What is the dumbest thing you have done with your equipment ?

[marhar]

When answering the question please do not include an accident that caused a fatality. Please do not insult another poster.

I will go first: My father and I overloaded a small utility trailer with logs that extended out of the trailer. We were hauling significantly more weight than we should have and the center of gravity was between the trailer tires and the end of the trailer.

We did not go far before we lost control of the truck and ended up laying on its side in a ditch. Luckily we were not injured (just our pride) and the truck only dented a door and bent a wheel.

 

[Jstpssng]

The closest that I've ever come to flipping... I had the homemade log tongs on the bucket of my little L275 and was loading an 18 foot hemlock log onto my trailer. I don't remember the exact reason why, but for some reason I had backed up onto the berm from when they built my road with a bulldozer many decades ago, then tried to lift the log. The rear wheels came off the ground and the only reason I didn't go over was because the forks and log were over the trailer. I had to use a chainsaw to get it off, but learned what NOT to do that day.

 

[MapleLeafFarmer]

lent some to a neighbour: new neighbour came over and asked to borrow some equipment he sees me use regularly. I lent it too him even though I really didn't know him. But I am just that kind of guy.

He broke it. When returning it he complained about my stuff being "old" and was "****" and he almost hurt himself using it and could sue me. Never offered to cover repair and I never asked. We haven't talked since and that doesn't bother me at all.

aside: I too am "old" but don't consider myself "****" or junk or worthless just in need of a little more care and attention when in use. Like much of my equipment.

moral: I will come over and help with my equipment for free but will never lend out for others to use/abuse.

 

[dirttoys]

I live on a few acres, with zero level ground. Tried to turn around a trailer with skid steer on it on side hill. Jack knifed it, and slid down to an uncomfortable spot. Ruined tire and wheel, which was a hoot to get changed. Hind sight could have (maybe should have) been worse.

I have done more interesting/painful things (maybe I will kick in another one latter) but, this was the most obviously tragic from the beginning.

Best,

ed

 

[Hay Dude]

1. Was baling hay while driving tractor & baler down a hill. Had a bale spear mounted on the tractors loader. Baler started pushing me down steep hill. Baler monitor broke lose in cab, fell on floor. While leaning over to retrieve it, leaned against loader joystick, unknowingly pushing the loader down, plunging the bale spear straight into ground. Snapped bale spear off and drove over it because I couldnt stop baler.

2. While driving farm tractor tractor and pulling a center pivot discbine, I began going down a steep hill with woods at the bottom. I made the mistake of turning on the hill a bit too fast. The heavy discbine pushed the back end of the tractor down the hill into a woods line. A large tree branch, crashed through my cab side window, grazing my pretty face and masculine jaw line. lol
Nearly took my head off.

3. While stacking round bales in a long line, I decided to make a second parallel line. I had the ”passenger side” all glass tractor door open because it was hot and my AC was broken. I snagged bottom corner of glass door on a round bale and the glass door exploded like a bomb, showering me with hundreds of bits of glass. Scared the bejeebers out of me.

4. Stopped at a buddies repair garage to ask him to help me check on a miss on my tractor engine. Tractor had a 15’ bushog in tow, folded up for transport. I left the door open to the cab. He was a bit unfamiliar with my tractor. I was standing next to the engine and he was standing at the base of the cab steps down on the ground. I asked him to rev-up the engine. Instead of grabbing the throttle, he grabbed the reverser and the tractor began to take off with the mower in reverse. Luckily, I left the emergency brake on. It bogged the tractor down just enough to keep it from getting going across the railroad tracks down an embankment and into the local river.

I have many more. It happens in farming.

 

[jaxs]

Long hot drought and cattle pulled a pond down so low the surface was covered with dead channel cats I had stocked 5 years earlier.
Started pumping remainder of water so pond could be cleaned out. When water got shallow more fish began swimming on their sides and dying. While sitting empty and no rain weeds grew head high so I thought it was ready to work on. Dozer man looked at it one day while I was away and called to say bottom was only dry about 2 feet with mud below. Said if I cut the weeds it would dry faster. While mowing one rear tire broke through then the other while trying to get out. Transmission and differental set on high center. Came back ,hooked hand ratchet winch to a 12" willow on bank,told teen age son to wait until rear wheels moved then release clutch. Before wheels moved the tree snapped off and fell on me,tractor and boy without doing damage. Three days later before I finished cutting tree up it began raining. I had to repump pond twice to keep water from reaching tractor before dozer guy got there and pulled everything out.

