Bent cracked loader arms

[daugen]

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.

Oh dear, here come the airbags....
good explanation. I kept thinking you meant deceleration instead of acceleration, but G force is G force. It's the sudden stop that hurts...

As far as the hydraulics, I'd expect the rams or some hydraulic part to fail first assuming a straight on collision. And would the overpressure/popoff valves in the system help?
But collide from the side? I can see something bending that way for sure.

Ok, let's offer a prize for the most damaging FEL story. one of 4Shorts shirts?

And I still wonder how fast I can go into that gravel pile without excessive wear on, well, anything.

 

[DK35vince]

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.

Thanks.
I know very little about computers. I can turn one on and off and punch the keyboard. That's about it.
I was on the computer when the power spike hit. Took out our printer also.

 

[KennyG]

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.

I've got a snowblower, but I sometimes use the loader (with bucket, not a snow blade) to scrape my concrete driveway. I always use in float position. What would be the disadvantage to floating a snow blade?

 

[xtn]

I kept thinking you meant deceleration instead of acceleration, but G force is G force. It's the sudden stop that hurts...

Acceleration is a change in velocity or direction. Acceleration can be from faster to slower, or from slower to faster. We use the word deceleration to describe a faster to slower change from our own point of view, but since all velocity is relative, it's really meaningless.

xtn

 

[Coyote machine]

Thanks.
I know very little about computers. I can turn one on and off and punch the keyboard. That's about it.
I was on the computer when the power spike hit. Took out our printer also.

DKvince,
There are numerous photo recovery software apps out there to use on a drive that will still spin up. If the drive is totally fried then forget about it. Check google.
For future prevention of similar events get an APC Backup; it has a surge/spike protection circuit AND battery backup for when the power drops out so you can safely shut down. I use them on all my equipment and have never had a spike or brown out or surge do any damage.
Printers are very prone to damage from events like what you described.

To the OP, check out one of my early threads about having bent my loaders arms and 1/2 moon shaped flatstock connectors on my first tractor: the DK-35 I had back in '09-'010. It includes pics and everything, along with discussion, etc.

 

[Katahdin]

I've been plowing the same 400 foot driveway for about 10 years with a full trip blade. I recently adapted this blade from my truck to my tractor loader. When I've hit an obstacle or heavy snow with my plow, the blade folds down flat and passes over the obstacle. The vehicle does not stop and there is no de-acceleration. Most times I don't even feel an impact. These are the only facts I can offer that are relevant to this discussion at the moment.

 

[FatTire]

This issue of possible damage to FEL arms due to plowing has come up in other threads. So far, doesn't seem like there have been actual reports of damage related to snow plowing with either full trip or edge trip plow.

 

[grsthegreat]

i was in a discussion about this same thing awhile back. a few people warned about damaging the loader arms.

Problem is...no one had actually ever seen this happen..or know of someone this has happened to (at least in a modern machine). So i place this as wives tail personally.

I now have 2 seasons with my Quick Attach brand loader mounted plow. Its a 84" wide plow with 4 quick trip springs. Works flawlessly as long as i chain up all 4 tires (otherwise it tends to drift when blade is angled)

 

[lostcause]

it may be hard to find many/any people who have experienced a failure this way, because most people won't put themselves in the position to experience it. it's basic physics really:

look at your loader arms - the width is less than the depth of them, because loaders are designed to lift vertically.

look at the floor stringers and roof rafters in your house - they are positioned vertically for strength.

go out and see if you can find someone who framed the floor of their house with 2x12's laid flat and let me know how the search went. this is a little extreme of a comparison, but it's the same principal. loader frames are designed to take vertical loads and not necessarily lateral loads. they will certainly take some lateral loads but many people will avoid doing it - particularly with smaller equipment.

my tractor is a jd770 and parts of the loader frame are 3/16" plate bent into a c-shape. i know this can take some lateral loading, because i've smacked into a few things over the years and it hasn't fallen apart yet. i would put a straight blade plow with a trip edge on if i didn't want to use the bucket but i wouldn't consider using an angled blade on something this light. stumps, rocks, and frozen banks are going to put a lot of repeated stress on that frame if i do. if i had a heavier setup i might, but i would have to look at it and evaluate whether i thought it was up to the task.

