As close to the dream property as I am going to get, at least for now
- Thread starter CTM1
- Start date
Triple C
Well-Known Member
X2!!! Great looking piece of property. As i've said many times, love the upstate NY threads.
Great trail cam pics and your property is beautiful, love the hills! Looks like you got a good deal on the disc. Craigslist can be a real pain for buyers and sellers. Our local police stations are letting people use their parking lots for transactions to help cut down on some of the scams where sellers rob the buyers when they show up for the purchase.
CTM1
Active Member
Thanks guys!
To Flyfixer, I think I did well on the disc, until I broke it.
I have definitive proof that my soil is in fact stronger then steel, yes people, I said stronger then steel, but I will get to that story in another post.
This one will be about the trailer I bought some months back.
Well earlier in the year I set out to purchase a used trailer so I could move the tractor back and forth. While it was fun to drive the 15 miles to and from the old farm it did however take some time and required a friend to act as a rear blocker so I did not get creamed from behind by another vehicle. So I started hitting Craigslist daily, and almost daily I either got the run around or just flat out missed out. This went on for a number of weeks and it was pretty frustrating. Well low and behold one pops up just a few towns over from me, and it was about $400 cheaper then any of the similar ones I had been seeing. I emailed shortly after the ad went up, but it was already pretty late. The seller and I caught up the next day and he assured me that the trailer was solid and that everything worked, including the brakes. So I told him that I could be over in an hour.
As soon as I arrived it started to drizzle. The guy tells me that he is a supervisor for the town highway dept in the next town over, and that he has had an excavating business for a number of years, but was looking to divest from it as the town job was taking most of his time. He has all sorts of equipment parked in his company yard. His background and his mannerism kind of put me at ease and it made me feel comfortable, like he was a straight shooter.
So I proceeded to look under the trailer to see if I there was anything like frame cracks, leaf spring issues or anything else that would leap out. I then walked on the deck (metal) to make sure it was solid and but for one broken weld on a seam it was fine. He then tells me that his buddy backed into one of the rear lights the other day and broke the bulb, but that it was an easy fixed. Given I have three friends who are electricians I was not concerned if there were any issues with the lights (fyi I do not touch anything electrical including doorbells). The guy then says the hitch is problematic at times, it just needs a little persuasion now and again. Ok so it is not perfect, but it is cheaper then many of the others I had seen. I again asked if the brakes work and he says absolutely, but then said they were working when he parked it last year. He said he bought a newer trailer with the wood deck as the metal one was to heavy for what he was going to be doing in the future, but again says do not worry they work.
Now anyone who has followed my thread has come to understand that I am not the most mechanically inclined guy when it comes to turning nuts and bolts as is all pretty new to me. Hand me a pile of wood and I can build you something, you give me PVC, Pex or Copper and I can do the plumbing, but when it comes to turning nuts and bolts etc that has not been my thing. Well the sky starts to opens up and the rain is coming down as I am looking at the tires, they appear to have good tread and looked fine to me. Now we are getting soaked so he says "hey I have to get to a meeting soon and I cannot show up soaked so I am heading for the truck. I stayed for a few more moments pondering the deal given he said on the phone all worked and once I got here there are a few issues, although minor. Well I decide to buy it figuring I am getting a "good deal".
So we do the deal and he hooks the trailer up and away I go. It is 18 footer, but two feet are beaver tail, and damn that tail drags on the slightest grade. I make it home with no issues and then go on to register it. One of my friends then wires up a new light and all is good.
So the trailer is now registered and like me awaiting until food plotting time comes around.
Fast forward to late June and my neighbor approached me about tilling an acre for him over at his cousins property across the reservoir. Given my neighbor is also my friend and has been for years, and when you couple that with the fact he helped me on more then one occasion last year when the tractor went down I told him I would be happy to do it for him.
