Dumbest Thing you have done with your tractor

[motepoc]

This is going to be a long story, so hope you have patience.

I am from the north, Philadelphia (12 years), Bethlehem (6 years) Pa. So, yes, I am one of those DANG (not sure thats spelled right) YANKEES. But my FIL accepted me just the way I was.

I tried to help him as much as I could. The first time he let me drive a tractor, he put me in a pecan field (50' between each tree) on a International H pulling a two gang toothed drag harrow that he had just put a 16' long 2"X10" piece of oak on the front of (besides being a good farmer, he was also a good carpenter). After a little bit of training on the gears and brake and clutch, he let me go. I went down the first lane and got to the end and made a turn. Somehow, that gang harrow or whatever didn't follow the tractor how I had immagined, and it hit the first pecan tree and broke that 2"X10" in to two pieces (one about 5' and the other 11'). He came running to me as I stopped and said that it was okay, he could finish it now.

He didn't like me to drive the tractors too much. He told people that what I didn't plow up or plow under, I ran over. So he let me do some maintenance. See, I was a mechanic in the service (Aerospace Ground Equipment Repairman) and I had just completed a 3 year training course at work and had gotten my mechanics card. So I told him I'd do maintenance work for him. He said good, guess he was thinking I wouldn't be on a tractor and couldn't do much harm. So he had me put a set of points into an International Super C. Not much to that. He told me when I finished to bring it to him in a field about 15 miles from the house. I worked on it hard, and finished in no time, but it was close to liunch, so I waited until after lunch. Then my wife (his daughter) had a few things for me to do, so it was a little late when I got the trator to him. Just swapped and brought the International M home. His two boys had gotten to the house, and since I arrived we had put up a basketball goal. Got them to start playing before it got dark. Well it got dark and FIL didn't show up. We figured we better jump in the truck and go and check on him. We got to the field and looked, could see the tractor in the middle of the field, but not him. We walked to the tractor and as we got closer, we could see a faint light near the ground. Really had us wondering. When we got closer, we could see him on the ground crawling around with a lighter in his hand. He said the C started to spit and sputter and finally stopped. He got down and opened the distributor and when he did, the point fell out. He wanted my card so that he could use it to search for the points and not use the gas in his lighter. I told him I would find them in the morning and fix it. He said that was okay, he would take care of it.

And one last little story. He sent up to the peanut field (about 20 miles) to check on the peanuts. I went and came back with the bad news. I told him that he didn't have any peanuts. He said "Tom, I know I have some, I was up there last week and htere were plenty". I told him Mr. C, I walked up and down the rows and there wasn't a peanut on the bush. He just shook his head. Geez, how was I supposed to know that you plant them upsidedown down here.

There's actually a lot more, but this is too long now. Maybe a little more later.

 

[flINTLOCK]

Not a tractor incident, but moral of the story is the same. Borrowed a buddy's car in college for pizza run one nite. Parking was always tight, but I saw nice wide open spot waiting for me on my return. I carefully backed into spot, turned car off and got out before I heard voices under the car. I had parked perfectly over stairwell bulkhead leading to basement of gameroom. Needless to say, don't back up without checking landing spot!!!!

 

[Farmerford]

Mine may not be the dumbest (but it is close), but it has to be the most embarrassing, particularly if you consider how many people witness the stupidity first-hand.

July 4 several years ago was a Saturday and my Kubota dealer was having a barbeque for his customers. His shop is on a country highway about 15 miles from town. Luckily, the Kubota B2400HST (with FEL and tiller) I had ordered for my wife to use came in a few days earlier and the dealer had it all put together by Friday night. He could not deliver it Saturday because of the barbeque, so I would have to wait until Monday.

Despite the fact that the B2400 was 杜y wife痴 tractor, that it was far from the first new tractor I had ever gotten, and that there was nothing that I really needed it for at the time, I could not stand the thought of not having it.

On the way out of town to the barbeque my wife and I passed the local Home Depot and out front were several new trailers 登n sale for July 4. So I bought the largest flatbed they had, thinking it would hold the B2400. It was only $400 so that tells you something about the size and the quality. The tires were about the size of saucers. But the shiny new orange Kubota overwhelmed my judgment.

