[AT] narrow vs. wide front tractors

David Rotigel rotigel at me.com
Tue Apr 8 09:26:11 PDT 2014


The brakes on any vehicle are designed to stop THAT VEHICLE ONLY! That goes for tractors, cars, puck ups, other trucks (and probably jet planes and water skis as well) You put on a trailer loaded with more than the weight of the pulling vehicle and unless the trailer has it's own brakes you are driving on "borrowed time"! You may get away with it for years, but after "enough" time, WATCH OUT!
	Dave
PS, Glad you are still "with us" Howard!

On Apr 8, 2014, at 10:31 AM, Howard Weeks <weeksh at att.net> wrote:

> My worst experience with a tractor as a 16 year old:
> 
> I was pulling a very large load of baled hay on a 4 wheel hay wagon with 
> a John Deere B.  It was just about dark on a summer day and it had 
> started to rain.  The road was a single lane dirt with a little bit of a 
> ditch on each side.  I had that tractor cocked wide open trying to beat 
> the rain to the barn.  There was a steep hill that I had to go down. 
> When I started down the hill, I found that the brakes were not going to 
> hold that load back and I was rapidly gaining speed and going out of 
> control.  Tractor and load both were sliding all over the place.
> Thought I was fixing to die!  Luck kicked in and both tractor and load 
> slipped into the ditch and it kept us in line until we reached the 
> bottom of the hill. I lived to clean out my pants and go on to the barn!
> 
> I have never totally trusted tractor brakes since then - especially 
> hydraulic ones.
> 
> Howard in GA
> 
> On 4/8/2014 9:37 AM, Dean Vinson wrote:
>> Herb wrote:
>> 
>>> After a few "experiences", did some of you young guys tend to develop an
>> invincible feeling?
>> 
>> Herb, as a teenager I was supremely confident in my tractor-operating
>> skills, and sure, getting a few experiences under my belt made it easy to
>> believe I was a veteran and knew what I was doing.  And there was even some
>> truth to that.  Not enough, however, to override some other teenager-like
>> tendencies, and one day I was behaving recklessly on my dad's wide-front
>> high-crop Case and rolled it over on a steep embankment.  I survived that
>> incident without physical harm, due 99.999% to blind luck, but it sobered me
>> right up.   Invincible teenager or not, finding yourself in a dynamic and
>> chaotic situation with a massive, roaring, moving, churning machine that you
>> are suddenly powerless to control has a way of making one aware of the
>> frailty of the human body.
>> 
>> Dean VP wrote:
>> 
>>> ...It is a very complex issue and the difference of potential roll-overs
>> on a
>>> Narrow Front End tractor vs a Wide Front End Tractor is stated to be not
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