Posted by John In IN on March 11, 1998 at 19:04:52:
In Reply to: Narrow front issue...my thoughts posted by John.COLO on March 11, 1998 at 04:56:38:
Any time you get any tractor in a position where it has forces trying to make it tip, you have to be very careful. I have personally been involved in two instances of tractors rolling or nearly rolling, andboth were with wide fronts. The first instance was when I was about 16. I was helping a neighbor clean up some briar patches at an old rundown farm he'd bought. He was mowing and I was using a brush axe. While he was mowing along a fairly gently sloped pond dam, the lower front wheel dropped into a hole we weren't aware of. The tractor went over so quickly I could hardly comprehend what I had seen. He was thrown clear, but the tractor took a good bit of work. If you think about it, when a wide front has a problem affecting only one side, you have a very unstable beast. The only remaining front support is a couple feet to the side of the center of the tractor. A 3 legged stool can stand up, but remove a leg from a 4 legged stool and it will fall over. A few years back at my dad's place, I was using a 2030 with a loader to feed round bales. While carrying a bale, the left fron wheel broke amd let the left side fall hard to the ground. Fortunately I had spent the previous 20 years partly ignoring my father and grandfather telling me to carry the bale low and it was only a foot off the ground. A heavy weight on a loader makes any tractor, especially a NF a very tricky beast.
John