 

[Hoobie]

Years ago I had an old 1939 Ford 9n. They had an electric starter but you could also insert a hand crank in the front to start it in a pinch. Cutting wood one fall in the woodlot the battery was weak and I was cranking it until I had a chance to replace it. Actually cranking was not a big deal and often in winter it would start easier on the crank than the electric.
One day after lunch I gave it a good whirl to get going and forgot I left it in gear. It came to life almost running me over, ran up against a small diameter tree, bent it over and proceded to climb the tree. By the time I got it shut off it was standing on its back wheels.

 

[RjCorazza]

My father enrolled me in an agricultural safety course when I was 8 or 9. It was a very thorough class, complete with shocking photos of stuff no child should see, but man did that stick with me!
Anyway, my contribution:
While (recently) pulling fence posts with my fel, I got to one set in concrete that wouldn't budge. Being safety minded of the fel's limitations and potential dangers I switched to the 3 point. In a poor judgement moment, I threaded a 9k rope through the lower link arms and around the fence post. The rope drew the arms together and put some undesigned force on the arms and snapped off the connecting ear to the transmission case (actually the brake case that bolts up between the transmission and differential case). That cost me over $2000.

 

[WVH1977]

Brand new 22 foot trailer with removable fenders. I was loading up pine logs at my mothers house to get rid of. I was not paying attention to the placement oof the grapple after putting a log on the trailer. Backed up with the tractor and bent and put a hole in the fender. One of the many dumbest things I have done with my equipment.

 

[bullbreaker]

Dumbest thing I ever did with "some" of my equipment was sell off certain tractors and attachments / implements for a small profit when in reality I didn't need the money .

 

[Hay Dude]

One cold morning, I left for a field intending to load a truck & gooseneck trailer full of round bale hay. The truck and trailer were parked on a slight downhill slope, with the truck facing up the hill towards the road, about 200’ from the roads edge. I needed to load it, drive it up the slight grade up to the road turn left onto the road, and drive to my customers place.
I proceeded to load about 10-11 tons of round bales on the trailer and strapped them all down.
Got in truck to pull trailer up the slight grade and the wheels started to lose traction & spin. The sun had heated the ground just enough to create a 1/4” of greasy mud on top of the frozen ground.
No matter what I did, she wouldnt make it up the hill.
I left the truck engine on, put the steering in a straight line and put it in neutral. Turned on headlights, 4 ways & beacon. Ran back to tractor and plunged the bale spear into the back lower bale at the end of the trailer. I pushed the trailer and the truck up the hill in a straight line until the trucks front tires came to a rest on the public road. Put tractor E-brake on and ran back up to the truck.
I thought I was going to get out of this mess after all!
Got in truck and in 4L I began to pull forward, but the front tires smoked on the road shoulder and the back tires spun in the mud of the field. It was too much weight for the front tires to pull me out. Put truck back in neutral and ran back to tractor, which was holding me from rolling backwards.
Got back in tractor and pushed the entire truck onto the road blocking traffic from both directions. By the grace of God, there was a small development road directly across the street. I jumped back in the truck for the second time, drove it with treads packed with mud into the small development road, turned around in the cul de sac and went back out to the main road. Parked truck & trailer. Turned on 4-ways and ran across street & backed up tractor sitting right at the roads edge back into the field.
A woman came out of her house screaming at me about all the mud I left on “her” development road. I said “its a public street”, jumped in my truck and left.

 

[oosik]

Building our log cabin in Alaska. Harvesting trees about ten miles from cabin site. One load of logs broke loose from the Jeep I was pulling log trailer with. Logs remained chained to the trailer but trailer ended up off the road and down about 20 feet into a ravine. Took the better part of the remaining day to get it all back up on the road and hooked back up.

Twenty five years ago - middle of the winter. Crossing the "moat" with my Ford 1700. Tractor broke thru the ice. Water was about three feet deep. FEL & bucket kept the engine up out of the water. Hand operated come-along. Slowly but surely pulled the tractor back onto dry land.

 

[blackd]

Just yesterday I broke off the hydraulic filter CHARGE FILTER | MF 1525 | MF 1525 | MF 1500 | Compacts | Tractors | Massey Ferguson | Shop AGCO Parts from the transmission on my hydro-static MF GC2400. That means NOTHING but the motor works anymore. It is now sitting front wheels perched upon 2 stumps, FEL down in a hard to reach location. The filter nipple mount is cast on the aluminum front transmission case, and broken off too short to fit a new filter.

My plan is to come-along the FEL up off the ground. Move the truck to the front of the tractor and pull it to a more open spot tor remove the attached FEl and tiller. Then load it onto the trailer and haul it the 40,miles to my dealer. Then I wait. Repair cost estimate is ~$1.5 -2K.

