Senile Texas Aggie - comic relief for the rest of you

[greybeard]

Troy Bilt

As one of my old shop managers once said: Troy shulda never built a %$*&%^ thing.

My Stihl powerhead I use for both string spool and brush blade was bought in 2008...I do not know how many hours I have on it but it's a lot, and I've abused the heck out of it. Same with the Stihl Farmboss chainsaw I bought in 2007. Cut thru dirt, creosote posts, crossties, big plastic PVC pipe, and everything else over the years and have never even had to change the spark plug. (it does take 3 pulls on the rope now to get it started, 2 on choke and one to run) .
I did buy a new Farmboss a couple years ago as a backup but have hardly ever used it.

For those that don't know a Gannon is a brand name of implements..box blade scrapers mostly.
Skid loader is a bigger tractor with only a front loader and no backhoe on it...called a wheel loader most places.

No tractor has front brakes except the big 200-300-400 hp tractors, usually with the rubber tracks that go around front and rear tires like the big Challengers. The only way you have any kind of front braking on farm tractors is thru the transmission of a 4wd tractor and then, only if it is actually in 4wd. The front wheel axle is then mechanically locked to rear wheels which normally is where the brake pads or shoes are located unless the left and right brake pads are made onto the sides of the transmission like Leyland, Case and a few others did theirs. Regardless, there are no shoes or pads actually on the front wheels of most farm tractors...way too dangerous...it would make it too easy to turn one over...they are unforgiving enough as is with just rear brakes.
(there are a (very) few tractors that have a spring activated E brake on the front but I've never worked on one or used one)

 

[greybeard]

Finally, (@Baymule , you will probably get a kick out of this), how do I deal with green briars? We cleared them out around the gate when we first bought the place. They have started growing back. I sprayed them with glysophate. They must have thought it was fertilizer, because they are continuing to grow like crazy!

Getting back to your greenbrier...
Do they look like this:

The day after you used the glyphosate, did they look like this?

and then this?

and this?

In a couple of weeks, I or cow will walk by and kick these and they'll break off like a dead stick and they won't be coming back. (the top one, I sprayed today, a couple squirts from a 1 gal garden sprayer with diesel/Remedy mix in it. It's dead....it just don't know it yet.)

You can if you wish and only have a few, snip the vines off at almost ground level, and immediately squirt a little diesel/Remedy mix right on the stump of the vine, or, (if you only have a few), take a knife of some kind, skin back a little of the green shiny bark and spray the same mix on the stem where you removed the outer layer.

My gut feeling tho, is if you have them around your gate, you probably also have a bunch in your 100 acres of pasture as well.
Sooner or later, you'll grow tired of mowing down the same ones over and over..

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

Well, folks, I had planned to respond to these posts in-depth, but you guys are to blame for my not doing so. "How?" you ask? Well, it started when early this morning I started reading postings by @greybeard (what a really smart guy he is!), then by Miss @farmerjan (what a really smart lady she is!), then by Miss @Baymule (what a really smart and funny lady she is!), then by @Mike CHS (what a really smart guy he is!) (is this starting to sound familiar?), then by @Latestarter (WARSGHI), then by Miss @Ridgetop (WARSLSI), then by others I read but can't remember (what really smart folks they are). Next thing I know it is 5:23 PM CDT and time for my Beautiful Gal and I to start reading. (We finished reading the book "Educated" -- great book -- and so will be starting something new.) But I promise to reply more in-depth tomorrow. Thanks so much for you folks helping us out.

 

[Ridgetop]

I see I have been outed as tractor challenged by DH. I don't know what gannons are or anything else that goes on the tractor although my DH and sons chat in this mysterious lingo all the time. That is why he wrote the post about what he thought Texas_Aggie should look for. I do know that steep hills and tractors are BAD THINGS!

Maybe I will tell the story later in my journal, after I have received more counseling from my therapist. It was a traumatic experience. LOL

 

[Latestarter]

I think most of us here have had at least one traumatic experience or two. Tends to go with country and "farming".

 

[greybeard]

I see I have been outed as tractor challenged by DH. I don't know what gannons are or anything else that goes on the tractor although my DH and sons chat in this mysterious lingo all the time. That is why he wrote the post about what he thought Texas_Aggie should look for. I do know that steep hills and tractors are BAD THINGS!

