PSA about tractor safety involving a Mopar guy

[themechanic]

 

[Davefinan]

Damn……that was a life saving reflex

 

[OKDart]

Looks like he had it in high gear too.

 

[khryslerkid]

I knew a young boy years ago did the same thing pulling his brother out of a ditch. Hooked the chain under the seat, flipped it over backwards and he was pinned under it. Emergency crews arrived and rolled the tractor over just enough to get him out. Not a scratch on him! Full grown man would have been killed.

Amazing the instinct of the man in the video to go where he did to avoid death. Like a cat!

Just happening to have all the videos from different angles is a good opportunity for a safety video.

 

[dadsbee]

Shat happens in a hurry!

 

[Detective D]

That is either a 730/830 4cyl or a 6cyl. 930 or 1030 Case from mid 1960's, maybe up to 1968. That tractor, if it has fluid in the rears, without the loader even, weighs somewhere between 15,000 and 22,000lbs depending on what weights are on it and which exact model it was. The loader would be 1500-3000lbs on top of whatever the starting weight was. Depends on the gauge of the bucket.

Thing is, the little fergy could maybe have moved it. Based on the bucket jumping and zero wheel movement, either the brakes were locked, the dude never bothered to put it in neutral, or the wheels were sunk into the earth to the rims.

The guy explaining is sort of right. You never hook the load to a point above center of gravity. Well, to a FIXED point above center of gravity to the drive wheels.
What the guy could have done, is purchased or fabricated a drawbar that hooked into the lift arms. With something like that, you can adjust the height. It can be actually below the draw bar, or you can raise it above axle height. The main point is: you control where it is.
With a lift arm mounted draw bar, a very short chain or strap could be hooked to the bucket. Maybe, if there was enough room, he could have raised the arms up enough ewith the short strap to get the bucket off the ground. At that point he could have blocked it up and run a proper chain under the bucket. With that in place, the same three point draw bar could be used to adjust the angle.

With the draw bar to the ground, it is highly likely the little fergy would just lose traction instantly and spin.
So you raise the draw bar a bit. This moves the load higher and pulls the tractor down, increasing traction.
Doing it this way does two things:
It gives you control of traction
It gives a very easy to recognize height liit because the traction will overcome the weight of the front of the tractor, as we see the result of in the video.

The trick is to find the sweet spot where traction is maximized, but not exceeded to the point it will overcome the front weight.
At this point, if the big ol' case won;t move, the little fergy was never going to move it.

Note: It is perfectly fine for the front end to come up, some. It is part of adding traction. The trick is the tractor should break traction and spin before it can left the front too high. That is a skill only learned through observation and experience. But it is not a difficult skill to learn, especially on a tractor you are familiar with.

My Grandfather had a Ford 9N and used to walk trees out of the woods on two wheels with this method, steering with the brakes as he was clearing new fields. My father and I would routinely float the front end of our 1030 wheatland pulling a plow uphill through clay back home. Properly weighted and balanced tractors can really, really move some weight.


Now, all that aside, what a dummy. Unhook whatever was on the back of the Case, drag it out of the way, and then hook the drawbar of the Case up and who care if the bucket drags on the ground. The bucket won;t dig in in any meaningful way going backwards.

 

[Plyrr471]

Damn!

 

[Dave6T4]

Once you feel the front getting light, you slam in the clutch! We had a little Ferguson like that on our farm. Most modern day riding lawnmowers have more h.p.

 

[biomedtechguy]

As soon as the narrator described the connection point, "above the axle" I knew the physics of the rest of the story..

 

[3sloppydogs]

I had a 9N for a while then sold it. I don't have the extra leg to operate it. Those things take three legs to run. What was Henry's thinking when he designed the clutch and brake pedal location.