Have been thinking about the question on ballast in one tire

There was discussion earlier on the affects of ballast in one tire.

In my opinion, having ballast in both tires would help the stability IF, the operator had the bucket in the air and the rear of the tractor tried to come up. I would think if the operator was operating this in a safe mode and not driving around with a loaded bucket in the air there would be no difference. If weight is kept below center of gravity, there should be no difference in the stability of the tractor loaded / unloaded. My dad always preached to me about keeping the bucket low, and I have always tried to remember that.

When I almost flipped my Ford 841S due to only one tire full and the other empty I had a full bucket of gravel and had it have it up high so I could dump it into the truck I was loading up. No way to have it lower in that case and that is where the problem came in

Rich,

I would concur with you that loaded tires add stability when load is above center of gravity.

I am not sure it is a good idea to count on it from a safety standpoint.

On a side hill, with the loaded tire down hill, the top of the loaded tire is down hill from the contact patch of the tire on the ground. Thus almost all the weight of the liquid in the tire is actually acting as a "lever" taking weight away from the far side of the tractor. thus CG is continually offset toward tipping, and the higher the bucket, the farther the GC travels toward disaster. Jim

The ONLY time I raise bucket above CG is when tractor is level.

I have a 580CK skip loader among many other loader units,, last year I had a rim get too bad to run from CC leaking and eating the rim long before I bought the machine in 1999,, I had a time finding one as of course Case no longer sells them as that would cut into new machine sales to sell a rim that fits at least 10 580 versions lol any way to make my story short I had to use it for over 6 months and through the winter before the rim was here and my tire guy was able to come out to install the tire and CC ( Hate the stuff but on this machine I need all the weight I can put on the rear) having one side light is Very unstable, and will make it act like a tri-cycle to put it in easy to understand terms, with the rear balanced it can still tip side to side at times but nothing like it does being light on one side, also traction is reduced by at least 50%, my unit does a large number of jobs,, moving snow and loading round bales is to big ones that are seriously affected by not having the rear end of the machine weighted correctly,, of course I always carry the load as low as possible for the job but loading bales is almost always done in a place not quite level, so counter weight in the correct place is a must,, what I am saying its VERY important to maintain a balanced counter weight to use a unit that is off balance is very dangerous,, but then I see so many who own a small 15-30 hp tractor of today trying to use the loader and no counter weight, which is both dangerous and unproductive along with being very hard on front end components
cnt

But even then if say you hit a rock with the up hill tire it can and will flip. I had had that happen on the 841S also bucket low but filled tire down hill hit something with the up hill tire and have it come very close to lay it over

The more weight on the back tires the more stable with a loader,if the loader is only a foot off the ground its possible to raise the rear with enough weight if the loader is capable. Also width of the rear wheels/tires make a big difference when I had 23.1 X 26 tires on my AC 180 I could do about anything
with the loader and it was no problem.

(quoted from post at 10:08:51 06/16/18) On a side hill, with the loaded tire down hill, the top of the loaded tire is down hill from the contact patch of the tire on the ground. Thus almost all the weight of the liquid in the tire is actually acting as a "lever" taking weight away from the far side of the tractor. thus CG is continually offset toward tipping, and the higher the bucket, the farther the GC travels toward disaster. Jim

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Jan, if you draw yourself diagram of the situation that you are describing, looking at the tire from the rear, unless you make the slope to steep for the tractor regardless of tire loading, you will see that only a small amount of the CaCl, will be outside of the tire foot print.

I?m not sure what the tractor was being used for in the original post, but here is one comment. For field tilage work where you are pulling the tractor at near rated horsepower unless the axle of the ..unloaded.. tire is weighted even to the..loaded.. tire there will be an increase in the wear on the differential due to wheel slippage. This is probably a factor with many other tasks as well. We had a Case 1070 we tore out the differential basically using it like it was a bigger tractor than it was. Just to much percent of slippage under load even though the axles were weighted evenly.

Dad told me 25 years ago he drained the CaCl out of my Super H. About 5 years ago I had a flat tire on the right rear. There was just a gallon or so of CaCl left in it. Left rear tire had 75% fill of CaCl. I had NO idea the left tire was still valve stem full. Dad and I put new rear tires on the SH about 1969 and transfered 50 gallons of CaCl into each rear tire. So I guess Dad drained one, and never got around to the othervtire.

I did. If a person strikes a vertical line from the bottom of the outside of the tire touching the top outside of the tire. then redraw the tire so
that it is tipped outward by the thickness of the tire at least 1/2 of the weight is now outside the contact patch. Jim

(quoted from post at 15:39:33 06/16/18) I did. If a person strikes a vertical line from the bottom of the outside of the tire touching the top outside of the tire. then redraw the tire so
that it is tipped outward by the thickness of the tire at least 1/2 of the weight is now outside the contact patch. Jim

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Jim, It sounds like you are assuming that the tires are full to the top of CaCl instead of to the valve stem like we actually do it.

Might want to slow down a little if hitting rocks almost tips you.

It is not a race.

Of all the people that run tractor I bet I am one that tends to go slower then most. But when driving in a field of tall grass it is hard to tell what is where. You also have to remember I have been using this tractor since the early 80s and have had my share of oh nos. Like the dead tree I figure I would push over with the loader and had the top break and then fall down on top of me and the tractor and pin me to the seat. Got lucky that day because I was not working alone. Kid that was working with me when he saw me started to laugh because of how things looked

(quoted from post at 21:13:03 06/16/18) Of all the people that run tractor I bet I am one that tends to go slower then most. But when driving in a field of tall grass it is hard to tell what is where. You also have to remember I have been using this tractor since the early 80s and have had my share of oh nos. Like the dead tree I figure I would push over with the loader and had the top break and then fall down on top of me and the tractor and pin me to the seat. Got lucky that day because I was not working alone. Kid that was working with me when he saw me started to laugh because of how things looked

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ushing over a dead tree with the FEL......SELF INFLICTED WOUND! We take our chances....sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. You got another day. Might ask yourself, why?

John. When I was in the farm tire business, I saw test results from JD. They ran several tractors for hundreds of hours with hundreds of lbs weight on one side of the tractor. That was equilivent of running fluid in 1 -20.8X38 tire and non in the other side. These tractors were pulled hard. The excess wear on the differential was easy to see, compared to the ones running no fluid in both tires or running fluid in both tires. I had a house fire many years ago and lost all the tech information. If I still had it I would post it. Maybe you can Google it. Good luck.

Well I replaced the rim and tube. The stem was junk and caused it to leak into the rim and pitted it pretty bad. I think the reason it went bad is it only had half the amount of calcium in it. When you would hit road gear the darn thing would sway side to side really bad for a while. I thought it was the rim but it was the fluid.