Rim guard or not? Why a ballast box instead of boxblade?

[lostcause]

490 lb per cubic foot for steel. that equates to a little under 41 lb for a piece of steel 12" x 12" x 1" thick.

I would be curious to know how much additional weight you would add doing this.

 

[IndyJay]

You can reduce the potential for staining and mess made by using the green slime stuff that is specifically made for filled tires. I have my fronts filled with green slime and the filled rears have the equivalent type of slime that is made for filled tires - can't remember the brand. The other option might be to just not have anything that will stain - dirt floors in barns/shops nothing but gravel roads, etc.

Some of the biggest deterrents I've heard about fill/nofill have been tire & rim issues. Although I've not had any rim or tire issues, I've heard that some of the older fills were corrosive enough to destroy rims and eat away at the tire - seen pictures too. I don't think that the tractors of my youth (8N's) were filled but for the last 25 or so years my tires have been filled and I haven't had any issues.

I use LiquiTube, regular for fronts and ballast formula with RV antifreeze on rears.

 

[npalen]

I would be curious to know how much additional weight you would add doing this. Doesn't seem (to me) it would be very much more than the actual draw hitch itself. My filled tires add ~750# each (~1,500# total). As mentioned earlier, I'll back into a round bale (1,200-1,500+# depending on the time of year) if I need to offset the front end any more than that.

A piece of steel 3" x 12" x 30" would weigh in at 305 pounds. Steel weighs 0.2826 pounds per cubic inch.
I'm assuming that "drawbar" in this case means the piece held by/between the two lift arms.

Edit: Looks like simultaneous posting above.

 

[OzarkChris]

490 lb per cubic foot for steel. that equates to a little under 41 lb for a piece of steel 12" x 12" x 1" thick.

But, I'm guessing, my draw bar weighs 30 - 40#

 

[npalen]

Tractor Tire Liquid Ballast: Pros & Cons Of 5 Liquids - Hobby Farms

Adding liquid ballast to your tractor tires can significantly improve performance, but it's hard to know which ballast offers the best overall solution.

www.hobbyfarms.com

Article on tire fill materials.

 

[mo1]

I see a lot of people buying 3 point ballast boxes or making ballast containers out of drums to attach to their 3 point hitch.

I have never really grasped why not just keep a box blade on the back so you could have not just a weight, but something that can be used should you wish to drag something? I have seen some weld a section of railroad rail onto the top of a box blade to make it heavier.

You can use any weight on the 3 point hitch to provide counterweight, be it an implement like a box blade or a dedicated counterweight. The key is having enough weight. Unless you have an unusually heavy box blade for its width, you will either end up with too wide of a box blade for your tractor to effectively use in order to get the blade to weigh enough, or it will be too light to be a counterweight to pick up heavy loads with your loader. Generally it takes a fairly heavy and long implement to serve as adequate counterweight. Some people have been pretty creative with rear ballast, and one popular one in my area is to spear a round bale with a 3 point bale spear.

Regarding Rim Guard, I don't have any personal experience with it, but I do have water/methanol in my rear tires. That was very economical and won't be that big of a hassle to deal with in the future when tires need fixed or replaced. The tractors I grew up operating had calcium chloride and we didn't have any trouble with any of them, but rarely kept one beyond about 15 years, so any corrosion issues wouldn't really have happened yet.

Maybe, but rear tire ballast doesn't move the pivot point of any load on the front axle, appreciatively. Weight on the 3PH does, thus reducing wear and tear on the front axle, steering gear, etc.

Weight does indeed need to be placed behind the rear axle to unload the front axle. The farther behind the rear axle, the more torque the counterweight exerts to resist the torque the load on the loader exerts on the tractor. However, loading rear tires certainly can improve performance of the tractor when using the loader even though it doesn't unload the front axle. It does improve traction of the rear axle and the ability of the brakes on the rear axle to slow down the tractor. This is the "other" important reason to have appropriate amounts of ballast and why ballast recommendations also mention weight distribution between front and rear axles.

More pressure is not always better, you are doing more damage via soil compaction. This is why the majority of AG tractors come with Radial R1 which are not loaded. They add wheel weights, leave the tires unloaded so the air pressure can be adjusted as soil conditions require.

I would also add another big reason that radials are often not fluid-filled is that the mechanism for much of the advantage radials have over conventional bias-ply tires (lower ground compaction and better traction due to larger contact patch, smoother ride, cooler operation in high-speed environments leading to higher road speeds) stems from the greater ability of the sidewall to easily deform or "cheek" due to the radial ply orientation. Putting fluid in radial tires decreases the ability of the sidewalls to deform and eliminates much of their advantage over the less-expensive, sturdier, and self-cleaning bias ply tires.

