I bought a new to me tractor recently. A New Holland 3939 w/Ford 7310 loader. I used it a bit and decided I needed to get it serviced. As the hours has quit, and all I knew was the oil was black as a moonless night!!
Anyway when I pushed and dug out a stump at my daughters house with it I realized I was lacking traction! I dug down under the stump and tripped it out of the ground. I got the stump in the bucket and could not get the tractor to back out of the hole with the stump in the bucket. She just wanted to just spin. One thing I had another root from a nearby tree I didn't want to take out. And everytime I would back up to that root it was presenting a hang up and the one tire would begin to spin. However nothing I tried was working. So could not get it to back out of the hole with the stump no matter what I tried! Ended up dumping the stump out on the other side of the hole I had dug. Then I was able to use the bucket to assist me in backing up past the root that was casuing the tractor to spin, and she climbed backward out of the hole. I back filled and then picked up the stump and put it on the burn pile!!
So I mentioned this to the guy who is servicing the tractor and he said. "You need to fill those back tires with water and antifreeze! So I have been doing some reading since I am new to the site and I see talk about a new type of antifreeze. So looking for some advice on filling the tires.
Now just to throw this out there. I grew up in a small town in Nebraska. The town had a tractor they often used this tractor for maintenance on the towns roads. It was an N8 Ford or it could have been a Jubile. Anyway the tractor had what I think was probably a homemade front end loader. They used a half of A 50GAL. drum filled with concrete. It hung from the 3 point hitch system. I would suppose for two purposes,conter weight for the loader and rear weight for traction when loading the bucket.
So after throwing that out there about the concrete counter weight from the 3 point hitch. Would that be an option for weighting the rear of my 3930 NH?? One reason I am thinking along those lines it the tires on the tractor now have some dry rot! Nothing extremely bad but I would be hesitant to break the tires down to add a tube, without putting on a new set of tires! At present I don't really want to spring for new tires!
I know they make weights that mount to the rear tires but would the concrete counter weight work!! So I am looking forward to some discussion on this subject!
It looks like your problem there is you got hung up on a root. Even if you were properly ballasted, if you were hung up on something stout enough that you can't move it or break it, you will spin your tires. Once you got free of the root using the loader, you were able to back up just fine from what you wrote.
Ideal weight distribution for a 2WD tractor is 30% front, 70% rear. You can use fluid in the tires, iron weights on the wheels, weight on the 3 point hitch, or a combination of these.
If you have tubeless tires, a sane option to fill tires is just to have the tire shop pump in methanol and water. It is inexpensive, won't freeze if there is the proper concentration of methanol and you're not in the Arctic, it's not messy, and it's not particularly corrosive. The con is that it's a few pounds lighter per gallon than beet juice or calcium chloride. You will get roughly 700 pounds between the two rear tires with methanol and water. That would be roughly 900 pounds with the heavier fluids. I have methanol and water in my tires and it is what pretty much everybody uses around here in utility sized and larger tractors and what the tire shops have in 300 gallon totes in the back.
A 55 gallon drum filled with concrete will weigh roughly 1200 pounds. That would be a perfectly sane thing to use as counterweight, many people have done this. You can also use anything else heavy hanging off of the 3 point such as an implement.
Iron wheel weights for a 28" wheel are generally in the 300-500 pound per wheel range and cost about $1/lb. This is a LOT more expensive per pound than fluid in tires or concrete weight on the 3 point hitch.
Your loader's manual will have required minimum counterweight, and your tractor's manual will have the maximum allowable axle loads. You will want to
ballast somewhere between the two figures.
