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

[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