EDIT: Changing air pressure certainly does change ground compaction. The more pressure in the tire, the more resistant to deformation the tire is. The contact patch is simply deformation of the tire from donut-like to flattened where it meets the ground, so the higher the air pressure, the narrower and shorter the contact patch. Ground compaction is due to the pressure exerted by the tire on the ground, and the smaller the contact patch, the higher the pressure. Adding fluid to tires will make the tire stiffer and shrink the contact patch, but one can still change this somewhat by adjusting air pressure, just less than if the tire didn't have fluid.

 

[KDTravis]

I found that usually when I was using the loader, the box blade also was useful. On my Kubota BX, I was using a snow blade in winter and with the box blade on back I could pull snow away from the garage door, back over it, then push away towards the street. Therefore in winter or summer the box blade was useful both as implement and counterweight.

Then two years ago I bought a Heavy Hitch and I love it. It's expensive - you're paying as much for iron deadweight as you would for an implement - but I can leave the A-frame on all the time, (while mowing for example) and easily add weights if I decide to pop on the FEL.

Further, I have two heavy trailers to spot and often need weight in the front. The suitcase weights will hang on the front brushguard plate of a BX, or better, my brushguard has a receiver where I can plug in the Heavy Hitch front weight bracket and quickly put 250 pounds of weight on the front. Before I would make do with mounting the FEL.

If you are in a similar situation and can afford it, Heavy Hitch is a good setup.

 

[jyoutz]

You can reduce the potential for staining and mess made by using the green slime stuff that is specifically made for filled tires. I have my fronts filled with green slime and the filled rears have the equivalent type of slime that is made for filled tires - can't remember the brand. The other option might be to just not have anything that will stain - dirt floors in barns/shops nothing but gravel roads, etc.

Some of the biggest deterrents I've heard about fill/nofill have been tire & rim issues. Although I've not had any rim or tire issues, I've heard that some of the older fills were corrosive enough to destroy rims and eat away at the tire - seen pictures too. I don't think that the tractors of my youth (8N's) were filled but for the last 25 or so years my tires have been filled and I haven't had any issues.

Check out bio-ballast. Non-toxic, non staining. It’s what the dealer filled my tires with.

Bio-Ballast® - EnviroTech Services

envirotechservices.com

 

[VoyagernOK]

Interesting that this thread came up on my email notification as just yesterday I did the design sketches for a ballast weight I could build for less than 1/4 the price of any comparable thing I could find. (and yes, it has a hitch receiver built into the design, but I also have a receiver added to my box blade so I can latch onto a trailer without dropping the implement when needed) So, here I am trying to decide which route to go and this thread comes up on my email.

I have a heavy box blade (nearly 1000#) that is 96" wide and I was contemplating making some suitcase weights to add another 1,000# or so to it as I have felt the rear end start to feel really light when picking up large stumps or boulders with my grapple. This means I'm putting too much stress on my front end and need to anchor my rear down. Then I was considering building this ballast weight because having an 8' box blade behind a tractor that is only 78" wide gives me a significant overhang on both sides. The extra width is essential when using the box blade, but not so much when just doing other things. Probably only 15-20% of the time am I using the box blade. My ballast design would add 1,550# hanging out past the 3 point hitch where filling the rear tires with 5#/gal of CaCl2 would add nearly 1,600# at the rear axle. (16.9X30 tires, so 73 gals/tire), making the ballast design more effective weight-wise than fluid and removable when pulling a heavy implement that doesn't need the added weight. With a quick hitch, picking the weight up and dropping it off are no problems. (my 3 point is rated at 5100#, so none of the options I'm considering are too heavy)

Up until this point I've also been hesitant about adding fluid to my tires as I was raised with fluid filled tires -- a necessity for traction when plowing in deep black loam soil -- and have had more than one instance where too much speed when roading the tractor from one field to another got a bit scary for a few moments when the fluid started rotating with the tires and the tractor started seriously lifting or bouncing creating a steering challenge. I don't drive my tractors that fast now that I'm older, but if you road your tractor, please consider this as the speed point between being safe with fluid in your rear tires and the scary/deadly point can be rather narrow. (tires are only supposed to be filled with fluid to the top edge of the center of the rim leaving everything above the rim air) I suppose on most compact tractors this might not ever be an issue?

So, like most questions on here, your personal circumstances and uses dictate what is best for you. What works for one person in their circumstances might be entirely wrong for the next person.

 

[OzarkChris]

A piece of steel 3" x 12" x 30" would weigh in at 305 pounds. Steel weighs 0.2826 pounds per cubic inch.
I'm assuming that "drawbar" in this case means the piece held by/between the two lift arms.

Edit: Looks like simultaneous posting above.

My bad, I thought you initially said the draw bar, not the hitch. So now I'm guessing you are either welding this 3x12x30 piece to the bottom of the draw hitch or you've fab'd a drawbar that will go into the hitch to hold it in place, correct?

I don't have much more room than what my drawbar will fit in that hitch opening, sorry for being confused..