Bye, bye irritating turnbucles

   / Bye, bye irritating turnbucles #41  
John Deere 3720.
My stabilizers line up and pin up decently and keep the ballast box or mower centered when hooking them up One irritating thing for me is when the tractor shifts from a bump or small hole the rear implement seems to slam back and forth because there is a little slack.

There isn't any way to get slack out to keep this from happening that I can tell. Has it always been there but just am more aware of glitches.

Both stabilizers seem tight but still a slight sway occurs that has an unwanted slamming action. Anything to help that?

I believe you will find 2 things happening
1) you apparently do not like this concept, but the more ridge something is, the more susceptible it is to vibration damage so some looseness is needed/required or you end up with stress fractures.
2) the tension changes as you raise an lower your 3PH. So if you tighten your stabilizers in a different position than you actually carry the load, differing levels of tension should be expected.
One of the primary purposes of the stabilizers in proper tension is to prevent rear tread damage on the inside of the tire. A second major purpose is to avoid the jerking of a loosely adjusted 3PH as a load shifts from side to side which is normal in most environments where tractors are used (remember point 1 that a bit of slack is necessary to prevent damage, but not so much that you are jerked around by that movement).
 
   / Bye, bye irritating turnbucles #42  
You don't really want it very tight. 3 PT is not a perfect linkage setup, quite often the pivot point for the stabilizers is not perfectly aligned with the pivot point for the lift arms. This causes it to bind in certain 3 pt height positions if the turnbuckles are too tight.

On mine with the telescopic style, I get about 1/4" of play and that's exactly how I like to run my 3 pt implements.

Interestingly enough, this is by design. The reason this is done is so that, when using ground engaging implements, they can move around when they are in the ground, and then they tighten up when raised for road travel. On larger tractors, this is usually done with blocks that prevent movement when in the raised position. I'll try to remember to get a picture after school and try to post it.
 
   / Bye, bye irritating turnbucles #43  
Looks to me like a lot of folks are overthinking what the telescoping stabilizers are intended for and how to use them. They're strictly for stabilizing the lift arms with no attachment on, centering the attachment if one IS on, and preventing that attachment from swinging side to side, i.e. stabilizing the attachment. Triangles work. Simplest form of geometry, and calculus will prove that EVERYTHING is made of triangles. They're a lot stronger than you give them credit for. Look how small the lift arm connecting rods are. The stabilizers on my LX2610 are nearly just as big. If you're getting excessive forces on the stabilizers and bending them, perhaps you should avoid slamming into trees with your attachments while you're doing donuts on your tractor.
:cool2:
The only thing that's going to bend one of those is a pretty catastrophic impact to the side of the attachment. You're more likely to damage the implement than the telescoping stabilizer, especially if you set them so that you have minimal swing. I try to avoid using the slotted holes if at all possible so that both share whatever lateral forces are created by a swinging implement. If you're pulling on things at an angle, well, simply put, you're doing it wrong.

I've noticed that most of the folks talking about replacing their turnbuckles with the telescoping type have the stabilizers on the outside of their lift arms. If you want the telescoping type to do you real justice, find a way to attach them on the inside from about half the length of the lifting arm, angled in toward the centerline of the tractor. This is the way Kubota put them on the new LX series. There's gotta be a reason they moved them inside, and probably the same reason Ford put the stabilizer chains on the inside as well. Stabilizers are a lot stronger at the sharper angle and don't take near as much adjustment for alignment of the lift arms. I've whacked several trees going past them with my box blade and haven't bent anything yet. I use a 3 point receiver hitch to pull small (<6" scrub) stumps with so that I get maximum lift as close to the rear tires as possible for the most effective pull on the stump. Some have had tap roots at least 4 feet in the ground, and I pulled them without digging at all. I take a strain with the lift, then rock back and forth on them a little with the HST until I hear the roots start to pop. Haven't hurt a thing doing that except a few scratches on the dual ball accessory for the receiver hitch. If I do bend anything in the lift hardware, my wife has permission to take the tractor keys away from me. The only thing I've bent is the top edge of my box blade where I put a shackle in a hole that didn't really want a shackle in it. Can't blame that on the chain, the shackle, or the box blade now, can I? The biggest mistake that so many people make with a tractor is snatching things with a chain. That's just bad practice all the way around. Bad for the tractor, bad for the chain, and if the chain breaks, might get real bad for the operator. If you want to snatch, get a snatch rope or nylon sling. They'll absorb the shock and won't break your toys.
 
   / Bye, bye irritating turnbucles #44  
The only thing that's going to bend one of those is a pretty catastrophic impact to the side of the attachment.

That won't even happen if you have them set right, to be put into tension with the sway. They may break through a different failure method, but it won't be from bending. That's why having them set correct is important, as it eliminates all the possible failure modes except for tension. And they can take a lot of load in tension.

The B models (which the LX replaced) have always had the telescopic stabilizers on the inside due to limited space between the rear tires on these smaller tractors (you'd lose spread/width for the 3-pt hitch if they were on the outside, and probably not be able to fit Cat 1 implements). The LX has the same setup, completely unchanged from the B models they replaced. L, Grand L, and larger models have the stabilizers on the outside of the arms since they are wider and can accommodate them on the outside. I don't think it has anything to do with attaching to the centerline or the angle. As long as they go into tension when loaded, those things won't matter.
 
 
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