Strength of Ballast Box Receiver?

[Suburban Plowboy]

wish you luck, I have had certain shrubs stop me dead in low range 4x4, stuff smaller 2 inches, other stuff easier, but i actually find it easier to just use the backhoe to pull them, the chains get tiring after a while.

I also weigh close to 4k in pounds

Those must be some shrubs! All the bushes I've fooled with came right out, even with the FEL and a rope.

This is how I learned not to use a rope to pull upward with an FEL, I should add. But it worked fine when it wasn't trying to pull the tractor over.

 

[SmallChange]

I have exactly that Titan box (though the red version) and filled it with steel and concrete to bring the total weight up to 800 lbs. And I have used its receiver exactly as you describe, with a hook inserted, to pull. As far as the strength of the receiver itself, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be a failure point. It's good for roots and maybe saplings. I keep it low and use my lowest gear (to give myself time to react). With the box low, it'd hit the ground if the tractor rose up, which would both change the balance and reduce traction, so flipping would be somewhat less likely but by no means impossible. I've spun rears with the differential locked but never lifted a front wheel, much less both.

I think this is a judgement call and we just need to think carefully and work slowly, or else have much bigger equipment than I have.

But to remove a tree and its stump, with trees up to 3" or maybe 4", I cut the tree about 4' above the ground to leave myself a lever (I'd cut it higher if I could safely do so). I'll use a SSQA adapter plate on the FEL with a hook in its receiver to work the top of this lever back and forth, and pour water into the growing crack around the trunk and roots. I have clamps for wire rope and will cut about 5' of rope to wrap around the trunk so I'm adding upforce. Doing this, I have actually had the rears shift a little, maybe have one raise up an inch off the ground, so it's obviously a bit dangerous as the tractor is threatening to try to balance on the front axle pivot. Again, working slow is key.

All these activities are reasonable enough to do, I think, on a small home basis, because I'm having a pretty good time and don't mind it going very slowly. Haven't had a pucker moment yet with these (yeah I know "yet" is the critical word in that sentence). But I think these are by far the wrong setups to try to work quickly as one would have to do on a for-profit basis or if I had many of these to do.

 

[Suburban Plowboy]

I have exactly that Titan box (though the red version) and filled it with steel and concrete to bring the total weight up to 800 lbs. And I have used its receiver exactly as you describe, with a hook inserted, to pull. As far as the strength of the receiver itself, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be a failure point. It's good for roots and maybe saplings. I keep it low and use my lowest gear (to give myself time to react). With the box low, it'd hit the ground if the tractor rose up, which would both change the balance and reduce traction, so flipping would be somewhat less likely but by no means impossible. I've spun rears with the differential locked but never lifted a front wheel, much less both.

I think this is a judgement call and we just need to think carefully and work slowly, or else have much bigger equipment than I have.

But to remove a tree and its stump, with trees up to 3" or maybe 4", I cut the tree about 4' above the ground to leave myself a lever (I'd cut it higher if I could safely do so). I'll use a SSQA adapter plate on the FEL with a hook in its receiver to work the top of this lever back and forth, and pour water into the growing crack around the trunk and roots. I have clamps for wire rope and will cut about 5' of rope to wrap around the trunk so I'm adding upforce. Doing this, I have actually had the rears shift a little, maybe have one raise up an inch off the ground, so it's obviously a bit dangerous as the tractor is threatening to try to balance on the front axle pivot. Again, working slow is key.

All these activities are reasonable enough to do, I think, on a small home basis, because I'm having a pretty good time and don't mind it going very slowly. Haven't had a pucker moment yet with these (yeah I know "yet" is the critical word in that sentence). But I think these are by far the wrong setups to try to work quickly as one would have to do on a for-profit basis or if I had many of these to do.

That's really helpful. Personal experience is what I hoped to hear about.

I've found my subsoiler to be great for stumps that aren't too big. I just rip the roots all around them, and then I pull them up.

 

[Suburban Plowboy]

Follow-up: the ballast box receiver worked fine. I was able to pull big shrubs out with no strain at all.

 

[SmallChange]

I had posted more than a year ago (#32), but with the thread active again I thought of a couple more points.

I think the ballast box receiver itself is probably plenty strong enough, but these boxes have a maximum rated weight (IIRC) of 800 lbs, and weigh something like 160 lbs empty. I put a lot of steel in mine before potting with concrete, and it wasn't hard to get 640 lbs of fill in there (numbers from memory). You should be more worried about exceeding the maximum weight for the box, which would have to include the force you're applying to the receiver tube. On this particular box I worry first about twisting the pins, which are mounted on those little tabs that reach forward of the box.

The lower draw bar is inherently safer. It's low, and the lower it is, the less likely the tractor is to flip backward. There's nothing special about the bar being below the rear axle. One thing that is VERY special about the lower draw bar is that it is BEHIND the rear axle. This means that as the tractor starts to rear up, the hitch point on the bar goes down. Getting the hitch point on the bar below ground is special: this makes the load pull your front down rather than up. Most situations don't let that point below ground, not by much anyway. Think of this as a kind of fail safe situation.

 

[Suburban Plowboy]

Thanks for the warning.

In this case, there were no problems. The force on the box was nearly horizontal, and it was not very great. I tore out a cherry tree a squirrel had planted in a hedge, and it popped right out.

Getting to the tractor's rear around the box over and over would have been a chore. Putting the brush grubber over a hook in the box's receiver was very easy.

That 800-pound figure is something to think about when adding things to the box. I would guess I have never had more than 50 pounds in tools and things in there. I believe I have 600 pounds of sand, but I am not sure. If I started modifying the box to hold more things, as other people have, I would have to think about the upper limit.

The cargo carrier probably weighs around 20 pounds, and I will not be putting much weight in it.