We load the tractor up with the disc attached. He wanted me to bring the tiller, but I had to tell him that I was not going to take the chance on breaking it by tilling his rocks. It is about a ten mile trip to his cousins property and within a minutes I realize that the trailer is not tracking correctly, in fact I could not go over 35 mph. Not much further down the road I was going through a long left sweeping turn when a tractor trailer truck came barreling down the road at speed. Well when his air blast hit my truck I nearly lost control of the truck and the trailer, I could see the tractor starting to lean hard to the right and then I could feel my steering getting light. I honestly thought I was going to wreck. After I got control I pulled over and told my friend and my other neighbor/friend who was with him that I had a problem and from that point on it was going to be under 15 miles per hour. They had been trailing farther behind so they never saw my adventure, old people drive really slow.
Well we made it over to his cousins property and just as I feared the grass was super high. Well I proceeded to make a couple of dozen passes in the same area and it was clear that the disc was just not turning the soil. I told him that we could come back another day with my sprayer and then try again in a few weeks. So we loaded the tractor back up and took it real slow back to the house. My neighbors stayed close looking at the attitude of the trailer and they thought that one of the wheels was oscillating, like it had a bad bearing. The hub was not hot, but after unloading it I took the trailer to my local shop and to have it all checked out.
A week later I get a call that all four tires are bad, that they are all different size tires and that they were actually car tires. When I inquired about what he meant when he said "bad" he said as in dry rotted. I said but they looked good and had tread. He said yeah they had tread but the guy had flipped them around so you could not see the dry rot on sidewalls. He said one of the tires actually separated when he took it off. Now for the real kicker, when I asked about the brakes he says there are no brakes. So I said "so it needs pads", and he says "NO, THERE ARE NO BRAKES, as in both calipers do not work, and there are no pads, and they are not wired up". He went on to say but I have some good news, the axles and wheel bearings are fine and that the tracking issues are solely related to the bad tires. He says you might want to go back to the guy who lied his butt off to you and get your money back. Now as much as I would like to have a face to face with the con man who sold it to me and give him a piece of my mind I think I am out of luck, besides I would rather not get into and find myself wearing a pair of shiny steel bracelets. So I had the shop put on four new tires, but when he gave me the price to do the brakes I cringed and said I really need to digest this as the "good deal" I thought I got is no now a bad deal. The trailer is now parked on the side of the garage until I decide what direction is best.
So that is my trailer saga and yet another of life's lessons learned.
#1 Do not trust anyone, even if their mannerism makes you feel comfortable.
#2 Do not rush a deal just because you have been frustrated and looking for weeks.
#3 Do not feel rushed to do a deal because it is raining and someone has a meeting.
#4 When you have no idea how to truly evaluate something, bring along someone who does.
Remember keep an eye out for the story about the soil that is stronger then steel, but do not worry it will not be a novel.
To Flyfixer, I think I did well on the disc, until I broke it.
I have definitive proof that my soil is in fact stronger then steel, yes people, I said stronger then steel, but I will get to that story in another post.
This one will be about the trailer I bought some months back.
Well earlier in the year I set out to purchase a used trailer so I could move the tractor back and forth. While it was fun to drive the 15 miles to and from the old farm it did however take some time and required a friend to act as a rear blocker so I did not get creamed from behind by another vehicle. So I started hitting Craigslist daily, and almost daily I either got the run around or just flat out missed out. This went on for a number of weeks and it was pretty frustrating. Well low and behold one pops up just a few towns over from me, and it was about $400 cheaper then any of the similar ones I had been seeing. I emailed shortly after the ad went up, but it was already pretty late. The seller and I caught up the next day and he assured me that the trailer was solid and that everything worked, including the brakes. So I told him that I could be over in an hour.
As soon as I arrived it started to drizzle. The guy tells me that he is a supervisor for the town highway dept in the next town over, and that he has had an excavating business for a number of years, but was looking to divest from it as the town job was taking most of his time. He has all sorts of equipment parked in his company yard. His background and his mannerism kind of put me at ease and it made me feel comfortable, like he was a straight shooter.
