Help me settle an argument. The situation is this. We have a tractor drawn tile plow. The tractor is 340hp magnum. Weighs about 36000 lbs fully loaded. When you pull in tile deep, sometimes it's not enough and you get stopped. I want to string a cable from the plow frame, under the tractor to my excavator. My excavator is a Volvo 240' at about 57000lbs. In your experience, what size cable should I be using? My math says a 5/8 cable may be enough. I don't want to break it, but too big is a lot of extra work too. It will be a single line pull. This is one of those times where old fashioned experience and common sense trumps math. In this case I am short on both. Thanks guys Ken
Yair . . . watglen. Not my area but from memory 5/8 is rated at around 30,000 pounds . . . SWL for lifting would be about quarter that. My gut feeling is you need heavier as you have to allow for swages shock loads and so on. Personaly I would be happier with 1" . . . and a lot happier with 11/8" I had on the D4 winch probably overkill but thats just me. Cheers.
If I remember right my d39 weights almost 20,000 pounds, but draw bar pull is around 37,000. You might have more pull than you thought. Have no idea what size cable though.
Why are you hooking it to the excavator? Wouldnt the d-5 be faster & more able to keep up with the magnum? Also, with the excavator you may have too much power, my that I mean in excess of 55k pounds of drawbar pull, thats almost 2x what the tractor is contributing... What are you trying to break? If I was doing the pulling, 1" would be the minimum, look at the tow cables that come on the scraper specials... Thats the size line your going to need.
Use 1 1/8" and even it can be broke with what you are hooking up. The cable will weaken with use therefore heavier is always best.
I was actually wondering what cable they used on pull scrapers. Never been around them myself. Doing some research... The dozer is speced at 140 kN (31500 lb force) drawbar pull. The excavator undercarriage is rated at 208 kN ( 46,750 lb force!) which is significantly more than the stick. I was hoping to get cable that would hold in the worse case but that may be overdoing it. To stay withing the safe working load limit for the excavator i would need something like 1.75" cable. Like i'm going to haul that around in the mud. 7/8" (64,000 lbsf ult) looks more plausible, or maybe 3/4 (47,600 lbsf ult) Its not the cost so much as the task of dragging the cable around, hooking and unhooking. That will wear you out in a hurry. . On the other hand, it would be nice to have a hunk of cable in the neighbourhood that will take anything you can give it. Its one of those things were if people know you have it, they will think of you when it comes time to unstuck something big. How big is the cable on a scraper tractor?
1" 1/8! Ouf! Thats a whopper I'm going to need a dozer just for dragging the cable around.
It will be somewhat unhandy, the 1 1/8" but this size is common on tail end winches, it is a bigger PITA to be breaking and replacing cables.
1" 1/8! Ouf! Thats a whopper I'm going to need a dozer just for dragging the cable around.
Might try two part 5/8 cable with the block on the tow rigg ,that way you still have some pulling strength and ease in rigging.I like the 5/8 cable due to it's flexible and works in allot of different situations.
as in many things, bigger is better.A cable with not enough strength is a waste of money.A big cable maybe hard work connecting/unconnecting but if the tile is in the ground,so what?
My boss is getting a kevlar cable made up to pull out our cane harvester (16.5t) and haulouts (approx 18t loaded). He was looking at a chain or wire rope but they would take two people to lift, kevlar is alot more expensive but only takes one man to move it. Perhaps it might suit you?
What I ment was lets say you hook a boulder the size of a house or a burried oak tree or some other large immovable object. With the magnum & the excavator either the tile plow is comming thru or the tile plow or other weakest link is comming apart. Now the d-5 has a variable hystat controll, you can adjust drawbar pull by adjusting track speed. Where as the excavator just had reducted final drives. Maybe these tile plows can take 80k pounds of drawbar pull... the equivelent of giving a cat d-10t a workout, but I'll bet that somewhere near 65k of pull something expensive will come apart... With the magnum do you need more hp, or more traction?
Maybe put a dampner on the cable so if something does let go it won't cut someone in half or shred a machine cab...
Yair . . . Fair dinkum you blokes, this is going over the top. Inch and an eighth cable is no big deal. I used to work with it all the time and I was less than 150 pounds wringing wet and covered in mud. I had it made up in hundred foot sections. You don't have to drag the entire rope. You move it in sections depending how deep the bloody mud is . . . sheesh Cheers.
We use a 1" cabel with a big hook on one end and a shackel on the other to pull out stuck artic. trucks. A loaded 35 ton barried to the axels and loaded being pulled by another loaded 35 tonner works almost ever time. But it does get a little scary when the stuck truck is spinning and the pull truck is grunting and puffing black smoke. A hole hell'ava lot of tension for a 1" cabel.
Sounds like i better go heavier than i thought. 1" at least. 1" breaks at 83000, rated at 16000#. Thats a 5:1 safety rating, which seems like tons to me. Ken
http://http://www.wescovan.com/catalogs/plasma.pdf
Stumpjumper, its more traction, always more traction. I've learned lately that in the midwest where "big" tractors live, 50 or 60K lbs of tractor is common on a tile plow. That makes my big tractor quite small at 36k lbs. We install at nearly a dead idle to keep the ground speed down. Give the plow time to react to elevation changes as you move along. Anyway, back on topic. I ended up going 1 1/8" cable, 12 ton hook, and 15 ton shackle on the ends.
A little late to reply, but make sure you attach the cable to the rear of the tractor as close to the drawbar as possible. Tractors are weak in the front and it would be very easy to damage it or even pull it in two. We have a couple Deere 9520 scraper tractors that come with 1" cable for pulling if they get stuck, the cable rides under the machine and is attached to the rear so it pulls directly on the scraper hitch.
First off hook the cable to the plow, preferably to the shank itself, not the hitch, second you got it right, at least a one inch cable or bigger, I'm not sure why you were thinking 5/8 even aircraft cable you'd shred that in a few pulls, one inch might not be big enough but its a place to start, leave it hooked up all the time, haning under the tractor and hook it to the front of your tractor somewhere, like a weight bracket and just let it hang under the tractor when you don't need it, everyone else does, theres no need to drag it around when you need it, its already there hooked up and ready to go. Lastly save yoursef a lot of headaches and pull the plow with a dozer instead of any tractor, even a rubber tracked tractor, hp means little for a plow, weight means more, tractors are rated to pull loads faster, thus the weight to hp ratio is different than a dozer, you need the weight to have traction enough to pull a plow, I'd say your short on weight, also the cleats on a dozer track are different than a tractor track or tire, giving you better traction for the weight. A 60,000 lb dozer with 230 hp will do way better job of pulling the plow than your tractor will, when its wet and greasy and frosty you'll still need to use a pull cat in front of the first cat at times, when its wet and greasy out your tractor won't do much of anything if thats the heaviest you've got to use to pull the plow. When the cable starts to fray, throw it away "now" not at the end of the day or tomorrow when your done using it and have spare cables on hand at all times and over time your not going to like using the excavator to pull with, after a while it'll get to be a pain in the butt and you'll want a dozer or tractor to help pull with instead, as they say been there done that, an excavator has street pads on it, not cleats and you don't have the traction to pull per say, they are pretty useless for that purpose, they are designed to dig and stay afoat not dig in with the cleats and pull, especailly when its damp out, you have a hog on ice scenerio there. The whole tire/rubber tracked verses steel tracks thing and the street pads verses cleated pads will become crystal clear over time when plowing in tile, along with weight verses hp comparisions. Best of luck