First week

[Valorum]

So last week we bought our first tractor, a Massey Ferguson 1533 with Power Shuttle, FEL and tooth bar I posted up a few pics of the new acquisition right after it had been delivered to us here. I figured we should post up a follow up to show you what we've put this new tractor through in its first week

The first day, the evening of the day we got it, we wanted to test it out of course! Here's the wife grinning ear to ear on her new toy:

And here she is getting it dirty turning some manure in the improvised manure pile:

After that, the tractor was nice and dirty, as it should be i guess

One of the first projects we had planned to do was to move a fence + gate down by the stalls. The gate that was there was only a 4ft gate, and we needed it to be a much bigger gate so a tractor / truck could get through it. We also wanted to move the fence + gate to open up more space for a tractor / truck to be able to move around closer to the barn. To create the new fence we had to sink two 4x6 posts. We are also planning on fencing in the whole front yard (3/4 acre or so), so the choice for our first implement was easy. It was acquired on Friday and hooked up on Saturday to tackle the job:

And after carefully moving around, angling, positioning and familiarizing ourselves with the tractor and controls etc, it was time to drill baby drill:

After that we did the second hole, ended up measuring a lot again, manually dug some more to get the posts' distance just right, and then finally poured in some gravel at the bottom, set the posts, braced them and poured concrete. By then it was way past lunch time, so we took a break so the concrete would get a chance to set. When we got back we put the boards up (screwed them in, not hammered, i hate nails), removed the braces and filled the holes around the posts with dirt. The end result for day 1:

Me posing proudly next to our first project

The next day it was time to take down the old fence + small gate. You can see the old fence with the little gate behind me in that previous picture. We first hung the new big gate so that the area was closed off, then we proceeded to dismantle the old fence & gate:

The first post came out fairly easy. We had to figure out how to do it right, but it didn't really give us much difficulty. But the 2 posts on either side of the gate proved to be a challenge! The tractor was not able to just pull 'm out, and we had to manually dig quite a bit. Turned out the posts were sunk quite deep and had a big chunk of concrete around them. But after a lot of pushing, pulling and digging we finally got them out:

(Notice the proper use of seatbelt by the wife After reading some of the threads in the Safety forum, i pressed upon her the importance of using that. I'm proud of her. )

After we filled the holes and cleaned up we called it a day. We were pretty pleased with our first tractor project Sure, it took us all weekend to do it, but hey, we're new at this

The tractor certainly earned its keep this weekend. It was well worth the monthly tractor payment to have it to do the digging and pulling etc I figure if on average we get one good weekend like this out of the tractor each month, it'll be well worth it!

Looking forward to many more fun projects on the tractor

 

[canoetrpr]

Well done you two!

 

[LarryD]

That's a very nice rig and it will give you lots of satisfaction, as evidenced by all the smiling people in the pictures. Have Fun. You'll probably find yourself using it more than one weekend a month though...

 

[Robert NC]

Nice tractor and good pictures. Nice to see the safe use and also it puts the size of tractor into perspective. Some of the pictures on Manuf. pages make them look smaller than they are. Know you'll get a lot of use out of it.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Good job. THe photo is off a little fencing job me and my brother in law did. It took us 4 days with two tractors, PTO PHD, hand PHD, shovels, FEL, a couple of drills and a grinder with a cut off blade to get the aluminum fence panels and all the post set and concreted in. But it looked good when we finished. We decided that we couldn't make any money doing fence building for a living though. We had to first grade the fence line to get it level and get some drainage since the whole thing is setting on a rising hill from the road. That was my first real dirt grading job with the FEL. Later after the fencing I hooked up to the box blade and got a real grading job going for my shop location. I had to cut down a 52 x 30 pad for my shop which required cutting about 4 foot cut from a hill and relocating the dirt to the low side. Another 2 1/2 days for that on. Had the contractor shot in the grade afterward and we got it within 2" of level on all 4 corners just eyeballing it. I was really proud of that one.

 

[framer]

Nice tractor and pictures. Looked like a good weekend for work. Your wife
looked like women that just went shopping and bought a outfit on on sale.I
wish my wife could get that excited about a new tractor.Good luck Framer

 

[Charlton John]

Your wife looked like women that just went shopping and bought a outfit on on sale.I
wish my wife could get that excited about a new tractor.Good luck Framer

Wow how true this is I wish this as well, than maybe it would be easier convincing her how much I need a BH

Great job, nice tractor, and thanks for sharing

 

[Gary Fowler]

Does your MF just powershift with out using the clutchbetween forward and reverse in each gear. Does it have a neutral between F & R How many gears does it have? My BIL is looking at new tractors and thinks he wants a HST. I dont have any experience with them but from the comments here, it seems to be a mixed bag. I see that you went with gear and powershift. I have an old 84 model graymarket Yanmar with powershift that I like because you can shift reverse, neutral and forward L, M and H in one of 4 gears. I was wondering if the MF was like that.

 

[polo1665]

Very nice, I am sure that you'll get at least one good weekend's work per month out of that tractor. Nice job posting the pics and narrative. You and your wife look to make a good team that enjoys working and spending time together. There is alot to be said for that.
Enjoy your new tractor, I sure have enjoyed mine.

Mark

 

[Valorum]

Thanks guys

Gary - Nice job on the fencing And yes, our tractor with power shuttle shifts between forward & reverse without clutching. It has a neutral in the middle. We tried all three types of transmission - shuttle shift (8x8), power shift (12x12) and hst. The shuttle shift was ok, but we will be doing a fair bit of FEL work, which means backing up and moving forward a good bit, so we weren't too crazy about having to clutch all the time. My wife wasn't a big fan of HST in general, and i did not like the pedals on the MF: The "go forward" pedal is right below the brake pedals. This means that to brake you gotta lift your leg up to step on the brake (gets tiring), while on the non-HST the brake pedals are lower. And if your foot slips, you accidentally would hit the "go forward" pedal instead There's also less floor space on the HST. The power shuttle worked nice, with being able to go back and forth quickly without having to clutch. It was the right compromise for us. The power shift has 12 fwd and 12 rev gears. 4 of 'm are below 1mph. So you can get quite precise with it all if needed. Also, and i think you cannot do this with the regular shuttle shift because of how the gears are synced, you can shift gears on the fly (with clutching) with the power shuttle. So you can still pick up speed if you need to travel a little distance after pulling away from a pile where you just scooped up something with your FEL.