Tires - Ground Drive Implement

Searching the forum I must not be using the right keywords so I'll just ask bluntly.

What direction should I3 treads face on a ground driven machine? Do you reverse it because the implment is pushing the other way??

Looking at a PTO forecart gave me pause because it was the reverse of what I expected.
 
I have never seen them mount backwards of how one you see them on a tractor but yes I would think they would work better but never seen them that way. Shoot even the steel wheel ones that had bar on the wheel had them mounted like you would normally run them if on a tractor
 
I always mount them backward on an implement,just put a set of tractor style tires on one of my NH 256 hay rakes today.On my skid loader I switched to tractor style tread put the
back ones on same as a tractor reversed the front ones so it backs out of holes with a loaded bucket better.
 
That Forecart I do not believe would work as the machinery load off the PTO would be more than the grip of the tires would be able to give. And the mowers the tire is just to small to be able to generate the power the mower needs. Had a David Bradley mower on 6:50x16 tires and it would not run the 5' cutter bar with out the wheels slipping. A manure spreader gets the grip from the weight of the load when it starts unloading and does not take the power when it gets partial loaded and the weight gets off the tires. That outfit to be able to put enough power out to doo anything would have to have the tires loaded with the heaviest weight avaible. Forecarts but without a PTO and steel wheels are a way of life for my friends.
 
If there not mounted backwards, there going to push the dirt to the center once they slip, and then they really slip in their own loose soil.
 
Of the many dozens on them that we mounted over the years, all of them were mounted opposite of farm tractor
tires. My own spreader is that way.
 
You can make things work in light hay but get in heavy it is a different story, On a 7' haybine in light 3rd cutting alfalfa you could pull one with a B allis, on heavy red clover timothy first cutting mix you might need the WD 45 or at least a WD so that is how they get things working and then they just might have the tires loaded for those pictures but when you would buy one the tires would just have air in them. You can make things work for show but not in real life. A brand new knife would cut better than the aberage 100 acre use knife and then put 500 acres on that knife and it will pull a lot harder. And most knives will be like that 500 acre one instead of the brand new one.
 
The math says that at 3.5 mph (the ground speed that the literature quotes the PTO speeds at) you
would need approximately 1000 lb of pulling force to generate 10 PTO horsepower. Assuming that a
tire on grass can generate a tractive force of half the weight it's carrying (in other words, a
coefficient of friction of .5) means that the cart would need to weigh 2000 lbs in order to
transmit the 1000 lb pulling force to the PTO without the tires slipping. At the end of the day
there is no free lunch - you can never get more power out of the PTO shaft than what the horses are
delivering at their harnesses and only then if the power can be transmitted through the system
without loss such as wheel slippage.
 
I'll concede the point that it'll likely struggle in certain conditions. I'd like to think if they can get it to speed flywheel momentum could get it past rough patches. I don't know much about hay anyways but it is neat to hear the bailer run without a tractor. I just thought it looked fascinating and makes me wish I had a couple draft horses.

I found that when I was trying to look up tools I could get that are ground driven. I only know of a couple tillage tools, manure spreader, horse sickle mower, and a few types of rakes that you just pull and they work.
 
Remember what I said about the load on the spreader. Then remember the David Bradley mower I wrote about and I had a Deere on steel at same time but wheels were quite a bit larger than the Bradly rubber tires and was heavier and it used a 6' bar with no problem. And I have had the ground drive hay rake slide the rubber, The steel were 44" diameter with a lug of sorts.
 
Good reply. But a draft horse will walk at more like 2-2.5 MPH so you could not get the speed, true a draft horse will be walking faster on road pulling a lightly loaded wagon but not out in the field pulling a plow and that load would be like pulling the plow. You can push a heavy loaded wheelbarrow farther if you try a slow walk than if you try to walk fast, you would tire out faster with the faster walk. And to get enough power with horses to do what they are saying you would need a minimum of 6 horses, more like 8 to 10 head. I have been furnishing horse capable equipment to my friends for several years to use as they have no tractors or cars. A driving horse with buggy can on level road do up to about 25 but when the buggy comes to a hill the horse speed drops to 15MPH. And a lot of the driving horses are retired race horses. Cannot keep load moving at same speed up hill as on level. Going down hill have to slow down at top of hill as buggy will want to gain speed on way down to when horse cannot walk fast enough. And there has been buggy riders plus the horse killed because horse could not hold the load back. And the speed they say for PTO speed is way to slow for the implements mentioned to work correctly, try running them with your tractor at 2/3 pto speed and see what happens.
 
As for the PTO speed I think that's a mute point. It's only 40 RPM's off my tractor speed.

They do put brakes on those carts. Granted it's an option but I'd say it's a reqiuirement.

Your talking about stopping a load. I'm not sure how much that bailer weighs but I think the horses plus brakes should easily stop that machine. It's not like you'd going to pull a hay rack behind.

Again I just thought this forecart was neat. Then I thought the tires were on backward. That brought me around to consider the direction for the tires I got for my Van Brunt.

I know nothing about farming with horses but when I read your comments I remember all the advertising that Farmall had. "A farmer can eliminate 18 horses and 2-3 hired hands if he had a Farmall."

Sorry. Anyhow what you say makes sense to me. If I ever used horses personally I wouldn't work them very hard. If I had one of these it would probably be used for small demonstrations of mixing modern tools with methods of the past. A motorized one could be interesting too.
 
Ground driven horse mowers worked fine and they don't weigh nearly as much as most fore carts I've seen,plus the rubber tires will normally get better traction.
 
(quoted from post at 11:32:31 03/09/18) Ground driven horse mowers worked fine and they don't weigh nearly as much as most fore carts I've seen,plus the rubber tires will normally get better traction.

The old horse drawn sickles are like a motorcycle to a truck. As I recall they still had enough weight without a rider to operate behind a tractor.
 
Seen more then one person try to d o that and in most cases it did not work out well. Many tractor 1st gear ground speed is way to fast and the mower has problems cutting or stay in one piece
 
Oh alright. I'll not do that then. I was starting to consider one because I figured I could use it behind an ATV, red H, or a horse/donkey (if I ever get one).
 
Its not a pretty site to see one of those horse pull sickle mower self destruct due to being pull to fast. I over the years have picked up a good many sickle bar mowers cheap and then rebuilt them which is not all that hard to do. Last one I did was a NH45/46/47 pull type. Paid $150 for it and sold it for around $500 and still got a profit. I have also taken 2 or 3 old sickle mowers and built one good one out of them. At one time I even built one to be belly mount for the Farmall B I had and used a power steering pump for hyd power to lift the mower. I traded that tractor off for a NH850 baler
 
Ground driven implements should have treads
backwards to tractor tires. Guys with 2wd
combines are putting tractor tires on rear
(unpowered, steering) wheels so that tires
will climb out of ruts and mud better.
 
(quoted from post at 21:29:07 03/08/18) That Forecart I do not believe would work as the machinery load off the PTO would be more than the grip of the tires would be able to give. And the mowers the tire is just to small to be able to generate the power the mower needs. Had a David Bradley mower on 6:50x16 tires and it would not run the 5' cutter bar with out the wheels slipping. A manure spreader gets the grip from the weight of the load when it starts unloading and does not take the power when it gets partial loaded and the weight gets off the tires. That outfit to be able to put enough power out to doo anything would have to have the tires loaded with the heaviest weight avaible. Forecarts but without a PTO and steel wheels are a way of life for my friends.

I&J has spent a lot of time (and $$$), as in decades, working out reliable PTO forecarts. I wouldn't sell them short quite yet. They have limitations but they do work well within those limitations.
 

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