I have man handled wheel weights for my entire adult life. I guess not smart enough to save my back.
This morning I was walking beside one of the tractors on a feeder wagon and I could hear a clunking noise. I stopped my son and looked real close as I thought we had loose wheel wedges. The ones out at the rim not the center ones. It was not either of them. The inside wheel weight bolts where loose and the set of four weights where flopping around as the tractor rolled along. This tractor feeds at two farms so it was lucky that we did not loose the stack on the road.
My son had a baptism to go to so I told him I would fix them after lunch. I was not looking forward to taking the outside three weights off to tighten that inner weight. These are just the 150 lb. weights so they are not too bad but still a hand full.
I was just looking things over before starting and noticed the loader tractor with the bale spears on it setting there. One of the spears was just the size of the offset hole in the weights. So I took one spear off and used the single one to hold/guide the weights off and on. I just stopped the tractor with the hole straight up. I then put the spear in the hole and lifted just a little so the end was resting on the very inside weight. It acted as a guide to hold the spear. So all I had to do was take the three nuts off each and slide the weight straight back the spear. I removed the outer three weights and never seized the nuts and re-torqued all the bolts in under 15 minutes. I then cussed myself for not thinking of this years ago.
I do use the pallet forks inside the larger weights like the 750 Kilo and 1500 Kilo weights the newer tractors have on them. That still takes some work to get them to line up. This way sure was easier. The round part of the spear made the weights line right back up. Not just the height but the rotation too.
So I guess old dogs can learn new tricks.
This morning I was walking beside one of the tractors on a feeder wagon and I could hear a clunking noise. I stopped my son and looked real close as I thought we had loose wheel wedges. The ones out at the rim not the center ones. It was not either of them. The inside wheel weight bolts where loose and the set of four weights where flopping around as the tractor rolled along. This tractor feeds at two farms so it was lucky that we did not loose the stack on the road.
My son had a baptism to go to so I told him I would fix them after lunch. I was not looking forward to taking the outside three weights off to tighten that inner weight. These are just the 150 lb. weights so they are not too bad but still a hand full.
I was just looking things over before starting and noticed the loader tractor with the bale spears on it setting there. One of the spears was just the size of the offset hole in the weights. So I took one spear off and used the single one to hold/guide the weights off and on. I just stopped the tractor with the hole straight up. I then put the spear in the hole and lifted just a little so the end was resting on the very inside weight. It acted as a guide to hold the spear. So all I had to do was take the three nuts off each and slide the weight straight back the spear. I removed the outer three weights and never seized the nuts and re-torqued all the bolts in under 15 minutes. I then cussed myself for not thinking of this years ago.
I do use the pallet forks inside the larger weights like the 750 Kilo and 1500 Kilo weights the newer tractors have on them. That still takes some work to get them to line up. This way sure was easier. The round part of the spear made the weights line right back up. Not just the height but the rotation too.
So I guess old dogs can learn new tricks.