Use for draw bar?

[Coyote machine]

I will give this some thought. I always thought a drawbar (or at least what I consider to be a draw bar) to be the STRONGEST point at which a tractor can pull. I am not talking about anything to do with the 3pt or the FEL, but the bar that attaches under the center portion of the rear axle.

Right, I agree with you as long as you are pulling a load, towing something. Trying to remove a stump is somewhat different. It is an immovable object resisting the tractor's pulling strength, and when it eventually gives up and releases certain forces go with the release unlike a wagon or cart of dump trailer, haywagon, manure spreader, etc. Those object have wheels and are meant to be pulled/towed by a tractor/ vehicle. Stumps are generally considered to be objects that like where they are and have few plans of changing zip codes I'm not saying you can't do it successfully, but it is not to my understanding the purpose of the drawbar, strictly speaking, and therefore it poses inherent risks greater than use for which the bar was intended.

As a farm boy on Allis Chambers, and then on Deutsch, and then on JD, we hooked up anything and everything that the tractor would pull. We hooked it to the drawbar because that was the part of the tractor that would not tear up. I am not talking about yanking, I am just talking about hooking up, putting the tractor in the lowest pull gear available, giving a little gas and letting out on the clutch gently. Either the item comes along with the tractor, or the tractor stalls, or tires churn. I have always considered a tractor not to be strong enough to destroy it's drawbar hookup.

I agree with that, and going easy until it spins or stalls.

I will defer to those with more experience in knowledge, as it sounds like I have some un-learning to do. So far my CK30 has not been strong enough to pull out a stump more than 2 inch diameter, without some serious digging around it. I consider myself doing more damage to the FEL digging around it than to the drawbar unit pulling it.

Guess you need a backhoe or a sacrificial chainsaw, as someone else mentioned.

 

[EE_Bota]

I consider the drawbar to be the strongest part for pulling as well.

I would never want anyone to take my advise and wind up getting hurt.
However, I do believe it is very unlikely a tractor will overturn backwards when hooked to a drawbar that is well below the axle level. Having said that, I would not use it in that manner unless I had a ROPS and a seat belt. I might give it a go in a very low gear without a ROPS, but I would not go wild on it.

I would like a mechanical engineer or an agricultural engineer to chime in on the drawbar / flipping issue. I find them to be very sober minded, and they would surely know better than I.

One caveat: I flew down to Florida in the junior year of my first degree for a job interview at a dairy farm just north of the big lake in the center of the state. First interview question, he took me to look at the biggest tractor I had ever seen, a large four wheel drive articulating Case. We walked around behind and the rear end, and the case was ripped off the tractor. The question was "Is this our fault or do we have a warranty claim?" I asked "was the load hooked to the drawbar?" He replied "yes." I replied "it is a warranty claim because a tractor ought not be able to out pull it's own draw bar." If I am wrong now, I was certainly wrong then!

 

[Mousefield]

I was reading the posts on this thread and thought to myself, I think I have a draw bar on my tractor. In the almost 2 years I have had my tractor didn't have the need for it or think about if I had one. Checked the manual and sure enough I have one. Nice to learn some of the uses and safety tips. Unfortunately accidents happed so fast and it is sad to read about someone losing their life.

 

[CurlyDave]

My question: When I need to pull something stout (like a stump) I attach a chain to the stump and to the drawbar holder (the part the drawbar attaches to). That is the same or better than actually turning the drawbar around and attaching to it. Right??

You should attach to the end of the drawbar for hard pulls, not to the drawbar holder.

There is a lot of misinformation on the internet in general and on this thread in particular.

The reason for using the drawbar is that it is engineered so that if the front wheels come up and the tractor starts to overturn backwards, the back end of the drawbar lowers to the ground as the front comes up. This automatically reduces the overturning torque to zero and the tractor will not turn over. This feature allows the operator time to disengage the clutch, release the HST pedal, or let off the throttle.