 

[daugen]

then Sasquatch it remains, but the hunt goes on....

 

[vtsnowedin]

I was at Harvest equipment in Wiliston today and took a stroll down the display line. One thing I noticed is that the 553 loaders with a quick attach bucket have a different linkage for the bucket dump then mine with a straight JD carrier. I didn't think to snap a picture of those but here is mine which is a very rugged casting instead of half moom plates. My hook up is not self leveling.

 

[milkman636]

This is my second winter using an 84" blade on my CT335. There is a spot in my driveway where the grade flattens out while running downhill that scared me the first time going down with my blade angled. The right loader arm flexed noticibly upward as the leading edge hit the flatter grade first. That was a one time deal for me and I run with the blade close to straight going through that spot now.

This topic is a concern I've had too. The loder mounted blade is very convenient and does a great job, but I can't help but wonder if I should have investrd in a subframe mounted plow?

 

[vtsnowedin]

This is my second winter using an 84" blade on my CT335. There is a spot in my driveway where the grade flattens out while running downhill that scared me the first time going down with my blade angled. The right loader arm flexed noticibly upward as the leading edge hit the flatter grade first. That was a one time deal for me and I run with the blade close to straight going through that spot now.

This topic is a concern I've had too. The loder mounted blade is very convenient and does a great job, but I can't help but wonder if I should have investrd in a subframe mounted plow?

I take it that your 84" blade is not free floated and you were pushing to the left? I don't know as the loader arm getting pushed up would do any harm. It would put the lift piston for that arm under a vacuum if the control valve was closed at the time making it act like a shock absorber.

 

[RFB]

I hardly ever float the blade. The roads that I plow are rough as a half-eaten cob and harder than woodpecker lips, and floating catches too many of the variables of the road. I also removed the skid shoes and obtained much better trip performance as a result. It seemed like the shoes "caught" more than glided, but the cutting edge runs smoother. Granted, this is almost always on a snow/ice packed surface.

The FEL is priceless for the residences where I can stack the snow into 8 foot piles.

 

[milkman636]

I was pushing off to the left, and my blade only has a 5 degrees of rotational pivot. If one side pivots up more than five degrees it applies upward force to that side of my loader. If my drive were flat enough I guess it wouldn't concern me, but my concern is torsional load possibly racking the loader so one arm would be slightly higher forever. I hadn't even considered cracking an arm or mount. I try not to hurry and get careless.

Experience is a good teacher. I'll know a little more when I start shoppping for my next blade.

 

[milkman636]

Floating the loader seems to be better on some surfaces than others. I clear areas of asphalt, concrete, and gravel. I find myself floating the loader in some areas then riding the joystick through other. Ideally I'd love to be able to get things dialed in to where I could get a good scrape on all surfaces with the loader in the float position. I've been fiddling with skid shoe height and blade tilt to try to get there.

 

[crazyal]

When I was looking to buy a backhoe I found several that had the loader repaired. Most of them had non factory welds and plates added to them. The manuals always state do not ram into stuff with the loader.

For those who think the trip springs on a plow will always protect you think again. That I have proof of. About 4 years ago I hit a rock about the size of a watermelon on the side of the driveway that had froze in place. I was lazy and left it there in the fall thinking I would never plow that far off the drive. The problem is that we had lots of snow and I needed to push the banks back to prepare for an upcoming storm. My trip springs are set very weak, I have them that way so when the ground isn't frozen the blade will trip without digging in too much. I also plow in low gear at slow speeds.

