Pulling a 5300 LB lawn roller

[VOL54]

I recently purchased a New Holland TC45DA tractor (45hp, 38 hp pto, industrial tires, 4wd) to care for a 7 acre plot that is very rough. I am thinking of building a lawn roller out of a 500 gallon propane tank from plans I found on another internet site. Estimated gross weight of the roller full of water is 5300 lbs. My question is "will the tractor be able to handle the load?" The land is combination of flat and gently rolling hills. Thanks for your help.

 

[BeezFun]

Your manual probably has a chart that shows the allowed weight limits for pulling and lifting various implements, I'd follow those guidelines. Also make sure you only pull something that heavy with the drawbar, don't use a 3pt attachment that could raise the connection point above the axle. You might also post this on the new holland forum, this is a general project forum.

 

[VOL54]

Thanks for the quick reply. Checked the owners manual but can't seem to find anything regarding the amount of weight the tractor is capable of pulling. I will move thread over to New Holland section. Thanks again.

 

[George2615]

Welcome to TBN....

Can't help with towing capacity of your TC45 but towing your 5300 lb. roller on level ground shouldn't be a problem since it's a rolling load. Its not like you are dragging it. The biq question will you have enough traction to pull it up your gently rolling hills and enough stopping power when going down. I on occasion move a 6000 lb. camper trailer around my property but only on level ground. I certainly wouldn't want it behind me going down a hill.

 

[sdef]

A rolling load is pretty easy to move. Think about how one person can push a 3500# automobile on a level service- at least for a short distance. As mentioned, I would be more concerned about stopping that load.

You can always play it safe and only fill the tank partially and try it out in steps until you get your answer.

 

[ENC]

My L4600 about the same ratings as yours, is rated for towing a trailer at 6000# I would think this includes stopping/starting/uphill/downhill and all combinations for liability issues. So I would guess that you are good. Obviously use caution the first couple times. The question I would ask is whether or not the roller will do any good. Around here they are yard ornaments. The ground is too hard and rocky. We just got close to 5 inches of rain and I could drive my loaded R1s in a straight line across my yard and there would be no evidence.

 

[Sportsman762]

I would be extremely wary of pulling a roller that weighed that much. The roller weighs as much if not more then the tractor, If you have any hills I would be wary of it taking off one direction and tipping the tractor. If the grass is damp then it could be a entertaining ride.
On another note, rolling the lawn with a 5,000lb roller is going to cause some major compaction problems. The grass will die off from the heavy roller, however your lawn will be as smooth as a airport runway.
Soil Compaction
Filling the tank half way would create some sloshing that could push your tractor around as 2,500 lbs of water will hav considerable motion and could be just as dangerous as a full tank.

I hate to sound like such a downer, or the safety police.

 

[boggen]

a roller to smooth out current ground, that just does not seem right at all to me bud.

a 3pt hitch box blade, that has a set of ripper teeth, and FEL (front end loader) with general duty bucket on it. would be my first attachments

then see about a chain harrow or drag harrow or like. possibly a 3pt hitch landscape rake / york rake, and/or 3pt hitch rear blade.

a bolt on or like tooth bar for FEL if you need to dig with FEL and move a descent amount of dirt around possibly. a good standard flat cutting on FEL can do some descent rough back grading, not final grading but rough grading.

a roller just compacts stuff, it might be used as a final something. but for roughing things up and smoothing things out... i am scratching my head, thinking... ya need to look at something else first.

a motor grader, but some sort of 3pt hitch attachment or trailer type setup, if ya wanting to get rid of some long / large low / high spots.

================
so many folks for what ever reason put MAX PSI in tractor tires *shakes head no* lower the PSI.

 

[sdef]

...a 3pt hitch box blade, that has a set of ripper teeth, and FEL (front end loader) with general duty bucket on it. would be my first attachments
then see about a chain harrow or drag harrow or like. possibly a 3pt hitch landscape rake / york rake, and/or 3pt hitch rear blade.

Recently I built a driveway on very rocky, heavy clay soil. While grading the surface, each pass of the rollover box blade (ROBB) with the shanks down brought up more rocks, some very large in the range of baseball sized to hundreds of pounds each, or larger. Even once I filled the large holes back in with smaller rocks and soil, I still had humps and valleys mostly caused by my grading.

The method I finally used to make the graded surface smooth was to go over the entire driveway several times with the ROBB until the shanks had stirred up a consistent 6" or more of soil. I then smoothed/leveled it all out with a couple passes of a landscape rake with attached gauge wheels. My first tries with the rake and no gauge wheels only provide mixed results as I do not have enough experience to use the rake alone. Adding the gauge wheels made the finishing task easy. Actually, the ROBB and the rake made this final part of grading easy. My stiffly sprung Jeep can now drive over this finished surface with the effect almost like driving over an asphalt surface, it is so smooth.