Changing Wheel & Tire Sizes on a Loader

[Knivens894]

This year I purchased a used loader which came with over sized wheels and tires. The tires wheels and tires appear to have come off of a timber skidder. Since I planned to use the machine in wet sand clay, my thoughts at the time were the added tire size would provide additional traction. What a mistake! I found the flexing of the front tires under the heavy sand clay load caused the sidewalls (caked in sand clay) to rub the loader frame, which eventually lead to tire sidewall failure. Meanwhile the loader hesitated to get moving under load and in less than 100 hours of use failed every drive shaft universal (seven) in the drive train. It also twice wiped out the damper pucks between the engine and transmission.

Long story short, when I had the front tire failure, I decided to go back to OEM standard sized off road tires. This meant I had to find and purchase original OEM sized rims and tires. After replacing all four wheels and tires with the OEM size, the machine no longer hesitates under load, acceleration is much faster, dig in power is greater, and the drive line issues have gone away. The point I intend to make here is bigger tires are not always better. The drive line torque required to turn the larger tires was obviously excessive. The design of the drive line was matched by the manufacturer to the size of the OEM tires. Anyone buying a machine with over sized tires or considering changing tire sizes to larger than OEM should take serious notice. I made an expensive mistake and not one I will soon forget. Hopefully sharing this will help others prevent a serious mistake.

 

[PJ The Kid]

Sounds to me like there was no maintenance done on the unit prior to your purchase. Bigger tires won't necessarily eat up the u-joints and pucks like you are talking about. Having about the same effect as pushing a pile. Also more than size, the type of tire matters alot. Depending on the size of the loader you are talking about, a skidder or feller/buncher would have bigger tires, but not as stiff of sidewalls. Also keep an eye on tire PSI as I have had to replace tires with beat out sidewalls due to loading them with under inflated tires.