Broke my tractor today

[northpolefolks]

Same here. When I was building my house we had the last concrete truck for the day showing up and he went down the wrong road on my driveway and when he tried to turn around he got stuck in the ditch. He was a few minutes from dumping all 10yrds on the ground just to try and get unstuck.

I walked the excavator down there and snapped a few chains trying to pull him out. Ended up extending the hoe out and pushing with the bucket on his pintle. Just had enough hp to get him out. That was almost a big mess.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Sorry about not jumping in on this. I am in Algeria and our internet is not tht great plus I've been a little busy up till today. I agree that the chain should have broke prior to breaking that drawbar attachment but it didnt even stretch. The casting did have a flaw that I found when bevelling it out. I am just glad it broke the cast fitting and not the cast frame / rear axle housing. I wont know how well my welding holds till I go home and then only when I hook up to something to pull. I doubt that I will be pulling on 45K weight anymore.
Once we got the shale dumped, the truck was pretty easy to pick up on the one side. I just had to get him up so his tires were on the ground on the other side and he pretty much pulled himself out at that point. With the way the loader is set up, I dont think you have to worry about damaging the front axle as it wont pick up enough weight at the moment to do that. This issue is discussed on another forum about the weak hydraulics which I intend to look at when spring comes and I am home.