Maybe I will tell the story later in my journal, after I have received more counseling from my therapist. It was a traumatic experience. LOL

It sounded pretty minor to me when I read the story, tho I do have to admit I was astonished that anyone would leave the seat of a moving tractor voluntarily..that's normally a big no-no.
My land is pretty flat and there have been tractor wrecks here at least 3 times in the last 50 years. If you count the time I drove a 50hp Case off into a canal while mowing head high briars and berry vines (that wuzn't my fault) or the time I backed the Leyland and a 6' bush hog off into the pond (that wuz my fault) then there have been 5 tractor' wrecks. No tractors, animals, or humans were killed or injured in any of these adventures tho 3 of them we were just lucky as heck.
1. The most recent was in 2006, when I was moving a loader bucket full of slushy mud/leaves mix down the road which had a 'maybe' 5° slant off to one side. As I drove onto the part of the road the angled off to the right side, the slush in the bucket all flowed down to the right side, and before I could lower the bucket, in relatively slow motion, the tractor turned over on it's side. I just pushed in the clutch, pulled the engine kill knob, braced myself against the rops and rode it down.
2. Sometime in the 90s, my father was digging a small pond with an 8n Ford tractor with dirt scoop of the back of it. He was already down deep, so deep you couldn't see the tractor from ground level and the ramp was too steep for him to get back up, so he put someone else on the 8n, and brought the Case down in the hole and would pull the 8N out with a chain between the 2. That old high axle, tall tired Case had a LOT of torque and could pull a 4 bottom plow and as dad started up the steep embankment, that Case just did a wheelstand, that is, stood up on the rear tires, with that Case emblem and headlights pointed skyward still pulling the 8n forward. Dad hit the brake& clutch pedals, but because the 2 brake pedals weren't locked together, hit only the right brake pedal & instead of the Case falling forward, it fell over on it's left side from a vertical position, and came to rest headed more than 90° from the direction it was originally going.
3. The old 8n Ford we had in the late 60s was bad about not wanting to start if you shut it off..starter windings would be heat soaked from the engine and that 8V battery just wouldn't crank the engine over, so we frequently had to pull start it with the pickup. It had the Dearborn front loader on it with brush forks on the front instead of a bucket, so to pull the 8n, we ran the chain under the brush fork so when we pulled the 8n forward, the tow chain would lift the forks up and not let them dig into the ground. That old Dearborn loader only had power up, (gravity down) no tilt and would drift down pretty quick if the engine wasn't running which is why we had to run the chain under the forks and get them off the ground to pull start it forward.
The way the 8n (and all N series) were geared, you had to put it in high gear and tow it pretty fast to get it to turn the engine over fast enough to get it to start. Brother was pull starting dad one day, and probably going 5-7mph when the tractor started with 8n in 4th gear. Ron got off the gas in the truck, the tractor was moving pretty fast, and of course slack got in the chain which let the forks drop down, they impaled themselves into the ground, 8n came to an immediate halt and caused the tractor's back end to come up off the ground and go over the front wheels, which launched my dad out of the seat and into the bed of the pickup all in the blink of an eye. The only time I ever heard dad cuss. I ran over, turned the key off on the now upside down 8n, looked over at my dad who is sitting up among a pile of stuff in the back of the truck and heard him say "What the &(*$%&! just happened?"

Looking back, it's been an adventure here over the last 54 years, and that don't count all the cow wrangling, snake bite, the colt breakings, getting hit by lightning and roping calves on open ground without a horse and all the branding and old fashioned type deworming before we had a real working pen or the bee tree robbing brother and I tried on a bunch of really angry bees in a fallen tree. Been quite a party.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

@greybeard, that was a really laugh out loud funny post! . And, yes, Miss @Ridgetop, tell us about the time that you decided to abandon ship -- er, tractor. I am sure it will be as funny also. Now to the previous posts on this thread.

I think you need look at different tractors, used and new. Go to auction yards and shop around. Sit in various brands and models to judge comfort and ease of use. Check prices both new and used so you will know a good deal when you see it. Make sure that the tractor you want or decide to get has 4WD, PTO, easy connect accessories, and low engine hours. Also make sure that it looks like it has been maintained. The accessory you need now is a brush hog, if you want to do fencing later get a post hole digger attachment, a gannon for flattening ground, and FEL for moving dirt or loading brush into a dump trailer.

Thanks, Mister @Ridgetop. I will definitely do that. Several stores in the area have copies of the TractorHouse listings, and I have looked through several issues. I have also visited the tractorhouse.com web site, but I have been a little intimidated when among the first things I have to do is choose brands, and I don't know a great brand (reliable, parts easily available, etc.) from a bad one. But I will continue to learn, especially from you knowledgeable folks.

I bought and returned 2 Troy Bilt weed whackers with brush blades last August

As one of my old shop managers once said: Troy shulda never built a %$*&%^ thing.

