I'm into owning my 3rd Kubota (M Series) and living in the interior of Alaska where temperatures hover in the -20s and dip to the -50's in Winter and sometimes touch 90 in the summer. Sometimes we have dry summers and other times we have a lot of rain. Coupled with a high water table, it doesn't take much to soak the ground. Our winters see ice and snow covered ground from November through April.
Ballast on the rear of the tractor comes in different concepts, one being a counter balance for lifting with the loader arms and the other for enhancing traction.
When the ground is frozen solid with snow covered ice, having weight on the rear wheels that aids in pushing the cleats of the snow chains into the surface is drastically different than not having the cleated chains.
I know there are different kinds of chains, but to be honest, I don't recommend - nor would I ever purchase a set of simple cross-bar chains, cables, whatever. I would only consider box pattern, diamond pattern, etc cleated chains. When I was a kid I had football cleats which were round studs and baseball cleats which were these thin blades - in the winter, when the ground was frozen and covered in ice - the football cleats were useless, but the baseball cleats gave you whatever traction you needed.
Of course, I wouldn't want to use hardened, cleated, box pattern snow chains on asphalt or a concrete surface unless it's completely covered in ice but when you need to push a lot of snow - you're going to need as much traction as you can get.
With rear wheel ballast there are generally three camps of thought - tire filling, wheel weights, 3 point ballast
the most economical and some would argue the most efficient would be simply using a heavy implement on the 3PH. The obvious advantage to this is that it's essentially free. The disadvantage is that you need to either use it for something, thus losing most of your rear ballast or that you've got something sticking out the back of your tractor 6' or more. Then there's the ballast box which is another low cost (aside from the initial pay-out) alternative which you can fill using whatever you have available. Or you can stick a few things in a barrel and fill it with concrete as an option. Here the disadvantage is if you need your 3PH for something - again you lose your ballast. The biggest advantage of ballast hanging off the 3PH is that the weight is by-far the cheapest per/lb, it's as far back as you can get it, thus providing the most counter-balance for whatever you need, you can put the weight as low as you want to maximize the lower center of gravity for sloped terrain and such and, of course, it's easily installed or removed.
Wheel weights are extremely expensive for what they "do" including cast wheels and the weight and they're the inconvenient to install and remove. If you need to remove the wheel weight because the ground is too soft and the weights are unmanageable - and cause busted knuckles and such - then you've got to put them. They're extremely expensive to ship anywhere. The advantage of wheel weights are the effect they have on ride quality - especially in the extreme cold. Weights on the outside of the wheels seem to improve ride quality as the air in the tires absorbs the bumps. Wheel weights also provide for a fixed center of gravity. Bush hogging the side of a hill is much more comfortable when you've got wheel weights on widened wheels than about anything else. As far as acting as a counter balance - wheel weights are by and far the least desirable option due to their cost, lack of weight, and distance to act as a counter balance. Another problem with wheel weights are fitment. Many people - even inexperienced tractor dealers when asked for wheel weights will ask "what kind of tractor do you have". With the different wheel sizes of modern tractors along with bolt-hole patterns and bolt spacing - the question should be focused around these and not "what kind of tractor do you have". If you need further explanation, you can look at Kubota M series tractors. An M8 has several different wheel options and all wheel weights are not going to fit on all the different wheels. God forbid you needed to ship 600 pounds of wheel weights half-way across the country only to find out the weights won't fit your wheels.....good luck in getting the shipping charges refunded.
