I have a Massey Ferguson MF1532 tractor that I bought new in 2012. My gravel driveway is about 1/2 km (about 1600ft) long and I get a fair amount of snow every year to clear. I had been using a Polaris Sportsman 6X6 with a 4ft blade for the last 13 years to clear the snow and that worked quite well but in heavy wet snow I could quickly run into traction problems.
So this fall I purchased a 7 foot quick mount snow blade for my front end loader. On the rear I keep a 6 foot "dirt" blade that I just use for pushing back snow in a straight line. The first few snow falls of the year were the nice light fluffy snow that doesn't have much weight. The new snow blade works really great for this. Recently however we have had some of the really heavy wet snow falls and that creates an issue for me. With the front blade angled to push the snow off to the right of the tractor I get into situations where the front of the tractor skids to the left even with my front wheels turned all the way to the right. This typically happens on areas where the ice is built up under the snow. I have carbide tipped studs on the rear tires and those are fantastic in icy conditions to drive the tractor forward. At the time I bought those studs I thought about putting some on the front tires too but the service guy recommended against it since he said the way the 4 wheel drive works is that the front wheels spin a little faster than the rear to "pull" the tractor. They are meant to slip a bit he said. So if I add studs to the front I am preventing this slip and placing a load on the front drive system that it isn't designed for.
Does that make sense? I don't want to do something that will damage the drive system but I imagine that better traction on the front wheels would certainly help or eliminate my sideways push issue.
Thoughts?
