat". I bailed out when the mud covered both tracks! It took over a month for the ground to dry enough to get it dug out.
Merle
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