Fluid filled tires - People in Florida can use 8 lb/gal (corrected - Thank you Jenny) water, many can use beet juice, which is a waste product left over from the extraction of sucrose from sugar beets at 10.7-11 pounds per gallon, others can use propylene glycol at 8.7 lb/gal or you can use CaCl at max concentration of 16 lb/gal. CaCl requires the use of inner tubes inside your tires, but the fear of corroding the wheels of tractor forces some to look to the almighty beet juice. In my research of the freeze point of beet juice - everything I had found was verified by a famous, commercial "beet juice" dealer in Elk Island, AB Canada. Beet juice begins to turn into slush at -20f and by -30 it's impracticle to use in a rolling tire. By -40 beet juice is frozen solid. A few of the questions I could not find answers to were - how long does it take to thaw and can you mix beet juice with glycol. The latter question, which I asked of a famous commercial manufacturer of the stuff was immediately answered with "if you have a leak and animals eat it - they'll die". I found this a strange answer considering there are several substances in a tractor with the chance of leaking that contain poisonous substances including the ethylene glycol in the coolant system. I made the representative fully aware of the temperatures I was dealing with, but apparently mixing beet juice with antifreeze has never been tested. CaCl, windshield washer fluid, water, beet juice, glycol all have varying cost/benefit value depending.........filling your wheels with some type of non-corrosive, non-oxidizing substance can be easily achieved through fittings and pumps readily available on Amazon. You can find glycol in significant quantity at many airports where de-icing it accomplished. Windshield washer fluid good to -50f can be found at Costco in the Northern US and Canada and these thinner fluids can be added to your tires with little cost. The CaCl requires inclusion of an inner tube unless you don't about corrosion. I'll offer that using Nitrogen, a noble gas and therefore a non-corrosive element does not prevent corrosion from the CaCl. The chloride chemically attacks the metal and what is a form of "hydrogen embrittlement". The chlorine molecules somehow work their way into the metal and corrode. Obviously I'm not an expert on this and someone might want to add information here - but to see how chlorine affects metal. Get a piece of scrap metal (not stainless steel) and use some dish soap to clean it. I watched a young man trying to clean the chromoly steel roll-cage on his go-cart prior to painting it. He used Dawn Dish Detergent - by the time that bare metal roll-cage was dry - it was completely covered in rust. I do know the Alaska DoT fills the tires of their snow removal equipment with CaCl, but you can't find CaCl at Home Depot or Safeway. Remember - we use air compressors to inflate our tires. My air compressor compresses air to 150 psi. But I've never seen a fluid compressor. (Not saying you can't compress fluids under extremely high pressures) Instead, we have hydraulic pumps. Fluids don't easily compress and when you fill your tire to 75% - well you now have lost that volume to act as a cushion and the ride is noticably rougher with fluid filled tires.
As a last option, you can just stay at the supper table and gain weight.
Can you ever have too much counter-weight or ballast? Other than impracticality, I don't really know. Maybe others can answer.
Ballast on the rear of the tractor comes in different concepts, one being a counter balance for lifting with the loader arms and the other for enhancing traction.
When the ground is frozen solid with snow covered ice, having weight on the rear wheels that aids in pushing the cleats of the snow chains into the surface is drastically different than not having the cleated chains.
I know there are different kinds of chains, but to be honest, I don't recommend - nor would I ever purchase a set of simple cross-bar chains, cables, whatever. I would only consider box pattern, diamond pattern, etc cleated chains. When I was a kid I had football cleats which were round studs and baseball cleats which were these thin blades - in the winter, when the ground was frozen and covered in ice - the football cleats were useless, but the baseball cleats gave you whatever traction you needed.
Of course, I wouldn't want to use hardened, cleated, box pattern snow chains on asphalt or a concrete surface unless it's completely covered in ice but when you need to push a lot of snow - you're going to need as much traction as you can get.
With rear wheel ballast there are generally three camps of thought - tire filling, wheel weights, 3 point ballast
the most economical and some would argue the most efficient would be simply using a heavy implement on the 3PH. The obvious advantage to this is that it's essentially free. The disadvantage is that you need to either use it for something, thus losing most of your rear ballast or that you've got something sticking out the back of your tractor 6' or more. Then there's the ballast box which is another low cost (aside from the initial pay-out) alternative which you can fill using whatever you have available. Or you can stick a few things in a barrel and fill it with concrete as an option. Here the disadvantage is if you need your 3PH for something - again you lose your ballast. The biggest advantage of ballast hanging off the 3PH is that the weight is by-far the cheapest per/lb, it's as far back as you can get it, thus providing the most counter-balance for whatever you need, you can put the weight as low as you want to maximize the lower center of gravity for sloped terrain and such and, of course, it's easily installed or removed.
