Tried to meet Harry Ferguson last Sunday.

Well, me and my 65...

Where to begin? The neighbor asked me to help him with some property cleanup and since it's within view of my house, I figured I would. He was removing an old above ground pool deck on a decent slope. The pool was set into the hillside. We began by pulling the front retaining wall made up of railroad ties. Then I backed down from above and pulled the deck off its supports and hauled it away. Next was to pull the 4x4s out of the ground that support the rear retaining wall. I began to drive around to pull from the area where the pool had been. The property owner asked if I could back down from above. No problem... I backed down the slope to the edge and he wrapped the chain around the post. I tensioned the chain by raising the box scraper and went to Low 1st and let out on the clutch.

That's where stuff went downhill fast.

The front end came up, I pressed the clutch and we went firing back toward the edge. I jumped on the brake, feathering the clutch, only to miss the right brake, but the left held. At this point I realized how stupid the whole thing was. What was I thinking? The rest of the job had been so easy and trouble-free that I really hadn't thought about what if something went wrong. Going backward over a 10 foot lip with no rops on top of vertical 4x4's is not my idea of how to spend a Sunday.

If I had been standing watching someone else try this I would have been the first to caution against it. What was I thinking?

Took me 3 days to figure out how to write this...

Fire away...

Aaron

holy schitt, man, holy schitt.

I didn't think much of anything until I read "Going backward over a 10 foot lip"

And only then I knew how much God was looking out for you.

Sure hope you thanked your creator.

Let that be a lesson to you. Next time the brake pedals will be locked together and evenly adjusted... and you'll probably learn to drop the lift arms rather than the clutch.
With some practice these things become common. You get used to it and don't panic...

Rod

Glad you are ok.

Let that be a lesson to all of us.

I am glad you are here to tell the tail.

What a scare! I was scared too,a whole bunch of
times.One scenario had me brushcutting (Massey 135/J.D.5' 3PT.hog.Backing and cutting down a slope towards a ravine.Too steep to go across.Put the tractor in 2 low forward at the top and reversed with the clutch in but brushcutter running(live P.T.O.) In case the brakes would'nt hold all I would have to do is let the clutch out and ahead I would go.I got close to the ravine,the brakes were a bit iffy,let the clutch out to go ahead and the front end reared up at the same time wanting to spin around.I guess one tire was on some slippery dead grass.I had a bit of lift on the brushcutter so luckily I dropped the three point
in time for the tractor to recover with a bit of help from the right brake.I had to repeat until slope was done,maybe 20 times,so I made sure all the weight was off the three point before letting out the clutch.It was stupid scary! The property owner is blind (no,really),I know he wants me to do the slope again.I did get the 135's brakes repaired,tho.

Don't beat yourself up too bad. We all make stupid mistakes, some are just worse than others.

I have had a couple too close calls, 1993 Do we all remember the floods and too wet 1993? Combine kept plugging with weeds, too wet for the herbicides to work.

Long story made short: tried to pull header belt backwards one last time, foot was against line for header. IH 151 had no header lock out. Broke hyd line with foot, I should have been dead. God gives us unbeleavable power when we need it, I was able to lift the header with my legs and roll out.

DOUG

You suffer from the same thing most of us do.. Trying to be a good neighbor, even though you did not really have the correct equipment to do the job.. Please do not take that as an insult, I do the same thing, it is hard to say no to a neighbor or friend.
It seems that a skidsteer or mini-excavator would have been a much better and safer machine to do that job.
Glad that things ended up OK. That could have been a bad accident..

Boy you sure can type good for all the shaking your still doin, at least I'd be.

Glad all is well !

Aaron
One thing I forgot to mention in an above post to "Attn James Howell"

I believe it was you that sent me a color pic of that mower , I'm sorry I seem to have lost it Can you post it again in that topic ? Thanks !!

What's that saying ? That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger or in this case wiser.

It's amazing how stupid you feel when in the middle of a bad situation knowing as it unfolds that you could have avoided the whole mess.

I had an old farmall with badly glazed brakes. I wasn't using it because I had another tractor and put off fixing the brakes.

My SIL called, she was stuck in the mud. I went down to the barn, my first tractor wouldn't start and I didn't want to leave her too long so I jumped into the farmall and pulled her out. They have a narrow drive on the side of a hill and I was getting turned around. I backed up and went to shift from reverse to second but didn't quite get the tractor stopped and couldn't get the tractor back in gear. I stompted the brake as hard as I could and slowly kept going backwards until I was over the edge of the driveway, then things became much less slow. No ROPS, no brakes, limbs hitting me every which way as I steered like a madman trying to avoid trees and not tip the tractor at the same time.

Those times aren't fun but I pay much more attention to what I do now, keep my machinery up, and now have ROPS and use the seatbelt.

Good luck.

Reminds me of the time I went over a 30 foot creek bank backwards with a tractor with a post hole digger on it because my father was rather nonchalant about fixing brakes.