Bent cracked loader arms

[vtsnowedin]

Reading through several of the snow removal threads I keep coming across references to bending or racking loader arms while pushing a front mounted plow or even cracking welds and breaking loader mounts. I thought I'd try to pull the subject into one thread and get some real experiences from those that have actually had this problem.
Now I know you can damage a loader by over stressing it. The loader I had on my 880 David Brown was designed to load manure and had a four foot bucket with round tines that stuck out a foot from the main bucket bottom. Useing and abusing that loader to do way more then it was designed for I managed to bend or break off all the tines and even sheared off several of the bolts that bolted the loader from to the tractor body" when I was young and foolish I was young and foolish"
But now who has actually broken their loader pushing snow with it? What size tractor? Are small SCUTS prone to this ? Are large utility tractors immune? Dose having chains on the front make it more likely? Dose moving the plow back towards the loader arms reduce the stress?
Any info from people that have been there and done that would be appreciated along with the pictures if you still have them.
Of course I have a full set of prejudices and opinions in mind but I will try to keep them in check and let the facts speak for themselves.

 

[tessiers]

I watched an owner of a john deere 200 excavator (45000 lb machine) break the main boom OFF at just over 2000 hrs. My point here is most if not all machines have the capacity to damage themselves. It is the operators responsibilityt to work within safe and reasonable limitations. With a proper trip blade of a reasonable size I think damages are very un-likely. I have a 6' plow on my JD 790 with quite a few hours plowing snow with no prblems.

 

[DK35vince]

My opinion, as long as the snow blade has the proper trip springs on it you will be fine.
I run chains on all 4 and a 9' snow blade on the loader of my 35 HP tractor with no problems.

 

[vtsnowedin]

I watched an owner of a john Deere 200 excavator (45000 lb machine) break the main boom OFF at just over 2000 hrs. My point here is most if not all machines have the capacity to damage themselves. It is the operators responsibilityt to work within safe and reasonable limitations. With a proper trip blade of a reasonable size I think damages are very un-likely. I have a 6' plow on my JD 790 with quite a few hours plowing snow with no prblems.

Thanks for the response. Yes I have seen excavators crack the dipper stick between the pivot point and the crowd pin attachment point. They seem to have figured that out as it has been a while.
Do you have any pictures of your successful set up?

 

[vtsnowedin]

My opinion, as long as the snow blade has the proper trip springs on it you will be fine.
I run chains on all 4 and a 9' snow blade on the loader of my 35 HP tractor with no problems.

Thats good to hear. Any pics of your setup?

 

[DK35vince]

Any pics of your setup?

Not any more.
I had lots of pictures until a car hit a utility pole near here last week and causing a huge voltage spike. Took out computer with all the photos on it, printer and several other items.

 

[xring100]

I'm sure anything is possible especially if your going fast. You could do the same thing running your bucket into a dirt pile really hard with uneven edge contact. I would think with a trip edge and cushion valve on the cylinders your chances are low just take it easy especially when working near frozen ice/snow piles the wider the blade the larger the moment arm and thus more torque on the arms.

Dave

 

[daugen]

Not any more.
I had lots of pictures until a car hit a utility pole near here last week and causing a huge voltage spike. Took out computer with all the photos on it, printer and several other items.

a suggestion:
if you have to replace your computer, don't throw the old hard drive away. It might still be ok, and could be a second drive on your new unit. And all your photos will hopefully be saved. Unless you were using your pc
when the spike hit, likely your hard drive survived. Power supplies often die, as well as anything connected to unprotected phone or cable lines. In a past life I owned an electronics business and saw plenty of this.

 

[Rustyiron]

Common sence must be used here. But I think that slow is the key, at least on gravel/rough surfaces. Just this morning I plowed with my 95hp 'Bota instead of my skid steel that I usually use. The loader arm movement was a little alarming. (watching it vs. the hood) With the SS, the loader arms are down resting against the frame stops. I was using a "factory made" plow with the SS quick attach plate (Snowwolf) 108" and of course with trip springs. Around here, usually we end up with a smooth snow "build up" that the plow glides smoothly over, but this last snow was on open gravel. With pavement, nevermind.:thumbsup:

 

[daugen]

how fast can one go pushing a bucket into a gravel pile? 2-3mph?
Always wondered how putting all that force on the bucket hydraulics
worked in the long haul. Seemed to me that the hydraulics would cushion the
impact but clearly bent or cracked arms are a reality.

Seems reasonable to expect any modern well made implement to not crack or bend structurally at full load,
or even something over that. I'd expect movement to stop, but not metal to break.

Now i guess if you run your tractor and loader into a tree at 15 mph, anything goes.
But short of a higher speed collision with something or a tractor upset or rollover, that steel should handle it.
Shouldn't it?

 

[tessiers]

I can get some tomorrow.

 

[Verticaltrx]

I don't have a loader mounted plow blade, don't plan on one any time soon. With that said, I do have many hundreds of hours running tractors with loaders and can tell you that putting side stress on a loader is not good. An angled plow blade puts a lot of side load on the loader arms, something to think about...

 

[RFB]

I have operated a 7.5 power angle FEL (QA) snow blade for thousand of hours. It has 4 springs for trip action and a hydro relief valve. I try to operate it as a sentient being: not recklessly. I never float the blade, I ride the stick just like a cyclic, correcting for contours in the road surface. It is always gravel/dirt roads and snow/ice/rock berms.
No damage to the loader.