We get to the dealer痴 and enjoy the barbeque and beer, along with a hundred or so other customers.

When I tell the dealer that I will take the B2400 back with me on the HD trailer he tries to talk me out of it, but I insist. I have measured, I tell him, and it will fit if each rear tire hangs off the side about 4 and the front and rear tires are exactly centered over the front and back edges of the bed.

The tires are kinda small, he says. But I tell him I have checked the specs and they are adequate (lie).

I trip the tilt on the trailer, let the back down on the asphalt, and start driving the B2400 up the tilted bed. I get all the way onto the trailer (front and rear tractor axles exactly centered over the edges of the bed) and discover that the center of gravity of the B2400 (with FEL and tiller and MMM) is still behind the trailer axle so the trailer bed will not tilt forward into the flat position. Actually, this is fortunate because I realize that if it did tilt to flat the FEL would hit the top of the Honda Passport 鍍ow vehicle.

No problem for me, I back down off the trailer, spin the tractor around, and back up onto the tilted trailer. Exactly as I planned, just an inch or so before the front tires roll off the front edge of the trailer bed the center of gravity of the tractor passes over the trailer axle and the front heads down.

What I failed to anticipate was:

1. As the trailer tilted forward the relative location of the trailer axle moved toward the rear of the trailer, so the tractor was effectively moving further ahead of the trailer pivot point, which caused it to tilt down much faster than I anticipated.
2. It tilted down so fast that when the front edge of the trailer bed contacted the trailer tongue it barely slowed down. It just pushed the center of the tongue down to the pavement, putting a nice 天 crease in it.
3. Before the front of the trailer tilts all the way to the ground, the tiller on the TPH contacts the spare tire mounted on the Passport tailgate, punctures the tire, and then pulls the spare tire mount (and a big piece of the tailgate) with it to the ground.
4. There was no way I could spin what happened into 笛ust like I planned for the 100 or so people watching me. Here I am, still in the seat of the B2400, the FEL pointing skyward at about 45 degrees toward the back of the trailer, and the tiller a few inches off the ground supported by the hissing spare tire and mount (that had been) on the Passport.

At least the little donut tires on the trailer did not burst.

There is a happy ending. Sort of. As I was sitting there on the B2400 tilted backwards on the minitrailer, my wife bought from the dealer one of the new tandem lowboy trailers he had just gotten in. They backed it up under the tilted up rear of the little trailer and I drove the B2400 from the little trailer right onto the tandem trailer. Then we threw the crumpled little trailer and spare tire assembly onto the tandem trailer, hooked up the Passport, and I pulled the whole crowd back to my place.

Actually, it was not stupidity. It was all part of my clever plan to get my wife to approve a tandem trailer.

When we got home I flipped the little trailer over on its back on the ground so that the 天 in the tongue pointed up. Then I put the blade of the Cat D3B on the point of the 天 and pressed down all the way. I keep that little trailer to remind me just how dumb I can be at times. It works pretty good, except that the tongue looks like a snake, and it tracks about two feet off to the right.

 

[Podunkadunk]

Mine may not be the dumbest (but it is close), but it has to be the most embarrassing, particularly if you consider how many people witness the stupidity first-hand......

Farmerford, I needed this story to break the monotony of the day! This is my favorite one yet.

I'm glad it all worked out for you...hard lesson to learn though!

Podunk

 

[SLOBuds]

Rented a Dingo for the day, with 24" auger, to dig a billion holes in the ground for trees. The whole setup was some $285 for 24 hours: Dingo, auger, and trailer.

First thing was to position the Dingo over to the opposite side of my 10 acre parcel. It was May, and a bit damp. The route of me getting over to the opposite side goes through a ditch.

Dingo got stuck in the ditch. It took the whole neighborhood to get the Dingo out, including a flock of gals who generally enjoyed the spectical of all these guys unable to pluck a Dingo out of a ditch.

My neighbor brough over HIS tractor to help. It got stuck. Then unstuck.

