You need balast or you will trash your front axle!!!! really?

[TomSeller]

If you have a son that weighs 100 lbs and a daughter that weighs 50 lbs and the daughter is at the far end of one side of a teeter totter, where does the son need to be on the other side to balance the teeter totter level? What happens if the son and daughter are each on the opposite far ends? Not including the crying.

 

[Snowback]

If you have a son that weighs 100 lbs and a daughter that weighs 50 lbs and the daughter is at the far end of one side of a teeter totter, where does the son need to be on the other side to balance the teeter totter level? What happens if the son and daughter are each on the opposite far ends? Not including the crying.

LOL!

 

[LD1]

If you have a son that weighs 100 lbs and a daughter that weighs 50 lbs and the daughter is at the far end of one side of a teeter totter, where does the son need to be on the other side to balance the teeter totter level?

1/2 way out

What happens if the son and daughter are each on the opposite far ends? Not including the crying.

Daughter goes for a helluva ride

 

[SPYDERLK]

View attachment 458257View attachment 458258View attachment 458259

Agree also that more ballast on the 3 point would probably have been beneficial.

That failure was from side/forward/backward thrust. Probably from hitting something. Maybe a latent defect compounded it. ... Certainly not a counterweight issue.

 

[sd455dan]

View attachment 458257View attachment 458258View attachment 458259
That failure was from side/forward/backward thrust. Probably from hitting something. Maybe a latent defect compounded it. ... Certainly not a counterweight issue.

Mmm - no mention of hitting anything, but was mentioned it was bought used and was hauling full loads of gravel for 5 hours on lightly snowed wet muddy ground in 4 wheel drive.

Sometimes (stuff) just happens...

 

[SPYDERLK]

Mmm - no mention of hitting anything, but was mentioned it was bought used and was hauling full loads of gravel for 5 hours on lightly snowed wet muddy ground in 4 wheel drive.

Sometimes (stuff) just happens...

Quite often failure accumulates unseen and unsensed til the final "pop". The root cause can be news so old its forgotten.

 

[Agvg]

But Kubota can't make an front axle so bad that using 4WD is a problem on normal use. After been reading a lot of threads here and I think many owners worry way to much over using 4WD on their tractor.
The problem with FEL an heavy use are usually wear on steering and center bolt, not mechanical breakdown.
How well the portal design used on Kubota and many other Asian tractors are l don't know.
On larger tractors the std is straight axle with reduction gear in the hub, don't know how high in the hp range Kubota uses this design.

 

[TomSeller]

I haven't seen any of Satins evil companions yet, but it is still February.

I can't think of one redeeming value of a yellow jacket. Is there one?

 

[Everhard]

View attachment 458257View attachment 458258View attachment 458259
That failure was from side/forward/backward thrust. Probably from hitting something. Maybe a latent defect compounded it. ... Certainly not a counterweight issue.

My reasoning which you support by saying "that failure was from side/forward/backward thrust" is that when you apply those forces as you mention to the front axle area and then on top of those forces you add a lot of weight and then finally on top of that having the tractor in 4wd adds additional forces it increases the potential for something to break. You can considerably lessen those forces by taking the weight off the front end while still doing the exact same work. That is made possible by the use of a counterweight.
I also thought I made it clear I was being an armchair warrior when it came to speculating why the failure happened in the first place. Mostly I posted that up since the reason Gladehound started this thread was questioning if there was any benefit to using a counterweight or not. I was trying to show how potentially it could make a difference and how in the real world not using an adequate amount of counterweight might lead to real failure.
Before I made a counterweight for my tractor I happily used a blade on the back and used 4wd a lot to accomplish loader work with my tractor. Then once I made and used the concrete barrel I was amazed at how much better it was. From the seat of the pants you can feel that you are not putting anywhere close to as much strain on the tractor's front end. Getting this point across for others is my real goal in posting this since it will help others when they do loader work. When people see real failure they are more likely to take note and actually consider what they are doing which is why I used that post as an example of what might potentially happen.

E.

 

[gladehound]

I don't think we can generalize a about CUTs and the risk to the front axle components due to any given use. They all have different front axles matched to different loaders.

I'm sure that some are very under built - for example a JD4100 front axle is rated for max operating weight of ~1100 pounds. This is paired with a loader rated for >2000 pound breakout force. This is just looking for trouble. with enough balast to make the loader go into relief at ground level, you probably have over 5000 pounds on an axle rated for 1100.

Move up to a jd4500 and things get much better. Axle (if memory serves correct) is rated at ~5000 pounds max op weight. You can still overload it for sure but probably only by a factor of 2 rather than 5 with the smaller tractor.

I'm only picking on JD because they list this spec. Most don't. I suspect most were designed for a max operating weight that is far below what is possible with the factory loader in a static scenario.

I would love to find ratings for my front (and rear) axles. All I know is that the portal axle in front seems to have large gears compared to most tractors of this size and I've put ~ 10,000 pounds on it and didn't have a problem (but I'll try not to do that again)

Anyone happen to know where I can find my axle ratings?