matthewkleinmannI had an old Allis Chalmers CA far tractor that I needed to move about 30 feet further into our property. This would be simple except the tractor has not ran in 10 years, the tires have sunk deep into the mud, and one of the rims is rotted out and the tire has a real bad flat spot. So the tractor will not move under it's own power. It is also in a place that nothing but another tractor can get to, and because of the geometry of the tractor it is not candidate for pushing. There are no trees anyplace in front of it to pull it from. What to do?
I knew the answer was a dead man, but I resorted to a simple test first. I found a very heavy U shaped metal fence post and used my post pounder to plant it over 2 feet in the ground, and wrapped a chain around one end of the tractor, wrapped another chain around the post and put my come along in the middle and started cranking.
The fence post put of a good effort. I let me tension up the chains to the point that I could not crank the come along, I had to switch it over to it's power pulling configuration and re-rig the chains. This time before the tractor moved at all, the fence post started canting over. With each crank of the come along the post canted over more, the tractor did not move at all, and eventually, the post canted over far enough that the chain could slip off of it. The simple fence post was not going to work.
I did take some time and pull the post out and examine how it failed. To my surprise the post did not bend at all, the post held the load against it, the soil the post was set in failed, ripping forward on the surface and backwards below the surface.
We had a few days of nasty weather, cold and rainy and I had some time to think. The next sunny day I got out and took stock of my scrap pile. I never scrap though. I look at the pile when I need something and figure out how to get from there to where I need to be,
In this case the answer was an old bed frame. This one was made out of larger and thicker angle iron than your typical bed frame, and held together with hollow rivets. This was good as hollow rivets can be drilled out. Most bed frames are built with solid rivets that need to be ground out. Drilling them out is much faster and in no time I had the legs and casters and the boxes that held the headboard and foot board off, leaving me with 4 nice pieces of angle iron.
The basic shape of the dead man resembles a sail boat sail. One vertical member than goes a couple feet into the ground, a horizontal piece that goes forward along the ground, and a piece at an angle that joins the two pieces. For good measure I also welded a spike pointing downward at the end of the horizontal piece along the ground. The angled piece is shy of both the top of the vertical piece and the end of the horizontal piece.
I used my vice grips to hold the thing together and as I figured out how long the pieces needed to be I used my metal cutting chop saw to cut them out. After I had all the pieces cut out and dry fit with the vice grips I used a sharpie to outline the areas that I needed to remove the paint and rust with my grinder. Once I had nice shiny metal where the welds needed to be, I welded all the joints together. I am not a good welder so I went over them a couple times and made sure to weld along any two surfaces available.
Once I had it built, I brought it over to where I needed it. I discovered one mistake right away. I should have left more of the vertical angle iron before the angled brace. My post pounder did not bottom out on the post but on the junction of the vertical piece and the angled piece. I figured my weld would break but I gave it a good slam with the post pounder anyway. The welded joint much to my amazement held. In fact after a few blows the outside lip of the post pounder started to rip out, and I had to resort to a sledge hammer. As soon as the big end was down to the same level as the small end I had to go back and forth pounding both sides down evenly.
To be honest I was amazed that pounding it in did not break it. I did not have great expectations. But it held up to be planted in the ground. Out came the chains again, and the come along in it's high pull mode. After a few cranks the chains were good and tight and the next crank I thought I saw the front tires on the tractor move a hair. After a few more cranks there was no question, you could clearly see ruts behind the tires. The dead man had not budged at all. A few more cranks and the tractor was out of the rut holes. At this point in time I was able to re rig the setup with the come along in it's normal mode and move the tractor twice as fast. It took a few re-riggings but I was able to move the tractor out of my way, and the dead man did not move one bit.
I was surprised, but it worked like a charm. I did learn a few things, both in terms of construction and rigging.
On the construction side, I screwed up in both of the verticals. I should have left enough free space on the big one so my post pounder would work on it, and ditto on the smaller one. Having the extra material at the top should not interfere with anything, and it will let you plant both the front and the back with the same tool. In my design I had planned on using the post pounder for the big one and the sledge for the small one, but it would have been nice to only have to drag one tool out into the field.
On the rigging end, I screwed up twice. One was I should have laid out my chains and come along and placed the dead man as far back as possible. The gives you mote leeway in where your load winds up and it also allows you to keep a better angle on the chain. The other thing I screwed up on is I managed to pull the tractor forward so that that the front tire is over the vertical member of the dead man. Now I need to figure out how to back the tractor up a foot or so in order to get the dead man out so I can re rig it and pull it back even more. When I do re-rig it, I will lay the chains out and put the dead man as far back as I can.
Thinking forward, this will be useful for all kinds of tings on the property. In fact I have pondered planting this one behind my saw mill when I am done with this project. This would let me drag heavy logs onto the mill by myself. It may also be useful in the winter if one of the cars skids off the driveway. Overall a very cool project.
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I had a friend stop by and he got a laugh out of both the situation, the front tires on the dead man) and on the thing that we were going to pull against. We are going to pull on that? I managed to back my 4x4 pickup in so we used that to pull the tractor back a foot and some old fence posts to pry the dead man out of the ground. It had been there for a while so it was somewhat weeded in.
Lessons learned last time came into play this time. I wanted the tractor on the side of a little shed that I built so I decided to set up the dead man behind the shed. I got my sacrificial push lawn mower out and hacked down the 4' tall weeds back there and ran over them till they were green pulp and started in on planting the dead man. We lucked out and did not hit any rocks knocking it in. You can get about the first foot of the big tine in before the front tine starts to engage. After that you need to go back and forth. At first my friend, who I was trading off with on the sledge was being gentle, or as gentle as one can be with a sledgehammer on the thing, but he saw me taking full swings and letting it rip and he soon joined in. He too was surprised that it did not come apart. We got it planted.
He was sure it was not going to take the load of the tractor but he did recall when the tractor was way down by the road and it somehow moved the first 30' or so in. Still, it looked crazy. And like last time it had sat so the tractors tires were very rutted in. We had to use the come along in it's high pull mode to get the tractor out of the ruts but once we had it out, it was easy to move. This has turned out to be a very handy tool. My friend was thinking so as well but could not think of an actual use. Um he plows his very long drive with an old tractor and he got it very stuck a couple of hears ago. He was lucky there was a tree near by and he could use that to extract it, but that was pure luck. This is like a tree you can plant anywhere.