Three point hitch raising by itself ???

sjbasin · Sep 13, 2008

While cutting weeds with a box blade today, I noticed that the box blade would occassionaly pop up on it's own, typically when I hit a rough spot. The tractor is a new (25 hours) L4400. What causes this unexpected lifting?

leonz · Sep 13, 2008

sjbasin said:
While cutting weeds with a box blade today, I noticed that the box blade would occassionaly pop up on it's own, typically when I hit a rough spot. The tractor is a new (25 hours) L4400. What causes this unexpected lifting?

If my thinking is right it is the forward action of the tractor and the box blade essentially skipping over a harder area-I have had cold water thrown at my ideas before-but the hydraulics are in float so the implememnts would rise and lower by them selves to follow the ground contours and if my memory serves me the three point hitch hydraulics lift with power and lower with weight anyway.

How deep are the teeth set if you are using them?

RayCo · Sep 13, 2008

Are you saying that it's actually raising up and staying raised? As leonz said, it's normally for things to lift and drop, since it's just the weight of the implement keeping it down. In fact, if you go out and drop your box blade down to the ground, you should be able to just grab it with your hands and lift it off the ground, assuming you can lift that much dead weight.

sjbasin · Sep 13, 2008

I pulled the teeth out, so that's not part of it. I took 'em out because I'm really using the box blade to cut tumbleweeds on about 10 acres. They really ball up in the teeth.

I'm not even sure of exactly what's happening. It seems that when it happens, I'm not looking backwards at the blade, and when I turn it's up in the air. I've bounced it over rocks and hardpan before, but this seems different.

I'll be doing some more tomorrow, so I'll try and pay more attention. It's pretty weird to see that thing lifted up without having pulled the lever myself. Maybe I'm just bouncing it off of rocks and don't realize it.

And now that I think of it, I'm not sure whether I lowered it or it dropped on it's own.

autobody · Sep 14, 2008

that is kind of odd. my problem is usually the opposite. like today i fixed the flat tire i had on my grey model and started to drive it to my front yard to show it off for sale and the tractor started jumping around like it had a flat tire again. of course to my surprise

i looked behind me to see that the tiller had gone to the ground and was tearing up my wife's nice lawn. i raised it back up and everything smoothed out again, then it started jumping again and i was chapped.

i turned to see what was going on with my lever, and there it was, my wide fanny with a tape measure hooked to my pocket pushing the lever the wrong way.

of course my day got instantly better to find out once again that it was operator error and not the machine.