So I proceeded to look under the trailer to see if I there was anything like frame cracks, leaf spring issues or anything else that would leap out. I then walked on the deck (metal) to make sure it was solid and but for one broken weld on a seam it was fine. He then tells me that his buddy backed into one of the rear lights the other day and broke the bulb, but that it was an easy fixed. Given I have three friends who are electricians I was not concerned if there were any issues with the lights (fyi I do not touch anything electrical including doorbells). The guy then says the hitch is problematic at times, it just needs a little persuasion now and again. Ok so it is not perfect, but it is cheaper then many of the others I had seen. I again asked if the brakes work and he says absolutely, but then said they were working when he parked it last year. He said he bought a newer trailer with the wood deck as the metal one was to heavy for what he was going to be doing in the future, but again says do not worry they work.
Now anyone who has followed my thread has come to understand that I am not the most mechanically inclined guy when it comes to turning nuts and bolts as is all pretty new to me. Hand me a pile of wood and I can build you something, you give me PVC, Pex or Copper and I can do the plumbing, but when it comes to turning nuts and bolts etc that has not been my thing. Well the sky starts to opens up and the rain is coming down as I am looking at the tires, they appear to have good tread and looked fine to me. Now we are getting soaked so he says "hey I have to get to a meeting soon and I cannot show up soaked so I am heading for the truck. I stayed for a few more moments pondering the deal given he said on the phone all worked and once I got here there are a few issues, although minor. Well I decide to buy it figuring I am getting a "good deal".
So we do the deal and he hooks the trailer up and away I go. It is 18 footer, but two feet are beaver tail, and damn that tail drags on the slightest grade. I make it home with no issues and then go on to register it. One of my friends then wires up a new light and all is good.
So the trailer is now registered and like me awaiting until food plotting time comes around.
Fast forward to late June and my neighbor approached me about tilling an acre for him over at his cousins property across the reservoir. Given my neighbor is also my friend and has been for years, and when you couple that with the fact he helped me on more then one occasion last year when the tractor went down I told him I would be happy to do it for him.
We load the tractor up with the disc attached. He wanted me to bring the tiller, but I had to tell him that I was not going to take the chance on breaking it by tilling his rocks. It is about a ten mile trip to his cousins property and within a minutes I realize that the trailer is not tracking correctly, in fact I could not go over 35 mph. Not much further down the road I was going through a long left sweeping turn when a tractor trailer truck came barreling down the road at speed. Well when his air blast hit my truck I nearly lost control of the truck and the trailer, I could see the tractor starting to lean hard to the right and then I could feel my steering getting light. I honestly thought I was going to wreck. After I got control I pulled over and told my friend and my other neighbor/friend who was with him that I had a problem and from that point on it was going to be under 15 miles per hour. They had been trailing farther behind so they never saw my adventure, old people drive really slow.
Well we made it over to his cousins property and just as I feared the grass was super high. Well I proceeded to make a couple of dozen passes in the same area and it was clear that the disc was just not turning the soil. I told him that we could come back another day with my sprayer and then try again in a few weeks. So we loaded the tractor back up and took it real slow back to the house. My neighbors stayed close looking at the attitude of the trailer and they thought that one of the wheels was oscillating, like it had a bad bearing. The hub was not hot, but after unloading it I took the trailer to my local shop and to have it all checked out.
A week later I get a call that all four tires are bad, that they are all different size tires and that they were actually car tires. When I inquired about what he meant when he said "bad" he said as in dry rotted. I said but they looked good and had tread. He said yeah they had tread but the guy had flipped them around so you could not see the dry rot on sidewalls. He said one of the tires actually separated when he took it off. Now for the real kicker, when I asked about the brakes he says there are no brakes. So I said "so it needs pads", and he says "NO, THERE ARE NO BRAKES, as in both calipers do not work, and there are no pads, and they are not wired up". He went on to say but I have some good news, the axles and wheel bearings are fine and that the tracking issues are solely related to the bad tires. He says you might want to go back to the guy who lied his butt off to you and get your money back. Now as much as I would like to have a face to face with the con man who sold it to me and give him a piece of my mind I think I am out of luck, besides I would rather not get into and find myself wearing a pair of shiny steel bracelets. So I had the shop put on four new tires, but when he gave me the price to do the brakes I cringed and said I really need to digest this as the "good deal" I thought I got is no now a bad deal. The trailer is now parked on the side of the garage until I decide what direction is best.
