Quote:
Originally Posted by ol'George
Adding liquid to the tires helps, and hurts nothing.
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I'm new to all this so please don't take this as argument. I'm interested to know this stuff and I'd rather learn through other's experience than through my own wallet. At risk of showing my ignorance I respectfully offer a different perspective:To me it seems valuable to be able to make the tractor lighter at times. My Ford 1700 has loaded R1 tires, 2 sets of heavy wheel weights, and a loader. It has all the traction advantages you mentioned, compared to my Ford 1510 which has wide turf tires and no loader. Those are essentially the same tractor, same basic weight but by my estimate the 1700 is around 1000lbs heavier and incredibly capable compared to the 1510. There are many places I can't go with the 1700 because it either tears up what it drives over or sinks into what it drives over. The 1510 has no problem driving around my lawn, the soft edges of my gravel driveway, or over my sewer lateral (access to one part of my yard). And I can transport it on my 3000lb trailer. In the near future I won't have the luxury of having two compact utility tractors. Theoretically I
could take those 100lb (each) wheel weights off but there's no way to reasonably remove any of the other weight if I needed to access some weight-sensitive area and didn't need ultimate traction for the task. If I had that added traction in suitcase weights though, several of those issues would be solved. Before I got a Cub Cadet, my 1-wheel-drive 300-ish lb JD Sabre with tiny bald turf tires did about 60% of the tasks that will now fall to the Cub Cadet, and I'm guessing I'm not the only person who doesn't need maximum capability of my cub for a lot of the time.
I can't argue with the added wear on axle components, but adding ~100lbs on the front or back of the tractor can't be that much harder on components than the weight of a front end loader or some of these larger ground-engaging implements cantilevered out like they are, right? Removable weights have the advantage in that they would presumably be removed when not needed, returning the tracter back to stock weight. Am I wrong?
Another point in support of loaded tires - I'd add that there's no less-obtrusive place to hang weight on your tractor than inside the wheels. We're talking orders of magnitude difference between a ~3000lb+ tractor (my 1700 example) and a cub cadet. When I downsize my tractor fleet and reassign some of the 1510's duties to my new-to-me 1650, I anticipate fairly common situations where minimum weight and maximum contact patch will be what I want. I don't even have any suitcase weights but I think they will be part of my program.
One more thing I've noticed with my bigger tractors is that the loaded tires are a much rougher ride at speed. On the road or a packed gravel surface on the 1700 my speed is limited by the roughness of the ride, it gets bad enough that I got scared I couldn't stay in contact with the controls safely. With the 1510, no such problem. That's certainly harder on the axles and everything else too, versus smooth cruising that's not shaking the paint off the machine. Granted, this anecdote is tall skinny ag tires vs wide high-volume turf tires as well so it might be tire shape and construction more than the fluid in the tires causing the difference. And with the lesser size/speed/weight of Cub tires maybe the differences become negligible anyway.
Anyway, please forgive my long-winded commentary. I need to figure out what I'm going to do about weights too so I'd also love to hear more input from anyone with applicable experience.