Ballast L3130 Ballast in rear tires.

[smittyd3]

Hello FarmerEd,

No that Smitty wasn't me . That was a little after my time.

I don't know where Ray Hicks is now. He retired around January of 2003.

About 15- 20 years ago I did a little organic gardening and sold a little produce, but now with my job I just don't have the time to put into building the compost piles. But who knows, with my new L3130 with bucket I may try to get it going again. I haven't checked on the qualifications for being certified organic lately, but it used to be 2 years without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. I don't use pesticides anyway. I really enjoyed that time.

I enjoyed looking at the pictures from your farm. You have some real nice produce.

Thanks,

Smitty

 

[Freds]

When I got my L3130 the dealer said to go with the ballasted rears because of all the FEL work I do. He said I wouldn't need any additional counterweight and he was right so far (knock on wood). It's nice not having anything extra to keep an eye on hanging off the rear as I'm usually in tight quarters, but with all this talk recently it has to affect the tractor more significantly than what I've seen mentioned here in the past. In other words, it has come to light that ballasted rears have more to do with than just giving you more traction, at least on tractors where you're pushing the hp to weight ratio a bit.
I prefer the way it steers in 2WD and the tractor just seems to have a lot of traction, but I haven't significantly driven one with unballasted tires, so I can't really say if it's the loaded tires or a heavier tractor than what I was used to.

We need a pulling contest /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[JayC]

Hmm... I've been wondering this for quite some time now. I guess this would be an ok spot to ask. With my very limited knowledge of tractors, if you load up the tires, then put on a FEL and backhoe on a HST machine, does that practically eliminate the high range? What effect would that have on a gear machine?

 

[_RaT_]

I thought about it after owning a L48 that was ballasted. The L3830 with 1000lbs hanging off the rear has more ballast then 2 tires with about 1000 lbs. The difference is obviously that when the boxscraper is off, so is the weight. It just seems to work better that way. It's not night and day though. If you don't mow, it might be advantageous just to keep the ballast. I used the L3830 with ballast and no boxscraper and found the counter balance of the ballasted tires far less effective though then the boxscraper. If you are using a lighter duty box scraper, it could be advantageous to keep ballast as well. I'm a big advocate of HD boxscraper's.

 

[_RaT_]

I would suspect on a L3130 in particular, it would at least take more time to get going. I find the H range on the L3830 to actually work much better then on my L48. On the L48, it would not do any incline to speak of. The L3830 does it quite well. The speeds are nearly identical, the weights significantly different as well as the HP.

 

[JayC]

When a tractor is loaded down with all that weight, does it affect the top speed or are these things geared to go the same speed regardless? /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Sorry for the stupid questions. The only "real" tractor experience I got is the old homemade machine that my grandfather made many years ago (that and a couple lawn tractors). I've been learning a lot from TBN in my time here, but I still got many questions. Most of the time I wait to see if someone will ask something similar. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

 

[_RaT_]

The time it will take to go from 0 to 17 mph will take longer. The ability to even approach 17 mph or even go up a steep incline will be adveresely affected by the weight.