When I hit the rock I bent one of the two angle cylinders (a 1 3/4" diameter rod), sheared one of the two 1" pivot pins, and bent the 3/4" steel plate with the hole for the other 1" pin. Now my plow truck is a 2 1/2 ton dump that weighs more than 10k and the plow is a 10' Western so there's plenty of weight to cause problems but the steel is a lot thicker. I still have the bent cylinder and I wasn't able to fully straighten out the plate. I was able to find a new old stock cylinder for under $100 on ebay (not much call for a angle cylinder that large) so it wasn't an expensive fix. But it did open my eyes. Damage to a loader would cost a heck of a lot more. Plus there's the wear to the pins in the loader.

Have I seen a damaged loader from plowing snow, no. But I also don't want the first one I see to be mine.

 

[vtsnowedin]

When I was looking to buy a backhoe I found several that had the loader repaired. Most of them had non factory welds and plates added to them. The manuals always state do not ram into stuff with the loader.

For those who think the trip springs on a plow will always protect you think again. That I have proof of. About 4 years ago I hit a rock about the size of a watermelon on the side of the driveway that had froze in place. I was lazy and left it there in the fall thinking I would never plow that far off the drive. The problem is that we had lots of snow and I needed to push the banks back to prepare for an upcoming storm. My trip springs are set very weak, I have them that way so when the ground isn't frozen the blade will trip without digging in too much. I also plow in low gear at slow speeds.

When I hit the rock I bent one of the two angle cylinders (a 1 3/4" diameter rod), sheared one of the two 1" pivot pins, and bent the 3/4" steel plate with the hole for the other 1" pin. Now my plow truck is a 2 1/2 ton dump that weighs more than 10k and the plow is a 10' Western so there's plenty of weight to cause problems but the steel is a lot thicker. I still have the bent cylinder and I wasn't able to fully straighten out the plate. I was able to find a new old stock cylinder for under $100 on ebay (not much call for a angle cylinder that large) so it wasn't an expensive fix. But it did open my eyes. Damage to a loader would cost a heck of a lot more. Plus there's the wear to the pins in the loader.

Have I seen a damaged loader from plowing snow, no. But I also don't want the first one I see to be mine.

+1:thumbsup:
I'm not too worried about up and down forces on my set up. The loader arms are fixed and the plow floats on the cutting edge and is free to rotate up or down on the push pins as per the Fisher design. What concerns me is the difference between the mounting plates that attach the stock plow to a pickup's frame which are about two feet long in total and the loader arms I'm using to do the same job and are eight feet from push pins to pivot point. And that point is a pivot point not a bolted up ridged connection. I'm getting from the lack of actual case histories that the concern is minimal with a properly designed loader but I think I will leave my front tires unchained to let them act as a side pressure relief valve and square it up and go slow when pushing into frozen banks just to save wear and tear on my investment.

 

[Renze]

I have a friend in Finland who plows snow commercially, with a 160-180hp tractor and a BIIIGG blade. In snow ploughing season he bolts a guide to the front end of the tractor that locks the loader arms both vertically (torsion) and sideways. He says it is a must if you plough a lot. Last year he hit a car when turning onto a road around a house or barn, the car was going too fast and couldnt be seen nor avoided untill it was too close. Car was totaled, no damage to the loader thanks to the support jig.

Steel gets more brittle in sub zero temperatures and will easier crack from dynamic loads like snow ploughing.

 

[xring100]

I have a friend in Finland who plows snow commercially, with a 160-180hp tractor and a BIIIGG blade. In snow ploughing season he bolts a guide to the front end of the tractor that locks the loader arms both vertically (torsion) and sideways. He says it is a must if you plough a lot. Last year he hit a car when turning onto a road around a house or barn, the car was going too fast and couldnt be seen nor avoided untill it was too close. Car was totaled, no damage to the loader thanks to the support jig.

Steel gets more brittle in sub zero temperatures and will easier crack from dynamic loads like snow ploughing.

Would it be possible to get pictures of it the brace sounds like a good idea but i am having trouble visualizing it

Dave