My neighbor also is a commercial fisherman. He did something that I would have never thought of. He brought a rather large Danforth anchor and 'anchored' it into the ground as a place to attach comealongs and other levarage devices, which ... eventually pulled the Dingo out.

Now the Dingo is filthy. It's day 2 and I have to get it back to the rental yard.

We pull it up to a relatively flat area and spend a good hour washing off all the crud. Neighbors and gals are in full party-mode now. Beer, wine, appetizers, everything is freely flowing while I wash off the Dingo.

Zero holes were drilled into the ground.

I dove the equipment back to the rental yard where a zit-faced kid asked me 'how'd it go?'

'Fine.'

 

[escavader]

Idid a pretty embarrassing dumb thing today.Iwas running a large all terrain6000 lb jcb forklift, moving products.the blocking pallet we have near the factory was empty,so i moved it next to the loading area near the mill, temporary,and went and got another pallet of blocking .Instead of driving right back and getting the first pallet,and putting it in its proper place,i went and got some more material to feed our mill.I forgot about the 4 inch high pallet,and drove that four wheel drive right over it,bang crunch5jhr7rhd!!!
Never hurt a thing not even the pallet,but the guys never usually catch me screwing up,so boy did they raz me
ALAN

 

[Builder]

This one happened to my neighbor about 10 years ago:

Unbeknownst to me my neighbor had rented a small Ford 4x4 with a FEL to dig a pit in his back yard to bury some stumps. This guy fancied himself pretty tough, X-marine, tattoos, etc.

From inside my shop, I could hear him overevving the tractor and ramming it into the ground to dig the pit. I would walk over to the window once in a while chuckling as he'd ram the little 30HP tractor into the ground like it was a D-7. Eventually, he got the pit dug, then started using the FEL to carry stumps down into the pit.

After maybe an hour, I heard this horrible screaming and crying for help. I look out my window and see the tractor-back tires up in the air about 5 feet off the ground, front of the tractor nose down into the pit and my neighbor strapped into the seat basically facing down the hood straight down to the ground, held in the seat only by the seatbelt.

"Oh my Gawd!!!" I said running outside over to the tractor the engine still screaming at about 2000 RPM and getting ready to completely flip over the front axle. I reached up and cut the throttle, then helped extract him from the seatbelt, which was cutting into his hips pretty bad.

Here he had picked up a stump that exceeded the limits of the FEL. When he entered the pit, the tractor nosed down while in 4x4 the front axle nearly rolled the tractor nose over rear like a ferris wheel.

Needless to say, his ego was hurt pretty bad. I finished the job for him because his wife insisted that he go inside and lay on the couch.

She and I still get a good laugh about that one.

 

[tornadowatchranch]

When trying to pull the garden tractor onto a 4x8 tilt bed trailer the turf tires tend to spin on the aluminum deck before they catch to get you up on it. When they catch at full throttle you move forward right up onto the frame in front of the trailer deck. No way to reverse back onto the trailer. Lucky I have a nice neighbor with a full size TLB and some straps. The only thing damaged was my ego.

 

[DuaneW]

Age 14, brother and me had bought our first tractor, an 880 oliver, used it like a car or 4 wheeler. Took it to the woods to look for cattle, got too steep so we parked the tractor and headed down into the hollow on foot, we hear loud noises behind us, turn and look. The 880 is sliding on leaves down into the hollow. It slid between two trees (narrow front), denting the hood and somehow NOT busting the exhaust manifold. Took two tractors and a LOT of dirty looks from dad to get it out. Second dumbest thing was letting dad sell the 880 because he was tired of it sitting around while we where in school. Was a good low houred tractor with only cosmetic damage to the hood.

DuaneW.

 

[gabby]

Luckily this one didn't hurt anything or anybody. Just happened this week. The uphill rear wheel rolled up on a pile of dirt that had just dropped out. I've done plenty more dumb things but no pictures of them.

http://www.tractorbynet.com/photos/showphoto.php/photo/4566/sort/1/cat/500/page/1

(can somebody tell me how to make the picture come up instead of the url??)