Power/Traction PT425

[Incline]

I almost got stuck yesterday trying to pull my unladen 12' car hauler trailer (1460 lbs) up a paved driveway with my PT425.

The drive is between 18-20 deg slope - so it's fairly steep. Trailer is hooked to the PT with a ball hitch on the quick connect plate. I intended to go down hill, then make a left turn off the paved drive and continue pushing the trailer up a gravel road I'd just carved out.

I debated on whether to have the PT going forward on the uphill side (pushing) or downhill (pulling) side. Not knowing the machine (or my) capabilities, I didn't really want to be on the down hill side of the trailer in case things got ugly. Plus, once I got down to the gravel turn off, I'd then be stopping and pushing back uphill, which I thought might provide better weight transfer to the machine and tires.

Down, no problem. Left turn onto gravel road OK. Now pushing the trailer (cocked at an angle) up the gravel road not so much. I stopped and reversed back up the paved drive and almost couldn't pull the hill - the black marks on on drive in my pic are evidence of the rubber lost off the rear tires as I pulled the trailer back uphill (fronts were fine but didn't appear to even be turning as the backs spun.)

So I read posts on here all the time about pulling big logs out of the woods with a chain. Granted I had a steep hill to deal with but I'm wondering if I'm missing a technique here or did I just discover the limits of the machine?

 

[Marks481]

Probably too much tongue weight, so your real tires didn't have enough traction. I have had no problems pushing or pulling a 12' landscape trailer up a gravel driveway that is steeper than that, but the trailer is balanced so it probably has <40# tongue weight.

 

[MossRoad]

Try putting a hundred pounds of weight on the rear of the trailer to lighten the tongue and see if that helps.

I frequently bring home my 18' car hauler loaded with a lot of heavy locust wood. I toss the wood to the front of the trailer to give me some tongue weight on the Suburban. However, when I get home, and I want to move the trailer to the back yard with the PT425, I can lift the ball, but cannot push it. So I toss a lot of the wood from the front of the trailer to the rear of the trailer. It lightens the tongue weight and the PT can then push it.

Don't know how that will work on your hill, though. But it's worth a try. That hill looks pretty darn steep!

 

[Incline]

Thanks guys - I put 250 lbs at the back of the trailer and tried it the other way. Me backing down with the trailer uphill from me. No skidding and was able to push the trailer back up the paved hill. Seemed to help.

Even with that, I felt close to maxed out so I'll leave the gravel approach for another day.....chickened out in other words.

A separate question but somewhat related to traction - my wheels have negative camber. The rears more so than the fronts. I'm hoping that's by design. Anyone know for sure?

 

[agjones]

Dunno on the camber...

I have to move empty trailers often on sketch angles and surfaces. Here's my way to be sure that a loss of traction or control is recoverable...mostly.

I put a hole for a trailer ball in the top of my pt box blade. The bottom of your 4n1 would work...if you are ready to start modding your new stuff.

By doing that and carrying the tongue on the tool, I can change the trailer's relative point of balance using lift/tilt. I'm not lifting the trailer. Pt Backwards uphill. Trailer backwards down. Going down... Your tool and it's position can give you both leverage and friction if needed.

The equation is this: mass * velocity = have a plan b!

BTW, welcome!
A

 

[m5040]

I know this is an old post, but it is important that you should NOT have negative camber on your wheel ends, they may be coming loose from the tractor. See this thread:

https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums...lts.html?highlight=broken+bolt+on+wheel+motor

 

[Incline]

I actually asked Terry from PT about the camber issue. He said that the negative camber is designed that way at the factory. He didn't elaborate beyond that. My machine's hubs don't bolt to the tub like woodland farms do. They are welded solid so either the hubs are welded with a camber or the motor inside the hub is installed with a camber.

I'm kinda thinking that even if it's by design, there must be varying degrees of camber depending on each machine and who was doing the welding or install. Some folks don't notice any while in my case it's very obvious. The tires show significantly different wear that matches what you can see visually - heavier wear on the inside of the tire and more on the "drivers side" than the other. In fact, I've had to rotate front to back and side to side to try and balance out the tire wear. Whatever they do, there's clearly some margin of error in the camber creation.

I remember seeing a post and pictures of FOURTEEN'S tractor and it had the same negative camber.

 

[marrt]

A lot of these tractors have negative camber...mine included. I suspect it's not "by design" but is merely flex in the wheel itself. I guess one could jack up the rear end to quickly verify this theory. Also, I totally agree that PT's manufacturing process does not lend itself to a precision camber design.

One thing to note...reversing the wheels will make the camber much more obvious. As you noted, this was very evident on FOURTEEN's tractor, which I remember from years ago. This sort of supports my wheel flex theory.

 

[Incline]

I will say that the negative camber was evident prior to reversing the wheels, both visually and by putting a level up against the wheel. Makes perfect sense that the reversed position would exaggerate it.

 

[m5040]

Doesn't make any sense to me. Most machines I have dealt with have a slight positive camber and when loaded within the design capabilities, bend into zero camber, returning to pos camber after load is removed.