First time I hopped on this site was to look for some advice on figuring the balance of an old tractor I was building for pulling. Well four years later I finally finished it up and did some test pulls. When I was re-building this thing I kept running into issues and had other projects that took front seat etc. but yesterdays practice pulls made the wait well worth it.
This is a 1957 John Deere 820 two cylinder diesel that I built up. Made a real nice subframe for it to fortify the cast iron etc. Total weight of the tractor as it is in this video is little over 19,000 lbs. The dead sled I'm pulling weighs a total of 28,000 lbs. I have urethane filled skid steer tires on the front for added weight and each front hub has 1,000 lbs. on them. I figure a weight gain for tires and weights of about 2,400-2,500 on the front and it dances really nice at that set-up.
Here's a link to a video my buddys boy took of the last test pull I made yesterday.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YE49GCR5
That old Deere makes some serious torque...!!
All the work on the tractor paid off last night. I built it primarily for an annual pull called "The King of the Mountain" pull at an event called the Portersville Steam show. It's an unlimited weight dead sled pull. Beat out a couple guys that were weighing up around 30,000 lbs. They didn't have enough snot.
Wooo Hooo!!
Is that you driving? I don't think I have ever seen weights on the from the wheels like that..
Yep the redneck driving it is me...
The wheatland style Deeres with the wide front ends had a cast iron pan up front. Folks have told me that they've cracked if slammed down too hard. I figured the weight on the spindles was a better bet so I didn't add any stess to my pan by bolting weight directly to it. The front tires are urethane filled skid steer tires that I made adapters and shouldered lug nuts up to fit them to my spindles. The front pan and axle is a heavier version Deere made for their industrial models and it has a heavier pan and bigger spindles.
The pull this Saturday wasn't near the load I had on during my practice pulls. The pan Saturday was a lot smaller... figured about 40% the surface area of the pan I practiced with. Also the track at the pull has next to no clay in it and a lot of stones. The track I practiced on is a clean clay dirt mix that's much stickier. They compensate the load by raising the chain hook point on the sled to change the angle and lesson the down pull you get from the sled.
I'm having some computer issues right now but I want to get a couple pics of the Deere 720 that was weighed up to 30,000 lbs. posted on here. Thing was scary heay. Wiggled like a block of firm jello when he moved it around. You wouldn't get me near the thing given how and where the weights were attached. Usually there's at least one machine that ends up with a cracked hub or axle housing but all survived this year. Most have backed off some with their weights from years past though. Most were up around the low 20's.
I had very little sprung weight on mine. Filled the rears with water... 4 drums each at 80% fill and had 1,500 lbs. a side with my wheel weights. At about 1-3/4 mph the loss of power from wheel weight is next to nothing. My subframe was the only added load on the rear of the tractor at about 1,850 lbs. I figured it'd be best for the machine to have the load on the ground and not bending my axles. The insane-o heavy folks are deflecting their axles during every turn of them and their housings are stressed big time... and eventually something's gonna give.
Too bad I can't see your video, the site that you have it stored on was siezed by the Gov't.Please post it on youtube, you should get many more hits that way. Sounds like a real piece o' work and a lot of fun for you. Keep up the good work!
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