snoracer
New member
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2013
- Messages
- 11
- Location
- Northern, Mn
- Tractor
- John Deere 4300, Two John Deere 425's AWS, Allis Chalmers CA
This will be a rather lengthy post, so I'll break it into small chunks.
Let me start out by giving a great big thank you to dfkrug for all of his help and encouragement. Without it I never would have attempted this very major repair.
Here's what happened - my dad and I, have a small 40 acre farm/hunting property that is only 2 miles from our homes. I keep my JD 4300 at my house and trailer it up to the farm when I need it there. I just use it to mow the trails and harvest firewood. Since it is such a short distance from home to the farm, I had gotten into the habit of not tying the tractor down on the trailer when I towed it, and just relying on lowering the FEL and setting the parking brake to hold the tractor on the trailer. I had done this many times without any incidents. That is, until the last time I towed it. I had only gone about a 1/2 mile when the tractor slid off the back of the trailer. The FEL got hung up on the back of the trailer and the rear tires bounced 3 times on the pavement before the tractor came loose and then rolled down into the ditch (free wheeled, not roll over) and kept on going until it ran into a barbed wire fence and stopped. I went down to the tractor and attempted to drive it back up to the trailer, but it wouldn't move. All the hydraulics worked fine (FEL and rock shaft), but no forward or reverse. It acted as if the range selector was in neutral. Now comes the task of diagnosing and repairing the damage. I called the local tractor repair guy to see if he could tackle this. He told me that it would be at least a month before he could get it in. I asked him if I should start tearing the tractor down to save him some time and me some money (time is money). He said yes, so I began the process. That's when I found dfkrug's post on a complete rebuild of a JD 4300, and several other of his posts. After reading everything I could find, and e-mailing and speaking to Dave, I got the courage to keep on digging deeper into this project. Attached photo's are of the trailer damage. Next post I will begin the teardown/diagnosis. Stay tuned !!
Let me start out by giving a great big thank you to dfkrug for all of his help and encouragement. Without it I never would have attempted this very major repair.
Here's what happened - my dad and I, have a small 40 acre farm/hunting property that is only 2 miles from our homes. I keep my JD 4300 at my house and trailer it up to the farm when I need it there. I just use it to mow the trails and harvest firewood. Since it is such a short distance from home to the farm, I had gotten into the habit of not tying the tractor down on the trailer when I towed it, and just relying on lowering the FEL and setting the parking brake to hold the tractor on the trailer. I had done this many times without any incidents. That is, until the last time I towed it. I had only gone about a 1/2 mile when the tractor slid off the back of the trailer. The FEL got hung up on the back of the trailer and the rear tires bounced 3 times on the pavement before the tractor came loose and then rolled down into the ditch (free wheeled, not roll over) and kept on going until it ran into a barbed wire fence and stopped. I went down to the tractor and attempted to drive it back up to the trailer, but it wouldn't move. All the hydraulics worked fine (FEL and rock shaft), but no forward or reverse. It acted as if the range selector was in neutral. Now comes the task of diagnosing and repairing the damage. I called the local tractor repair guy to see if he could tackle this. He told me that it would be at least a month before he could get it in. I asked him if I should start tearing the tractor down to save him some time and me some money (time is money). He said yes, so I began the process. That's when I found dfkrug's post on a complete rebuild of a JD 4300, and several other of his posts. After reading everything I could find, and e-mailing and speaking to Dave, I got the courage to keep on digging deeper into this project. Attached photo's are of the trailer damage. Next post I will begin the teardown/diagnosis. Stay tuned !!
