mo1
Platinum Member
I have a 3038e I bought new 2017 with 406 hours. It runs great. D160 FEL, 9.5 ft BH, 10 attachments. The problem is lift capacity. I just got new 350# forks and wanted to remove a 4x4x8ft hay bundle (about 1,100#) off of truck into horse stable. I've been unloading bales no problem, but I'm 70 thinking about 75-80 years old? Yesterday I have bush hog on back + 200# ballast and lift one bale row down...but it just wouldn't quite make it. So I (here it comes) slowly drove truck away and fluid filled tires lifted a couple inches.
I quickly eased it down. Then tractor around other side, I had two pallets in breezeway (all concrete floor) and managed by bouncing load barely get it on pallets.
Now I'm faced with choices:
1) sell/trade for a 4 series, 4044R, 4052R (4066s are hard to get here). I'm told hydraulics same, just hp. I'm guessing I'd pay $30K difference? Would attachments I have work on 4 series?
2) can I boost hydraulic pressure a bit? Would that make much difference? I have a pressure gauge but never tried it.
3) have two pallets in truck bed, cut hay bands here and unload in two halves? I could buy a pallet jack to move them where they need to go.
Wife says buy new & write it off!
Decisions, decisions. Thanks in advance.
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) slowly drove truck away and fluid filled tires lifted a couple inches. 
I quickly eased it down. Then tractor around other side, I had two pallets in breezeway (all concrete floor) and managed by bouncing load barely get it on pallets.
1. I would go larger than a 4 series if you are going to be doing this very often. A 4 series with loaded tires and something much heavier than a backhoe on the 3 point should do okay with a 1100 pound bale if you were careful and went slowly. I have moved round bales that weigh in the 800-900 pound range with a tractor the size of a 4 series with loaded tires and a backhoe the same size as yours on the back. It would absolutely get light in the back when picking the bales up off the ground but they could be picked up and carefully moved. Taking one off of the second stacked layer would generally pick a rear tire off of the ground. The loader was more than powerful enough, there just wasn't enough tractor weight to have the bale that far up in the air. Maybe if there was something heavier than the backhoe it would have been better. As a point of comparison, I can move those same sized bales and stack them two tall on top of a deckover flatbed with a 5 series machine with loaded tires but nothing on the 3 point and have zero issues even with moving a lot faster.
2. Your problem is the same I had when I used somebody else's 4 series sized machine to move the stacked round bales, the tractor wasn't heavy enough. Adding more hydraulic pressure would make no improvement as that wasn't the problem.
3. For your current bales, it sounds like they are small squares banded with a Bale Band-it as you mention a "hay bundle" and "straps." You will need to cut the bands for the bundle. If you don't want to handle bales individually, throw some ratchet straps around some group of bales to keep them together and then pick them up with your forks that way.
4. I would suspect your forks are actually full sized tractor forks if they weigh 350 pounds and are rated for at least 4000 pounds. Compact forks usually only weigh 200-250 pounds and are rated for 1500-2000 pounds. Many things that are not buckets or grapples that are set up for a JD QA will be designed for the full sized JD 500 QA but also have the compact JD QA lower pins welded 3" above them so it could be used with either full-sized or compact tractors. The good news is that if that is the case, you could use your forks with a full-sized Deere utility tractor. The bad news is that swapping this set of forks for a set of compact forks probably won't be enough of a weight loss in order to let your current tractor pick up 1100 pound bale bundles very well.