Neil from Messick's here, outside today on a sloppy, snowy, icy morning. About six months or so ago, we did a video on different tractive properties of tires and testing them with a load cell that we have. It's one of my favorite videos that we did because it puts some real numbers and statistics behind how different tractor tire patterns performed in different conditions. They’re waiting here for a good snowfall to do the same thing out in the snow. The selection between R4 and turf tires, well, R4s are clearly better in dirt applications, our numbers showed about 30%. 

We very frequently hear from customers how well turf tires can perform in the snow and something you wouldn't necessarily expect because of them not cleaning out so well. We're going to actually put some numbers to that here today, take a BX Series tractor, set the thing up, and see what it can do. First a little bit on our setup, you'll see here we've got a nearly 10,000-pound SVL 75 is the ballast for this application, and two chains hooked here with a load cell in the middle. Now, we only have a 3,000-pound load cell, so every time I've done a test like this, I typically go for a small tractor because we can actually out pull the strength of that load cell. 

So we're going to take a BX 2380 right here, we're going to start with turf tires, and give this guy a pull in both high and low range and see exactly what it can pull against that load cell. Our ice conditions here today, it snowed about four or five inches yesterday. It gave us a nice thick layer of ice on top of that. It's warmed up here a little bit today, and you see some of this is melting. We've got some slush down here on the ground now, but this is going to be more than enough to get a really slick surface underneath those tires, so let's see what this thing does. 

For my very first test here, I'm going to do this in low range with turf tires and see what kind of number we come up with. We're going to heat the tractor here for just a moment. 

[engine noise] 

Slide her into low range, come up to full revs. 

[engine noise] 

Engage four-wheel drive. 

[engine noise] 

Let’s check our numbers. Interestingly here, low-range, four-wheel drive on the ice, we're pulling just shy of 1,400 pounds. Now, interestingly, if we look back to that prior video that we did, that same test done on dirt netted us right under 2,200 pounds, so a really significant tractive difference between being on the ice and being on dirt, unsurprisingly. Now we're going to try the same test in high range and see if the tractor is able to pull equally to that number before it’s overcome by the transmissions limitations. We're going to repeat the same test now, and we're going to do it in high range. 

Now, normally, in high range, at either set of tires, the transmission isn't able to overcome the tractive power that you get from either of them, so it'd be interesting here to see how that compares in this icy slush. 

[engine noise] 

I'm going to pull off to the side here a little bit so we get a fresh patch. Pull the slack out of our chains. 

[engine noise] 

That's really interesting, it looks like I've got enough traction here, sitting on this ice with my turf tires to not be able to break them loose. If I'm remembering back to that prior video, those numbers actually make sense because in high range, we were seeing around 900 pounds of pull or so, and it showed before that we were breaking loose at about 1,300 here earlier. It seems that in high range, your tractor tire selection doesn't really matter. Our results from that test are interesting, in high range, we ran out of, basically, transmission pressure right around 1,300 pounds, about the same place where we broke loose with the turf tire. 

Logic would tell us if it had just a little bit more gumption left, high range would have been able to break those tires loose as well, but interesting that we're getting very similar results between those two ranges. We're going to go bring in a tractor now with R4s and see how the numbers change. 

[engine noise] 

So we swapped our tractors out now. This is a different machine, but with different tires on it, both brand new identical units. We're going to repeat our same test here, low range, four-wheel drive, with air force tires. 

[engine noise] 

The same test, this time in high range. 

[engine noise] 

In conclusion, what do these tests tell us? At least on our slushy conditions out here today, the performance of the R4 and the turf tire on snow, icy conditions is nearly exactly the same. Actually, giving some validity to the guys that say that they've had really good success with turf tires in snowy conditions. Perhaps the most interesting thing to me from this test though was that our stall pull, the point that we were stalling out the transmission when we were pulling was 400 pounds higher, about 50% more than when we repeated this exactly the same test several months ago. What's our variable here? Probably the outside temperature. 

Today it is basically 30 degrees outside when it would have been 80 when we had been doing this before. I'm curious whether our thicker, cold hydraulic fluid is leading us to have a stronger pull. I'd be curious what you guys think might be playing into that because those tests are very repeatable. Two different tractors with two nearly identical numbers in our old test, two different tractors with nearly identical numbers in this test as well for the point that we stalled out. Interesting information for you. If you're looking to choosing what set of tires that you'd like on a tractor in a snow application, it seems that you can't go wrong, you're going to get very similar results either way. 

If you're going through the buying process of purchasing a machine, if you need parts for one that you already have or if you've got service needs we can help with, give us a call at Messick's, we’re available at 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com