LFEngineering
Silver Member
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2013
- Messages
- 109
- Location
- Western, MA
- Tractor
- Kubota B1700, IH Cub Lo-Boy 185( Sold) & Deutz Allis 5215 (Sold)
About 2 weeks ago I got stuck in my driveway in 3/4" of snow. That's right, less then 1" stopped my '75 Cub lo-boy in her tracks. As an engineering tech and fab shop owner I have an uncontrollable urge to tweak / modify everything so it didn't take long before I was looking for ways to improve traction. I was leaning towards making wheel spacers & buying chains until I found the popular "Cutting / Groving / Siping R-4 for snow" thread here on TBN. This got me thinking, R-4, R-3 doesn't matter they're both suffering from the same problem when it comes to snow.
Based on the information found on the R-4 grooving thread I decided I'd pick up a groover & modify the center lugs on my R3's.
One of the hardest parts of this entire experiment was trying to find an objective way to measure the results. To do this I decided to cut only one tire, that way I could drive on any surface and see which tire slipped first. If the un-grooved tire repeatedly slipped before then the grooved tire then grooving helps. If it's 50/50 then it was a waste of time. Remember I'm not trying to beat chains, or studs I just want an improvement.
I started by laying out each lug with a cross hatch pattern. After the first few I decided to just free hand the rest. All in all it took about an hour to cut one tire start to finish. The groover handled it well, I only used 1 blade and it didn't seem to cut any different from the first to last cut.
Results:
After a trip out to the yard the results were in, it worked. To what degree I can't say yet, but 20 for 20 attempts up the snow covered hill the non-grooved tire broke free first. Unfortunately it was too dark to take video, but I will do some filming this afternoon.
Based on the information found on the R-4 grooving thread I decided I'd pick up a groover & modify the center lugs on my R3's.
One of the hardest parts of this entire experiment was trying to find an objective way to measure the results. To do this I decided to cut only one tire, that way I could drive on any surface and see which tire slipped first. If the un-grooved tire repeatedly slipped before then the grooved tire then grooving helps. If it's 50/50 then it was a waste of time. Remember I'm not trying to beat chains, or studs I just want an improvement.
I started by laying out each lug with a cross hatch pattern. After the first few I decided to just free hand the rest. All in all it took about an hour to cut one tire start to finish. The groover handled it well, I only used 1 blade and it didn't seem to cut any different from the first to last cut.
Results:
After a trip out to the yard the results were in, it worked. To what degree I can't say yet, but 20 for 20 attempts up the snow covered hill the non-grooved tire broke free first. Unfortunately it was too dark to take video, but I will do some filming this afternoon.