Attaching the chain to the drawbar mount appears stronger, but defeats the important safety feature of lowering the tip of the drawbar.

As long as you do not jerk the load by accelerating with a slack chain, your tractor should be designed to handle pulling against an immovable object so long as you use the correct drawbar.

A few common misconceptions are:

1. "Attaching below the rear axle will prevent overturns." As logical as the claim sounds, there is nothing magical about the rear axle and this attachment is not guaranteed to prevent overturns. The thing that overturns tractors is a torque generated by the propulsive forward force caused by the traction of the tires against the ground and the rearward force from whatever is being towed. The moment arm is the attachment height above the ground. Tractors can and have overturned from towing chains attached to and below the rear axle.

The only safe hitch point is the correct drawbar.

2. The device which attaches to the lower two arms of the 3-point hitch is a tow bar, not a drawbar. Because of its ability to raise & lower a tow ball it is convenient to use to tow anything with a trailer hitch. It does not have the built-in safety of a true drawbar and should not be used for a hard pull.

P.S. I am an engineer.

 

[archerm3]

Yeah for curly.

Ps I is a enginerd too.

 

[texasjohn]

CurleyDave speaks completely rightly.:thumbsup:

 

[lakngulf]

Thanks, Curly, for the information. You are right....I assumed the drawbar holder would be as strong or stronger than the drawbar itself. But now I completely missed the safety feature associated with the extended drawbar. So far, when I have hooked to anything that stout (1) the tractor has not been able to pull it and (2) I have had the box blade still attached, so any back tilting would have been limited when the box blade hit the ground.

 

[deepNdirt]

Ignorance is sometimes embarrasing, but I think I favor that over stupidity.

Draw bar:

Not that I need one, I don't know, but I've been seeing them around and I don't know what they are used for. So, let me have it. You can pound on me if you like, just slip the answer in there somewhere.

If You think it "stupid" not to know what a Draw bar is for? then you can call me "stupider" http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachments/156915-please-explain-use-toolbar-drawbar.html

 

[EE_Bota]

Yeah, thanks CurlyDave! Are you an ME? I am an EE.

Instead of taking the EE statics and dynamics combo course, I took the ME statics and dynamics. I was SO good at ME dynamics, I took it twice!

I took it first as a summer course, which was shear madness, and combine that with this: I don't know what part of the Middle East my dynamics prof came from, but I was the only student not from his part of the world, and I didn't understand a word he said. I guarantee you, if I had not been there, he would have taught the course in his native language. I wish he had! All of the other students would have understood him completely, I would would have misunderstood him just as well as ever!

I failed, but I took it again immediately in the fall semester, and I got a B. I should have stuck with the EE combo course, and counted my blessings, but I wanted a bit more mechanical exposure. It didn't really hurt my GPA, because at that university, the classes from my earlier degree, and the latter degree all figured into one hard to move GPA. I remember a prof. saying one time, only half joking: "if you mess with me I'll fail you over and over until you wash out of school!" I said something like "Doctor So-and-so, I've got a GPA of xxx with yyy hours, so you do the math. Are you sure you want that much face time." I got an A in that course!

I mentioned a job interview story earlier, and a scenario with a huge tractor with a broken rear case. One thing I forgot to mention was the part of the discussion on how the tractor driver tried to pull the load. I asked if the driver snatched the load (which was a likewise huge water-filled roller for flattening / compressing the land) and the farmer said he witnessed the event, and it was a slow, steady pull-off in a low gear. The roller attached directly to the drawbar, so there was no hidden slack that had to be taken up.

It was very fortunate that the facts of the case allowed me to give the farmer / interviewer the answer he no doubt wanted to hear. Otherwise, that was going to be a very BAD interview question.

 

[CharlieR]

CurlyDave, thanks for answering my question with good reason included, not a "just because" answer.:thumbsup:

I went to buy the TSC swinging draw bar but it looked "awfully long".
Now that length makes sense.
It's the "anti-tip-over feature" that didn't come to mind at first.