 

[vtsnowedin]

I'm still hopeing to hear from people that have actually bent their loader. I'd like to see what gave way first. On my old David Brown the cross brace at the front of the loader was bolted in, not welded and had a bit of play in it. If you dug a lot with one side of the bucket you could rack the arms a couple of inches but just switching sides for a while would rack it back. I tended to favor using the left side as the control levers were on the right frame post and blocked the view.

 

[daugen]

I'm still hopeing to hear from people that have actually bent their loader. I'd like to see what gave way first. On my old David Brown the cross brace at the front of the loader was bolted in, not welded and had a bit of play in it. If you dug a lot with one side of the bucket you could rack the arms a couple of inches but just switching sides for a while would rack it back. I tended to favor using the left side as the control levers were on the right frame post and blocked the view.

sounds like you are trying to avoid a bad experience of the past, but that old loader, well, it sounds "old"... Wonder if you had welded the crossbrace if it would have made any difference. If not, I just hope more modern
FEL's are stronger. I'm just as interested as you are in understanding "fails" here.

Putting a big side load on a bucket should be left to excavators... I don't think our FEL's were built for that. Though within reason, "operating as a sentient being" (great quote) I'm sure we can all do a little of it.
It's when I put a chain on the bucket and go to pull something heavy out of the woods, my understanding is to go "straight back" to avoid side bending.

 

[RFB]

Maybe the concept of a "bent loader arm" is based upon false premises and is thereby more legend than fact. If (for the sake of the argument) most people who frequent this site come either to obtain and/or share knowledge, then that could indicate thoughtfulness rather than recklessness. If that is the case, the cross-sectional sample obtained would not have sufficent idiocy to provide the proper amount of damage desired.

 

[daugen]

Maybe the concept of a "bent loader arm" is based upon false premises and is thereby more legend than fact. If (for the sake of the argument) most people who frequent this site come either to obtain and/or share knowledge, then that could indicate thoughtfulness rather than recklessness. If that is the case, the cross-sectional sample obtained would not have sufficent idiocy to provide the proper amount of damage desired.

Well, in my "prime" I could be an idiot of the first order...

And as the Amish farmers say, every day some farmer puts his foot in the milk bucket...

So I guess I could volunteer to help provide sufficient idiocy...

btw, wonder if anyone in the welding forum has some experience with loaders...they'd be the ones to fix them.

more legend than fact.
The Sasquatch of tractor land...

 

[vtsnowedin]

Good thoughts guys. My old loader was certainly "old" by the time I was done with it:ashamed: but it was pretty well built and not that much different from what is available today. I expect that there are some loaders out there that are not well matched to the machine they are on and can fail under normal use and there may be material choices and manufacturing methods made by the builders that leave some brands less capable over the long haul. Perhaps it is just an old wives tale and it seldom happens without a wreck to finish things off.

 

[RFB]

The Sasquatch of tractor land...

And his third cousin once removed, "front differential damaged by chains on the front tires".

 

[xtn]

how fast can one go pushing a bucket into a gravel pile? 2-3mph?
Always wondered how putting all that force on the bucket hydraulics
worked in the long haul. Seemed to me that the hydraulics would cushion the
impact but clearly bent or cracked arms are a reality.

Seems reasonable to expect any modern well made implement to not crack or bend structurally at full load,
or even something over that. I'd expect movement to stop, but not metal to break.

Now i guess if you run your tractor and loader into a tree at 15 mph, anything goes.
But short of a higher speed collision with something or a tractor upset or rollover, that steel should handle it.
Shouldn't it?

You've kind of touched on some engineering language choices that are interesting.

First, the hydraulic fluid itself isn't going to provide any "cushion" as it is practically incompressible. I mean that's one of the big reasons it's used. Any "cushion" in an FEL system is going to be found in the expansion of lines, the loose tolerance of joints or actual soft bushings used in joints if any, and/or actual give in the metal somewhere.

Now let's talk about full load. Nothing fails below full load. If something failed, it wasn't below full load now was it? And if something hasn't failed, then you haven't yet loaded it past it's full load capability. If something fails at a load below what you THOUGHT it's full load capability ought to be, then you were wrong. Now the figures a manufacturer publishes as his design full load capability is something else altogether. I agree with you that with modern engineering data, tools, and manufacturing techniques, we ought to expect that any published design load figure is safe and ought to not cause undue damage. But then we could talk about expected cycles, allowable tolerance for small defects due to age and use, etc. Like that little scratch that was put into the metal years ago when another operator accidentally dragged the boom along a fence post. And that little scratch has been gently cycled a few thousand times since then. What's the max load capacity of the boom now? LOL impossible to answer accurately from the vague info given, but maybe it's less than it used to be, huh?

And collisions, or let's call them "very high acceleration events", at even low speeds can generate HUGE momentary forces. For example: from 3mph to dead stop in 0.01 seconds... that's over 13 g of acceleration. Now if you've got X lbs of machine behind the loader when you run into a tree, that's 13X lbs of force trying to bend or break something. If my tractor weighs about 5000 lbs, that's 65,000 lbs trying to bend or brake my loader during that 0.01 seconds. Stopping in the same amount of time from 15 mph and you've got yourself a 68 g event.