I have quite a bit of weight on my front rack in winter with a bunch of chains, ropes, cable pullers, chain saw, Isocore, etc to make the front end sag pretty good. When I park it in the garage I actually jack the front end up some and put a jack stand under it to keep all that weight from just sitting there for prolonged periods of time. I have almost 10,000 miles on my ATV now and still the OEM bearings. I replaced all the bushings a long time ago with those kick butt Garage Products bushings. They have many thousands of miles on them and they still are too tight to take any grease. Home ⋆ Garage Products
Totally agree, i have pinched nerves, bulged and herniated discs, degenerative disc disease and arthritis. After one surgery (laminectomy) they said i needed a fusion, i said no way. I started hanging upside down on an inversion table 10 years ago and it saved my life. Tree work ever since and now 60 cords scrounged and sold in the last 14 months and still goin strong. Id love a tractor im just a truck,splitter, canam 450 and saws so i feel what your saying
I'm sure you have a full load 0n the front suspension, maybe even a bit more than recommended by OEM(?)...but that is still nowhere near the load/stress that the front suspension components would see with a fully loaded/overloaded front bucket...you know, like how one of these "here, hold my beer and watch this" types would do Not accusing you of operating this way Joe P ...to me it sounds like you are being perfectly reasonable in your use of this handy tool...
LOL, no accusations taken Brenndatomu. We good! It most certainly is a trade-off. Is an ATV meant for this sort of thing? Not really. Well, hell, lets just be honest. No it aint. Am I probably shortening the life span of the front end components, yep, probably. But as I get older, I get smarter. Seems to my my Dad used to say that to me when I'd smart off about something. I hate it when he is right. If I can use the machine to do the heavy lifting and moving even if it means I need to rebuild something later, that is money well spent IMO. After being incapacitated for 6 weeks with a back injury about three years ago, I don't mess around with that anymore. When you're young, you're invincible. Remember those days? I used to joke with people with back pain, until it happened to me. It sucks and it wasn't funny anymore. I keep my stuff until it is plum worn out, then I fix it and run it some more. I learn a lot of stuff doing it that way
Speaking of, Joe P , how's the 5-6 year old wood you got from me burning for ya now that you had a chance to use more of it? I'm still burning the stuff I moved last spring as part of the stack realignment I did and probably won't be starting on the rows next to the ones you took until late February or even early March or so. Based on what I have cut and hauled so far this winter and what I have left yet to cut/haul, I don't think it will be long before I run out of room again.
It burns great. I don't even need kindling to get it going!! LOL. If I have any coals left from the previous burn, I rake them up into a small pile, load the stove up and open up the draft. Roaring fire in about 5 minutes. I let the flue get up to about 600 °F and damp it down to nothing. If I don't have any coals, I load the stove up, hit the front-most split with the propane torch for about 30 seconds.... See above for next steps.. It's good stuff. The wood I was burning previous two years wasn't bad or so I thought. It was dead standing oak and probably seasoned 14-18 months. Compared to this, it may as well have been green.
awesome to hear! I'm burning pretty much the same stuff this winter. It was split/stacked the previous fall, whereas the stuff you have (and what I'll be starting to burn in early March or so) was split/stacked the following spring.