I did consider Stihl. After 40 some-odd years of using electric string trimmers on our different 1/4 acres lots, only to have them fail after a year or two, I decided to get a gas trimmer. I noticed that a lot of the landscaping and lawn service companies owned Stihls, and after researching them on consumer reports' web site, and saw just how highly rated they were, I decided to buy the most expensive model Stihl had. It turned out to be a bit more troublesome than I thought it would be. It was so hard to start, often flooding. I finally gave up and took it back to the hardware store and told them of my troubles. The sales guy took it out back and he started it right up. The magic formula turned out to be pumping the primer bubble exactly three times and then pulling on it while on choke. When it finally tried to start, then remove the choke and try again. Then it would start right up.

We gave away that Stihl, along with just about all of our yard equipment (lawn mower, chain saw, etc.), shortly before I retired, as we were planning to go RVing full-time (a story for another time) once I did retire. But we ended up buying this place and then I immediately needed some lawn equipment. The first piece of lawn equipment I bought was a zero turn radius Cub Cadet. I had never owned a ZTR type mower before, but I thought "How hard can it be to drive one?" I wish I had a video of my initial efforts. You could have seen me run into the A/C units outside, the porch steps, but especially the crepe myrtles when I tried to mow under them. If a limb would get too close, I would tend to pull up on the lever on that side of the mower, which would drive me into the bush. It's a good thing most of the crepe myrtles had landscaping timbers around them or I would have mowed them down! So I decided to get both a string trimmer and a push mower to trim around such obstacles.

I considered buying another Stihl, but I decided to look at 4-cycle trimmers, instead of 2-cycle ones. I decided to do that as while I once explained to my Beautiful Gal and my niece one time what the differences were between the two, I feared that my Beautiful Gal would forget one time and use ordinary gasoline instead of an oil/gas mix, thus ruining the engine. There were no 4-cycle Stihl trimmers that I could find, but I did find a large 4-cycle Troy-Bilt trimmer with several different kinds of attachments, so I ended up buying those, along with a Troy-Bilt push mower. So far, they are holding up pretty well. We shall see.

As for

Getting back to your greenbrier...
Do they look like this:

I have yet to take any pictures of them but will try to do so later today. What I can tell you now is that they are green and growing...

Thanks again to everyone for all of your help regarding tractors.

Now one more question to you folks. Over the past few years I have become quite thin-skinned (literally as well as metaphorically). Yesterday I reached my hand under a chair to retrieve a tow for our cat. While doing so, I rubbed the top of my left hand against the bottom of the chair. I didn't think anything about it, as there was no pain. About 5 minutes later, I happened to look at my left hand, and there was a good bit of blood on it, with part of the skin torn away. What the ...??? So do you folks know how to keep the skin from thinning out and tearing easily? Comments, both helpful and humorous, are welcome.

Well, it is time for me to do my stock market analysis today, which I normally do on Saturday or Sunday, but didn't, because instead you folks made me go read many of your back posts (which is more interesting than doing stock market analysis...)

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[Mike CHS]

Mine has gotten noticeably thinner in the last 4 or 5 years but of course, I'm those same years older.

From the web: The number of new cells you produce decreases slightly. Your body also makes less collagen (which keeps the skin firm) and elastin (which keeps the skin flexible). Also, you lose some of the fatty layer underneath your skin, making the skin seem even thinner. These processes accelerate with a lot of exposure to sunlight. In fact, the ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun destroys collagen and elastin. Use a sunscreen and wear protective clothing to safeguard your skin from the sun’s harmful rays.

I try to wear sunscreen when I'm out for extended periods of time but I don't do it as I should.

 

[Bruce]

@greybeard, that was a really laugh out loud funny post! . And, yes, Miss @Ridgetop, tell us about the time that you decided to abandon ship -- er, tractor. I am sure it will be as funny also.

Only because no one got hurt! Which is pretty amazing given those stories.

The magic formula turned out to be pumping the primer bubble exactly three times and then pulling on it while on choke. When it finally tried to start, then remove the choke and try again. Then it would start right up.

That is how my Stihl trimmer works, the chain saw doesn't have a primer bulb. But I think the process is pretty much the same with any small engine with a choke. When you pull and it sounds like it almost starts but doesn't, move the lever to the run position and pull again.

So do you folks know how to keep the skin from thinning out and tearing easily?

Calfskin gloves?

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

All,

I decided to see just what the different manufacturers offered in the way of tractors, so I decided to build a tractor on couple of different manufacturing websites. It didn't take long to get into things where I did not know what the heck they were asking me to choose. Today, Kubota.

