Ballast ballast box weights?

hanson1999 · Sep 7, 2009

I am going to get the jd ballast box for my 2520. if filled with concrete anyone know how much it would weigh?? or filled with gravel?? i am hoping to somehow get around 800 pounds of weight on the back.

Runner · Sep 7, 2009

My situation was this: I had (7) 42 lb suitcase weights for the front and a ballast box. I wanted some removable weight for the box so I wouldn't have to use the full amount of weight all the time.

So, I put (4) 80 lb bags of concrete in the box which left just enough room for the cast iron weights to sit in the top. Now, I have a box that weighs about 473 lbs without the cast iron and 809 lbs with (8) suitcase weights (I bought an extra one because I had room in the box for it).

hanson1999 · Sep 7, 2009

runner,

that looks great just what i'm lookin for, did u buy bags of quikcrete and just mix it up right in the box?? that sounds almost to simple!!

kennyd · Sep 7, 2009

Read post #17 in THIS thread for weights.

Runner · Sep 8, 2009

hanson,

Well, kind of a long story. I had a couple of bags of quickcrete sitting around that had partially hardened up and I didn't know what to do with them. So, I got the bright idea to use them in the ballast box. I knew two bags wouldn't be enough weight, so I bought two new bags.

However, I didn't want to have a permanent fill in the box, so I decided to line it with a couple of layers of sheet plastic. This also sealed up the box so that the liquid from the wet concrete would not seep out the seams.

So, the way I filled it was, put in the plastic liner, then, alternated layers of the old hardened up quickcrete (crunched up with a sledge hammer) with layers of wet mix (mixed in a wheel barrow) with plastic sheet in between.

This way, I figure that I can remove the concrete in the future if I want to by just smacking it with a hammer and chisel to break up the layers. However, in reality, I will probably never remove it.

Once I got the top layer of wet mix in, I smoothed it out with a trowel and made sure it was level. The four bags filled it just enough to leave room for the cast iron weights in the top.

The other thing I like about this solution is that it gives me a great place to store the cast iron weights which I don't use all that much otherwise.

On edit, I noticed that I wrote that I had 473 lbs of weight in the box with 4 bags of quickcrete which was a mistake. I think the number is more like 437 lbs with just the concrete and 809 with all of the weights.