The dumb part is that I knew it was weakness of the tractor design, and didn't buy a skid platehttps://bro-tek.com/products/view.php?&eid=60160851 to protect it. I had planned on doing so a couple of years ago when I was negotiating on a wooded piece of property, but chose not to when the deal collapsed and my nearly all open lot was my primary use.

Another costly dumb lesson learned.

(Updated to show link to actual GC2400 skid plate)

(Updated again to show price of repair)
Got the tractor back yesterday, 5/12/2022. The total price was $2705. $600 of that was for service and transportation, so could have saved much of that by doing them myself. Total down time was just less than a month.

Alternatively, I could have gotten the repair $80 kit: Broken hydraulic filter rescue kit and had a local mechanic fix the tractor After looking at the kit I thought the labor, 14 hours in the book, would be nearly the same to repair it correctly (little chance of metal shavings in trans and hydraulic components.)

 

[HawkinsHollow]

DANG! Some crazy stories!
Broke my FEL quick attach while using a stump bucket to dig out some small trees. It was getting into the summer and ground was drying up making it a much more difficult job. Luckily welds looked like very bad penetration so it was covered under warranty. Def. did not tell my dealer I was using a stump bucket.
Sold stump bucket soon after. Kind of wish I would have kept it for minor trenching jobs or digging shallow graves.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

Rented mini-x.
Was digging with medium sized shrubs at the edge of my pond. Got a good sized one out with saturated root ball. As I swung over the pond to drop behind machine the weight towards the side of the tracks mini ex cocks up to about 30 degrees and comes to rest on the boom on the bottom of the pond. Because of the angle I brace my foot out ONTO one of the forward movement controls, LUCKILY it was the one up in the air. If it was the one on the ground it could have gotten ugly. I would have gone into pond and onto the side with the open door, probably trapping me in mini ex. Scary to think about. Luckily I was able to get my wits about me a release the shrub and get it back flat, then I changed my drawers.

 

[HP942]

When I was a kid, we had an old M Farmall that we converted from a tricycle to a wide front end. Sometimes it would start but the battery was usually dead resulting in the “almost break your arm” crank start. Anyway Dad or I parked it on a hill to make it easier to jump the clutch to start. About a week later we noticed it was missing. It had rolled down the hill and hit a tree breaking the front end off.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

Rented skid steer with heavy duty bush hog on front
Had to cross a small stream, 3 feet deep 6 feet wide. Tried to make a little crossing with cinder blocks, worked pretty well going one way. Almost got stuck in the mud over on that side but got my work done. Heading back across the stream cinder blocks rolled out from under the skid steer as I was going up the far bank. Skid steer did a wheelie cocking up almost vertical (or that is how it felt anyways). Was able to throw the bush hog down with the FEL enough to drop the front and climb up the other side. Didn't have to change my shorts on this one, but man it felt good as I drove out of that stream.

 

[wolc123]

Years ago I had an old 1939 Ford 9n. They had an electric starter but you could also insert a hand crank in the front to start it in a pinch. Cutting wood one fall in the woodlot the battery was weak and I was cranking it until I had a chance to replace it. Actually cranking was not a big deal and often in winter it would start easier on the crank than the electric.

One day after lunch I gave it a good whirl to get going and forgot I left it in gear. It came to life almost running me over, ran up against a small diameter tree, bent it over and proceded to climb the tree. By the time I got it shut off it was standing on its back wheels.

I had a similar incident with my old 1941 Allis Chalmers C one time. That tractor didn’t have a battery on it the whole 20 years or so that I owned it. Fortunately, it had a real long crank handle. That gave me time to get out of the way, the one time I cranked it while it was in gear.

It proceeded across the old barn floor, crushing everything in its path, which included a push lawn mowers, a leaf sweeper, and a wheelbarrel. It pushed all that stuff into a wall, before loosing traction and spinning the rears, which fortunately were not loaded. I was able to get on the back and kill it with the throttle lever, that had initially been about half up.

 

[setxjeff]

Loading up tractor (with rotary cutter)on lowboy . The tippy point when the front wheels are light just as the rear wheels leave ramp onto trailer. I forgot to lock brakes together I usually just tap the brakes , this time the tractor turned sideways on the trailer with brush hog sticking out one side and front wheels dangling over the rail on the other side. It happed in an instant and luckily I pushed the clutch just as it spun. I added more front weight and now check brake latch several times.

 

[oldballs]

Late in a working day, I wanted to remove the FEL from my B2620. Tired and inattentive, i did not follow the OE manual directions and ended up with the loader arms/hydraulic cylinders sitting down on the front tires. After wrestling around with it, I had dented the side panels and the grill. Just left it all night and started anew the next day.



Gr-r-r-,
Mike