First, I had to choose the type of tractor. Looking at the different HP ranges, I chose compact. Next, I had to choose a model. I chose L6060 (62 hp). It came standard with 4wd and hydrostatic transmission. I then chose the factory installed cab -- I admit it, I am a wimp and hate to be in the heat, but even more so the dust. I took the default ag tires and high traction lug TL, whatever TL means. I chose the loader package. But then came the rear hydraulic choices:

Mounting Base with Valve Kits
+ None
+ 1ST POSITION DOUBLE ACTING VALVE KIT
+ PLUS 3RD POSITION VALVE KIT (CHOICE OF VALVE FOR 2ND & 3RD POSITIONS)
+ PLUS 2ND POSITION VALVE KIT (CHOICE OF VALVE FOR 2ND POSITION)

I figured rear hydraulics might be for lifting up portions of implements like hay rakes or bat wings on mowers. I chose the "1ST POSITION DOUBLE ACTING VALVE KIT", though I was not sure what a double acting valve kit was. I then was presented with the following choice:
Section 1 -- pick 1 of the following items
+ DOUBLE ACTING VALVE
+ FLOAT DETENT VALVE

Huh? What the heck are those two items? Is a double acting valve like a double agent spy, or maybe like Hayley Mills in the movie Parent Trap, where she played the two roles of identical twin sisters? And is a FLOAT DETENT VALVE a value that has to go to detention for misbehavior? I chose the double acting valve.

Then came the loader attachment choices. For the quick coupler I chose the "TWO-LEVER HYDRAULIC QUICK COUPLER & THIRD FUNCTION VALVE" as I knew I also wanted a grapple and would need the third function valve. I also chose the "72" QUICK ATTACH HEAVY DUTY ROUND BACK BUCKET", the "BOLT ON CUTTING EDGE(73" w/11 Holes)", the "42" PALLET FORKS", but no bale spear.

Next came the loader accessories. When I tried to choose the 3rd function valve kit, the web site told me that it was incompatible with the "TWO-LEVER HYDRAULIC QUICK COUPLER & THIRD FUNCTION VALVE". Oh, maybe the 3rd function valve and lines are already there. For the loader hose quick coupler, I had the following choices:

+ None
+ SINGLE LVR VALVE HOSE QUICK COUPLER FOR LOADER (4 HOSES)
+ SINGLE LVR VALVE HOSE QUICK COUPLER FOR LOADER (8 HOSES)

I assumed that "LVR" meant "lever", but why would I need 4 hoses or 8 hoses? I would have figured that a third function valve for a grapple would require 2 additional hoses, not 4. I chose the 8 hose version. I also chose the "QUICK COUPLER FOR LA805 AND LA1055" and "HYDRAULIC SPILL GUARD FOR LA1055", assuming that one of those loaders would be the one I would buy.

I skipped over all of the backhoe options and the mid-point PTO options, as I don't think I will need any of those right away.

Then for the Dealer Installed options I chose the ones marked with a "+" and skipped the ones marked with an "x":
Draw Bar Kit
+ SWINGING DRAWBAR (is that a drawbar that goes to the honky tonk every night?)
Draw Bar Clevis
+ DRAWBAR CLEVIS
Draft Control Kit
+ DRAFT CONTROL KIT
Top And Tilt Kit
x TOP-N-TILT KIT
High Capacity Alternator
+ HIGH CAPACITY ALTERNATOR KIT
Grille Guard
x FRT GRILL GRD KIT/LA555/LA805/LA1055

When I tried to select the "TOP-N-TILT KIT", the web site whined about my having chosen "1ST POSITION DOUBLE ACTING VALVE KIT" and said I would have to choose one of the other two. So I didn't choose "TOP-N-TILT KIT".

I didn't choose anything extra for windows or cab accessories (I can play music on my Samsung phone). I chose the rear worklights. I chose no snow blowing or plowing attachments, blades, or sweepers. For attachments, I chose the ones marked with a "+" and omitted the ones marked with an "x":
Ground Pressure Relief
+ GROUND PRESSURE RELIEF
Quick Hitch Coupler
+ COUPLER KIT FOR GL60 TRACTORS
Quick Hitch
x None
x K1 MANUAL-HITCH
+ K3 AUTO-HITCH

What the heck is a "GROUND PRESSURE RELIEF"? Is that a urinal in the cab with a tube that runs to the ground to relief the pressure in the bladder onto the ground? (If so, I definitely need one of those!) As indicated above, I chose it. I also chose the "CLOTH AIR-RIDE SEAT FOR GL60". I didn't choose any extended warranties. The final MSRP for the tractor was (drum roll please...)

$69,525.00

Obviously, I need to buy a his and hers model.

Tomorrow, I will visit the Massey Ferguson web site...

Senile Texas Aggie