Has anyone had problems yanking stumps out with an eHydro?

[YLee Kioti]

Man this was a painful read....guess the older I've gotten the more vivid my imagination on all the stories of Darwin award winners......

would it not be more cost effective on many levels to hire out a stump grinder? If nothing else for one's own and equipment longevity?

Men being what we are, will still create enough beer drinking stories that we lived through.....heh.....

 

[CobyRupert]

A very safe alternative to chains and cables. Industrial kinetic recovery rope at work! Yankum Ropes - YouTube

I guess I don’t understand how a big elastic rope that snaps back WHEN it eventually breaks (when capacity is exceeded, age, etc..) is safer than a chain with little or no stored energy.

I pull most things with a chain. I don’t use the “running start“ method unless I’m trying to break something. With enough speed ANY pulling vehicle can overcome the capacity of ANY rope, chain or cable.
What happens when that rope breaks is a function of how much stored energy (stretch) has gone into the rope, cable, chain etc..

When I do use a cable, I make sure I’m sitting protected behind the cage that came on my logging winch.

 

[k0ua]

One other thing to consider in the video of the broken chain going thru the windshield of the jeep. The jeep is MANY feet lower in elevation than the pulling truck. Gravity worked on the broken chain on its journey towards the jeep windshield as it always does, BUT the ground continued to fall out from under the chain as it traveled along its initial vector. The vector sum of the initial vector and the gravitational vector took the chain into the windshield and into the guys face. If the jeep had been uphill and the pulling vehicle downhill, the chain would have fell harmlessly under the jeeps bumper.

Yanking on a chain is always a bad idea. Pull with a chain slowly, and if the wheels spin, thats it. Don't yank. If you are going to yank and use the elastic stored energy to "jerk" something out, you don't need to be using a chain. Many deaths and injuries have proven that.

Yanking of stumps with a tractor is dubious at best. Yanking on stumps with an aluminum rear cased tractor is just not a good idea at all.

 

[4570Man]

I guess I don’t understand how a big elastic rope that snaps back WHEN it eventually breaks (when capacity is exceeded, age, etc..) is safer than a chain with little or no stored energy.

I pull most things with a chain. I don’t use the “running start“ method unless I’m trying to break something. With enough speed ANY pulling vehicle can overcome the capacity of ANY rope, chain or cable.
What happens when that rope breaks is a function of how much stored energy (stretch) has gone into the rope, cable, chain etc..

When I do use a cable, I make sure I’m sitting protected behind the cage that came on my logging winch.

A rope isn’t that dangerous. The weight and velocity of the rope itself isn’t that much. Now put a clevis on the end of your stretchy rope and you’ve got a death trap.

 

[Deere Dude]

I recall as a 11-12 yo my dad and I would tip up old cars that I wore out driving around the farm. Tip up and chain the bodies to a couple trees and jerk the frames off them. I would be the tractor driver, a 40 HP? Allis Chalmers. I would back up to the car and when the 10+foot of slack would come tight, the frames would pop right off with a few good runs. But I recall vividly around 1960 when one time the chain snapped and come whistling past my head over the front of the tractor. That didn't bother me as a boy but my dad stopped doing that shortly after that incident. I guess he didn't want to lose a tax deduction. So, chains do not just fall down.

 

[Hay Dude]

I recall as a 11-12 yo my dad and I would tip up old cars that I wore out driving around the farm. Tip up and chain the bodies to a couple trees and jerk the frames off them. I would be the tractor driver, a 40 HP? Allis Chalmers. I would back up to the car and when the 10+foot of slack would come tight, the frames would pop right off with a few good runs. But I recall vividly around 1960 when one time the chain snapped and come whistling past my head over the front of the tractor. That didn't bother me as a boy but my dad stopped doing that shortly after that incident. I guess he didn't want to lose a tax deduction. So, chains do not just fall down.

Yeah, they do. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
There’s no one prescribed outcome. Sometimes they fall to the ground, sometimes they go upward and kill someone, sometimes they go through the grill and into the engine, and probably every other possibility in between.

 

[Hay Dude]

One other thing to consider in the video of the broken chain going thru the windshield of the jeep. The jeep is MANY feet lower in elevation than the pulling truck. Gravity worked on the broken chain on its journey towards the jeep windshield as it always does, BUT the ground continued to fall out from under the chain as it traveled along its initial vector. The vector sum of the initial vector and the gravitational vector took the chain into the windshield and into the guys face. If the jeep had been uphill and the pulling vehicle downhill, the chain would have fell harmlessly under the jeeps bumper.

Yanking on a chain is always a bad idea. Pull with a chain slowly, and if the wheels spin, thats it. Don't yank. If you are going to yank and use the elastic stored energy to "jerk" something out, you don't need to be using a chain. Many deaths and injuries have proven that.

Yanking of stumps with a tractor is dubious at best. Yanking on stumps with an aluminum rear cased tractor is just not a good idea at all.

Very good observations. The chain went through the Jeep windshield because it was level with the point at which it was attached with the tow vehicle and the fact that it was like 50 long and being yanked far beyond and margin of safety.

 

[Diggin It]

There’s no one prescribed outcome.

And no two identical chains, straps, cable or ropes connected in identical manners and stressed to identical points under identical conditions will break in identical ways, if at all.

 

[Hay Dude]

And no two identical chains, straps, cable or ropes connected in identical manners and stressed to identical points under identical conditions will break in identical ways, if at all.

Youd think the guy in the stuck Jeep would look ahead, see the pulling truck chain attached at “eye level” with him in the drivers seat and realize “ this doesn’t look safe “
What a sad, unnecessary loss of life.

 

[Mat4644]

Per the Deere manual no stump greater than 1/2 inch should be yanked.