tilling clay soil after a big rain

[LoneCowboy]

baaaaaaaadddddd idea.

Friday night, ripped up (with my fancy scarifiers) about 2 acres of weed infested pasture to till and replant in the rain. Made a mess of the tractor but worked fine.
Rained hard saturday afternoon and didn't get back to it until sunday morning.
got the tiller all set up. And mind you, I've used this tiller a lot, just chugs away, 1st gear (low-low, about 1mph), uses the normal 1 gallon per hour of fuel on the MF 1433.

Well, let me tell you that tilling wet clay soil is just a bad idea. I was making long passes back and forth (so i wasn't turning on the dirt) and a thte end of every run, I had to idle it down so it could cool down. (nothing plugged, didn't overheat doing anything else) I used an ENTIRE tank of fuel in 3 hours. (about 2.5 times the normal rate) I stalled it about 10 times, i had to keep slowing it to keep it running, and the whole tiller is just caked.
It did a good job but I think either it was plugging up the tiller or the wet stuff was just too much for the blades.

anyway, I still have to wait to seed it, it's too wet.

 

[Oleozz]

I could be wrong but I don't think there's a tiller made that would handle my ground. Plenty of rocks, thick sod, you name it, we got it. What I don't have is what you were trying to work up and that's the heavy clay. The rain would definitely make it a mess to work with.

 

[RobJ]

I think the general consensus is moist clay, not wet clay. More dry than wet. Wait it drys, it'll shrink and fall off. After some ATVing in some blakc bottom land gumbo and I don't have time to clean the atv, it I don't make it back to the house for a couple weeks it'll dry and have big piles under the atv.

Rob

 

[LoneCowboy]

Update
it appears it may not be all the tractors fault.
went back today to spread some manaure (I had left the tractor on site).
and the 2nd trip down from the pile to the spreading area, i see the tiller is hanging way way done.
What the ????????
Get off, tighten up the top link a lot.
ok, fixed
drive off.
next trip down I look back and it's hanging way down, this time with the top link in.
Ok, now i'm confused
drive slowly back to the truck and park it.
Turns out a bolt had fallen out of the pieces that end up being the top link and it must have fallen out a while ago (took me a while to find it) and these top 4 big metal pieces (at least 3/8 thick) are BENT big time.
So, i think the tiller was going way too deep, which is probably at least part of what was going on.

Going to have to order those new pieces, I'm sure they are cheap.