So that is my trailer saga and yet another of life's lessons learned.
#1 Do not trust anyone, even if their mannerism makes you feel comfortable.
#2 Do not rush a deal just because you have been frustrated and looking for weeks.
#3 Do not feel rushed to do a deal because it is raining and someone has a meeting.
#4 When you have no idea how to truly evaluate something, bring along someone who does.
Remember keep an eye out for the story about the soil that is stronger then steel, but do not worry it will not be a novel.
My 18 foot trailer had brakes wired up and working when I bought it but somewhere down the line I hooked up to it and the brakes locked up until I unplugged it and then they would release. I am not a wiring guru or anything but I am pretty mechanically inclined and have rebuilt fixed a bunch of stuff in my time here on this planet. I have changed the trailer plug in and traced out all of the wires. What it seems like is I have an actual short right at the brake solenoid at the trailer wheel.
My solution so far has been to disconnect the trailer wire to the brakes. I tow my tractor and equipment on average every couple of days throughout the summer as I use it commercially. I pull with a 3/4 ton Ram truck with exhaust brake and a tow/haul mode that automatically starts gearing the truck down when you take your foot off the gas pedal and all of that stuff keeps me from even needing to use the brakes for anything other than actually coming to a stop and so far have never had an issue with stopping...actually looking back at all the trailers I have ever had this is the first one that has even had brakes...If I pulled a dozer or full size backhoe I would make sure they worked but pulling stuff that weighs a bunch less than my truck I don't worry too much...
On tires always buy trailer rated tires preferably 10 or more plys...
My solution so far has been to disconnect the trailer wire to the brakes. I tow my tractor and equipment on average every couple of days throughout the summer as I use it commercially. I pull with a 3/4 ton Ram truck with exhaust brake and a tow/haul mode that automatically starts gearing the truck down when you take your foot off the gas pedal and all of that stuff keeps me from even needing to use the brakes for anything other than actually coming to a stop and so far have never had an issue with stopping...actually looking back at all the trailers I have ever had this is the first one that has even had brakes...If I pulled a dozer or full size backhoe I would make sure they worked but pulling stuff that weighs a bunch less than my truck I don't worry too much...
On tires always buy trailer rated tires preferably 10 or more plys...
dogdoc
Well-Known Member
I pull my Kubota L3400 all the time and have no breaks on the trailer. Now that you have new tires you'll learn how to drive the trailer safely. Sounds like it is a sturdy trailer. Since everything else still is sound on the trailer it's gonna be cheaper in the long run to save the money and get the brakes fixed eventually. But like I said no trailer brakes wouldn't stop me from using it.
Todd
Todd
CTM1
Active Member
Despite some of the set backs I still find myself waking up with a smile.
CTM1
Active Member
As I recall the owner of the shop told me to go with a 10ply like you said. I could not imagine towing without brakes. When I originally picked up the tractor up with a U-Haul trailer which had working brakes I still found my truck brakes burning on some of the hills.
The trailer is now back in the shop and they are going to let me now what I am in store for,
CTM1
Active Member
In all honesty I would not feel safe driving without brakes and as I understand it they are required by maw in my state anytime you have
a dual axle.
CTM1
Active Member
So you think of me when near disasters take place
, but at least I am thought of Just glad that the tree missed your brain bucket.
CTM1
Active Member
CTM1
Active Member
I have been so busy trying to catch up with stuff around the house and etc I have to catch up on all of the other threads to see what everyone has been up to, but given status of my plots I will be jealous.
CTM1
Active Member
Thank you Sir. I do enjoy getting the opportunity to share the ups and downs of this thing we love.
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