Wheel weights are extremely expensive for what they "do" including cast wheels and the weight and they're the inconvenient to install and remove. If you need to remove the wheel weight because the ground is too soft and the weights are unmanageable - and cause busted knuckles and such - then you've got to put them. They're extremely expensive to ship anywhere. The advantage of wheel weights are the effect they have on ride quality - especially in the extreme cold. Weights on the outside of the wheels seem to improve ride quality as the air in the tires absorbs the bumps. Wheel weights also provide for a fixed center of gravity. Bush hogging the side of a hill is much more comfortable when you've got wheel weights on widened wheels than about anything else. As far as acting as a counter balance - wheel weights are by and far the least desirable option due to their cost, lack of weight, and distance to act as a counter balance. Another problem with wheel weights are fitment. Many people - even inexperienced tractor dealers when asked for wheel weights will ask "what kind of tractor do you have". With the different wheel sizes of modern tractors along with bolt-hole patterns and bolt spacing - the question should be focused around these and not "what kind of tractor do you have". If you need further explanation, you can look at Kubota M series tractors. An M8 has several different wheel options and all wheel weights are not going to fit on all the different wheels. God forbid you needed to ship 600 pounds of wheel weights half-way across the country only to find out the weights won't fit your wheels.....good luck in getting the shipping charges refunded.
Fluid filled tires - People in Florida can use 8 lb/gal (corrected - Thank you Jenny) water, many can use beet juice, which is a waste product left over from the extraction of sucrose from sugar beets at 10.7-11 pounds per gallon, others can use propylene glycol at 8.7 lb/gal or you can use CaCl at max concentration of 16 lb/gal. CaCl requires the use of inner tubes inside your tires, but the fear of corroding the wheels of tractor forces some to look to the almighty beet juice. In my research of the freeze point of beet juice - everything I had found was verified by a famous, commercial "beet juice" dealer in Elk Island, AB Canada. Beet juice begins to turn into slush at -20f and by -30 it's impracticle to use in a rolling tire. By -40 beet juice is frozen solid. A few of the questions I could not find answers to were - how long does it take to thaw and can you mix beet juice with glycol. The latter question, which I asked of a famous commercial manufacturer of the stuff was immediately answered with "if you have a leak and animals eat it - they'll die". I found this a strange answer considering there are several substances in a tractor with the chance of leaking that contain poisonous substances including the ethylene glycol in the coolant system. I made the representative fully aware of the temperatures I was dealing with, but apparently mixing beet juice with antifreeze has never been tested. CaCl, windshield washer fluid, water, beet juice, glycol all have varying cost/benefit value depending.........filling your wheels with some type of non-corrosive, non-oxidizing substance can be easily achieved through fittings and pumps readily available on Amazon. You can find glycol in significant quantity at many airports where de-icing it accomplished. Windshield washer fluid good to -50f can be found at Costco in the Northern US and Canada and these thinner fluids can be added to your tires with little cost. The CaCl requires inclusion of an inner tube unless you don't about corrosion. I'll offer that using Nitrogen, a noble gas and therefore a non-corrosive element does not prevent corrosion from the CaCl. The chloride chemically attacks the metal and what is a form of "hydrogen embrittlement". The chlorine molecules somehow work their way into the metal and corrode. Obviously I'm not an expert on this and someone might want to add information here - but to see how chlorine affects metal. Get a piece of scrap metal (not stainless steel) and use some dish soap to clean it. I watched a young man trying to clean the chromoly steel roll-cage on his go-cart prior to painting it. He used Dawn Dish Detergent - by the time that bare metal roll-cage was dry - it was completely covered in rust. I do know the Alaska DoT fills the tires of their snow removal equipment with CaCl, but you can't find CaCl at Home Depot or Safeway. Remember - we use air compressors to inflate our tires. My air compressor compresses air to 150 psi. But I've never seen a fluid compressor. (Not saying you can't compress fluids under extremely high pressures) Instead, we have hydraulic pumps. Fluids don't easily compress and when you fill your tire to 75% - well you now have lost that volume to act as a cushion and the ride is noticably rougher with fluid filled tires.
As a last option, you can just stay at the supper table and gain weight.
Can you ever have too much counter-weight or ballast? Other than impracticality, I don't really know. Maybe others can answer.
Last edited:
