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TomG,
Those are some darned good questions, this could be fun!

I have a friend who was involved in a sport that those questions are dealt with in great detail. Tractor pulling.

He competed on the national level for several years, and worked with numorous engineers and other experts on the subject.

His wheel rpm's and surface speed were a little higher than say a 4310 or tc 29, but here is what I learned from him, and all his expeirience and expertese.

You seem to have a good impression on what's going on, and I suspect you have the knowledge to answer your own question and are just looking for a second opinion, "the devil's advocate" so to speak.

Here we go.

It does take energy to rotate ballast, and the rotating ballast does store energy. Liguid ballest does tend to rotate with the wheel some, but not much at low speeds, due to surface tension, and other things to numorous to mention. The problems with liquid ballast have been descussed not only on this forum, but, everywhere else, and I will not bog the conversation down with redundancy.

My friend and his advisors chose to keep the wheel ballast from rotating. They did this by useing bearings on a shaft bolted to the wheels.

The main reason for this was vibration. Believe it or not, a large 30.5X32 tractor tire swith a surface speed in exceess of 60 mph needs to be balanced. 100# wheel weights are poorly balanced when cast, and making steel weights from plate steel wasn't much better. The vibration caused major problems with traction.

Liguid ballast was just to hard to deal with, and getting the exact same weight in each tire is easier said than done. I remeber when they first toyed with the idea of useing liguid, I thought it was promising, a large viscous balancer came to mind, but saftey issues arose from poor weight distribution, and some serious vibration on initial rotation, and it was soon banned in the rulebook.

weight on the 3ph is a good form of ballast for FEL"s or any other fron mounted equipment, but the draft arms are nothing but levers and the rear axle is a fulcrum. any weight at the end of the lever has an effect on the front of the tractor, in other wordS, the more you add to the rear of the hitch, the lighter the front end becomes.

In my humble opinion, the best place for rear balast would be just in front of the rear wheels, you would get alot of benifit from the weight in that location, with little effect on the front end when the loader is not in use. They are easily removed if you would make a bracket and use suitcase weights.

Any body else have any Idea's?

Thanks Tom, this is a fun subject. anything involveing "Newton's Law" always makes for an informative debate, almost as fun as Thermo Dynamic Principles.

You are a huge asset to this board, for a Ford Man......just kidding!!

Ballast Weight and Power
Just For Fun Off Topic
Replies 11 Post by MR. Ethics

TomG,

I liked the idea, and yes lazers are getting very affordable now, but I too sometimes prefer the old ways. sometimes useing simple tools like that give us great insight on other things in our lives.

When I was a child on the farm, may neighbor was full of old, simple ideas like that, I credit much of my practical knowledge to him.

When I was 15, he hired me to help him build a new farrowing house for his sows, he was 70 years old and was so much of an optomist that he thought he needed to update his operation!!!!

He used a level just as you described throughout the whole project!!! it worked great, and without fail, no dead batterys, no bad connections, and even in the rain or bright sun. We used it for almost everything, except making sure posts were plumb. For that he had an old home made level that his father had made useing a glass tube from and old dairy he worked in at nights. I checked it several times with my good store bought level and it earned my confidence.

This guy had so much old knowledge it was increadable. A few years after that, I was making a paddle wheel for an old grist mill that our local historical society was trying to restore.

He laid out the whole wheel useing nothing more than an old compass with no markings on it, a tape measure, and a pencil. He never stopped to do any calculations, nor did he use any tables. The wheel fit together perfectly after I cut all the lumber at his marks. It looked great!!

It wasn't untill I went into high school that I realized what he was actually doing was geometry and his way was a heck of a lot simpler, although not near as accurate. But at the slow speed of the wheel involved, it was the quickest and best way. We had no blueprints to go buy and by the time we could get someone to put some prints together, we were done. It made little difference that the wheel was 12' 3/8" in diameter instead of just 12' which is what it was supposed to be when someone found the old plans for the mill two years later.

But now we have CAD programs and computors, and they are pretty slick. But the old ways sometimes will surprise you!!

Poor Man s Transit
Garden and Landscape
Replies 21 Post by Mr. Ethics