At Home In The Woods

[scoutcub]

Obed -

Sounds like quite a ride you took.....glad you're OK!

I went thru something similar....though not nearly as scary. Loading the dump truck with my tractor, tractor started slipping forward with a load of dirt up high, I tried to hit the brake and hit the "go" pedal.....fortunately the dump truck was my barrier.....unfortunately, the dump truck was my barrier......lol
see my thread for results of that meeting....!

assuming tractor came out Ok?

 

[walleyed]

I'll take a picture of our kitchen tile with the grout installed and post it for you.

Obed

Thanks. No rush for this. I will not be doing any tile work until March...see below



Well, I'm not going to be building a new house after all.





We found a better solution.:thumbsup: Signed the papers on a place with a 23 year old house sitting on 20 acres. Location is perfect. Only 5 minutes from town. Land has about 3 clear acres and the rest is bush. Has a nice small stocked pond that is 22 feet deep. No idea what its stocked with yet....

House is 2100 sq ft , all brick with 3 bedrooms and 3 baths. Nothing in the house has been updated since being built except the heating system which was replaced 11 months ago with a new propane furnace and fireplace. We are planning to redo all the flooring (tile and hardwood) along with the kitchen and bath cabinets. Also replacing 8 windows.
We also plan on clearing some trees and building a shop next summer or fall.

We gave the current owners the choice on closing date and it will not close until March 1st. They are buying another parcel of land closer to where they work and wanted to wait until near spring.

 

[walleyed]

A Narrow Escape!
Guys, today has been a very long day. While moving some dirt from the back yard, the tractor got away from me and started accelerating down a steep grade.

Wow glad everything worked out ok and you both are safe and sound. (You and the tractor!!!!!)

On the hydro machines I rarely use the brakes so I would guess it would take me a second or two to remember where the heck they were and by then it could be too late.

Good thing those trees were there:thumbsup:

 

[dcyrilc]

WOW!

I am very happy to hear that you and the tractor made it out OK.

Well, I learned something from this also. I have a steep driveway, and I have been in the habit of going down it in high gear and 2 WD. No more. 4 WD everywhere, and no higher than middle range.

P.S. While dropping the FEL will provide extra braking power, lowering the cutting edge is sort of a crapshoot. I haven't had to use it as a brake, but from experience scraping up dirt, there is a critical angle--too little down angle and the blade just skims the surface, too much and it digs in and wants to keep going down. This could cause a very abrupt stop. While I have never head of a forward flip over from this cause, I think a runaway tractor and a sudden stop with the FEL buried in the earth might cause one.

I supose it could depend on the angle of the hill, but we have one drive which has a 43% slope and I would not be afraid to use the front bucket on that slope in an emergency. From years of using backhoes for work, it's habit for me to drive with one hand on the FEL control. For 20+ years, almost every time I got on a backhoe I was using the bucket. Now when I get on my hand just automatically goes to the FEL control.

As for using 4WD, that's one of the things I still need to fix on my tractor. It's been stuck in 4WD since I bought it last year. It has a bad control silenoid and I will have to drain the hydro fluid (14 gallons) so I plan to do that when it's time for the next fluid change.

 

[jinman]

Obed, Thank goodness everything turned out okay. As I looked at your pictures, I could not help but think that everything that hit something was the very best part of the tractor to do that. I was figuring you would have to cut down that tree with the binding FEL bucket, but you got it out without doing that. The only times my tractor is not in 4WD is when I'm exercising the controls to keep them loosened, don't have the FEL installed, and when I'm driving on a road. As I see your place, there is no reason to take that tractor out of 4WD. From your post, I think you feel the same way now. With 4wd and HST, these tractors are about as stable as possible. With 2WD and a bucket full while going downhill, you are playing Russian roulette. I'm so happy this has a happy ending. You are so close to having a huge completion celebration that you don't need excitement like this. God bless you! It turned out okay.

 

[eepete]

Did the 2 WD downhill with bucket full once. Did the tip over the tractor once.

These 4 second mini-courses at the School of Hard Knocks will always stick with you. All you've got to do to pass is not break too much stuff (you or the equipment). I'm _very_ glad you got an 'A'.

We now return to our regularly scheduled lives already in progress.

Pete

 

[WBWI]

Obed, glad you and the tractor are ok. I'm surprised the safety police haven't jumped on this yet. Is your neighbor really straddling the cable while cranking on the come-along?

 

[dstig1]

Yowza! Nothing like that pucker factor....x100 in this case! Glad you are OK.

I use my brakes on my HST when needed, but I do have to push pretty hard to get decent braking. Mine doesn't seem to runaway in gear like that either. I have never used high range - I work between Med and Low depending on the task. Ground is too uneven to go fast and I'm always up and down a hill somewhere on our land - it's pretty steep. Low for more power or control, and Med for most tasks. I don't know that 4wd would have made a difference for you - but the gearing would have. Mine is basically always in 4wd as it is all driving on dirt/brush/mud, except for brief times on the road loading/unloading it onto the trailer.

Keep the shiny side up!

 

[Diamondpilot]

Glad you and the machine are ok...

Chris

 

[PAGUY]

Obed - Glad you and the machine are okay.

I know the feeling when we do something dumb with the tractor. Last winter after a deep snow I had the dumb idea of driving down the lawn to the backyard so I would have a path to spill my ashes over the bank back there. I got down okay in low and 4WD but when I tried to go back up the snow was so deep that the tires just spun. I tried to clean a path with the FEL but wasn't making any progress. Finally I gave up and got the Honda snowblower to make a path with no resistance from the snow which did the trick thankfully. My BIL who worked as an equipment operator told me all I had to do was back out using the FEL as my leverage to push myself back up the lawn. Hopefully I learned from my predicament but If I get into a situation like that I will have the knowledge to make the machine work for me.