MessickFarmEqu
Super Member
I just got out of a 4 hour class on weight and ballast. Thought I'd throw it up here for you all to chew on. It was run by New Holland, who is a middle of the road company when it comes to their own products weight.
The basic principle of this class was to dispel the old farmer myth that more weight is better. Todays modern tractors are built in a way that weight no longer is equal to durability. More often its the opposite. The basic consensus is that beyond a reasonable amount, weight is bad as it does nothing but burn fuel, wear tires, increase compaction, easier to get stuck, and make the tractor more sluggish.
Todays machines should be ballasted, not just heavy. For most of the work you see compacts doing a 35/65 F/R split is about right. Put too much on the rear and your front tires are not doing any work, have too much in the front and you start to fight the lead of the FWD. Neither are good. The work your doing changes this. Obviously loader work moves a lot of weight front, 3pt work pulls to the rear as the front end lifts.
The trend is towards doing work with as little weight as possible. They had a really interesting series of videos of tractors pulling cultivators and the difference that ballasting would make over even a short span. The most efficient machine out of the group happened to be the lightest machine without the duel tires and front weights we're used to seeing. Taking the same tractor and putting 2000lbs in the wrong place could skew things nearly 20%.
One thing I learned is that the liquid ballast that we often use in compacts is a huge detriment to traction. Changing a machine to iron weights improves ride and traction to the point that it can make a 10% difference in productivity. Field tractors are typically setup for 100-130lbs per PTO HP. Ideally you would want to be as light as your application will allow while being properly ballasted.
The first objection here is that you need weight for traction, however thats easy to overcome by lowering tire pressure providing that your machine is not setup go gosh darn heavy that the side walls can't take it. Modern tire designs and drive systems have made raw mass unneeded for most applications. They're putting 300Hp field tractors out at 5-6 psi. We spend good money for radial tires so they'll do this, but we don't put them to work. A bias ply is much cheaper if your not interested in running low PSI.
About the only application where you really want weight is when your working on hills (providing its all down low) and when you need to stop something like a bale wagon, manure tanker, etc.
thoughts?
The basic principle of this class was to dispel the old farmer myth that more weight is better. Todays modern tractors are built in a way that weight no longer is equal to durability. More often its the opposite. The basic consensus is that beyond a reasonable amount, weight is bad as it does nothing but burn fuel, wear tires, increase compaction, easier to get stuck, and make the tractor more sluggish.
Todays machines should be ballasted, not just heavy. For most of the work you see compacts doing a 35/65 F/R split is about right. Put too much on the rear and your front tires are not doing any work, have too much in the front and you start to fight the lead of the FWD. Neither are good. The work your doing changes this. Obviously loader work moves a lot of weight front, 3pt work pulls to the rear as the front end lifts.
The trend is towards doing work with as little weight as possible. They had a really interesting series of videos of tractors pulling cultivators and the difference that ballasting would make over even a short span. The most efficient machine out of the group happened to be the lightest machine without the duel tires and front weights we're used to seeing. Taking the same tractor and putting 2000lbs in the wrong place could skew things nearly 20%.
One thing I learned is that the liquid ballast that we often use in compacts is a huge detriment to traction. Changing a machine to iron weights improves ride and traction to the point that it can make a 10% difference in productivity. Field tractors are typically setup for 100-130lbs per PTO HP. Ideally you would want to be as light as your application will allow while being properly ballasted.
The first objection here is that you need weight for traction, however thats easy to overcome by lowering tire pressure providing that your machine is not setup go gosh darn heavy that the side walls can't take it. Modern tire designs and drive systems have made raw mass unneeded for most applications. They're putting 300Hp field tractors out at 5-6 psi. We spend good money for radial tires so they'll do this, but we don't put them to work. A bias ply is much cheaper if your not interested in running low PSI.
About the only application where you really want weight is when your working on hills (providing its all down low) and when you need to stop something like a bale wagon, manure tanker, etc.
thoughts?
