What is the biggest mess you made with machinery?

[730virgil]

I didn't do it but man I was working for did. didn't swing auger in on combine first time around fence line caught auger on bid tree.
bought some hay on shares hired friend to make hay bale. he ran over some electric fence wire tore up his mower really bad he was hot he had mowed that field year before never got into mess like that
bunch of kids were ripping around when ground was froze I think wire was in back of one of trucks down tail was down and wire slide out.

 

[caterpillar guy]

I think the worst was when The dozer track got run off on the inside. Had to put enough bars in under the track to get it to ride up on to the front idler. Fortunately there was some slop in the track and the track adjustment could be backed off some. Took a couple hours or more to get back on.

 

[jal-SD]

Not my faul, but being a farm kid w/wrenching experience was told to fix it. Summer job working for SD-GF&P @ Lake Herman State park after 1st year teaching. Park had a dump trucks w/winch on front behind front bumper. Controls left of steering column were 3 identical pull knobs labeled with the word Muncie. One controlled the PTO, one engaged the winch & 3rd engaged the hydraulics for the hoist. Operator engaged the PTO. Pulled knob that was though to engage the hoist. It was actually the one that engaged the winch.

Previous user of the winch had wrapped the winch cable around one horn of the bumper & hooked the hook end of the cable to the other end of the bumper rather than rewinding. The rest of the cable was laying along the gravel pan between the bumper and frame. Current operator gunned the engine as the box wasn't going up as anticipated. Excess noise from the winch area caused the operator to disengage the PTO to check it out. He then drove truck to the shop where I was sharpening mower blades.

Boss took me off of sharpening blades. It took me the rest of a very hot day to unload gravel, untangle cable & remove bumper. Then I was instructed to attempt to return bumper & gravel pan to some resemblance of straight bumper & appurtenances. Final part of the job was to use pocket knife to carve a large W in the appropriate control knob.

 

[Stephen Newell]

I've run across some antique barbed wire once and it did the same thing. Never knew there was ever a fence on my place.

 

[37 chief]

I have my share of stuff wound around my flail mower drum. Chain link fence is the worst. When the tractor starts to bog down I know I have hoked a big one, It all happens in a matter of a few seconds because of the blade drum speed. When that happens it's a trip back to the shop for some torch work. A bed mattress will have the same effect. I even hooked a nylon lifting cargo net one time. Stan

 

[r.w.b.]

cutting neighbors soybeans. he had a kid that wasnt quite right. told him to get the gaucho barb wire out of the field about a month or 2 before harvest. instead of dealing with that nasty gaucho he walked throwing the wire into the second row of beans. i opened field up n turned on end n seen beanstalks parting threw seperator out n before it quit turning i discovered it was a great wire roller. took a full day to get that cleared out

 

[gtractorfan]

When I was a kid using the Fergy tractor in the field it was running low on gas. 5 gallon cans of gas were brought to the field along with a funnel that locked to the tank. I poured in the gas but before I stopped I ran the gas over. The engine is below the tank, the gas spilled onto the hot exhaust manifold and made a cloud of steam. Fortunately there was no spark to ignite it. Years later dad was applying anhydrous in a corn field using a smaller two wheel applicator that was refilled from a nurse tank. Dad filled the applicator, then went and did something else. When he came back he drove off with the hose still hooked to the nurse tank! THere was a big cloud of ammonia that burned off an acre or more of corn. Glad dad got clear or it could have been fatal.

 

[showcrop]

I had a tri-axle dump truck that I hired out by the day to mostly excavation companies. There was a small console between the seats with controls for the body and the lift axle. The air valve knobs for the tailgate and the lift axle were right next to each other and were both round and nearly the same size. One time coming into a 90 degree intersection I pulled the knob to raise the lift axle, and immediately realized that I had pulled the wrong one. I pushed it back down but I was too late. Dirt pile in the intersection of two state roads. I continued the tenth of a mile to the job site, where my long time friend, and father of the company owner was working. He noticed as I approached that my gate was unlatched. We quickly hopped in the cab of a loader backhoe and went to clean it up. We filled both the bucket and hoe, but got it picked up except for dust, which on my next trip the DOT was there sweeping up. They charge a minimum of $500.00 for clean-ups, but they didn't figure out where it had come from. As soon as I got home that day I took my grinder and converted one of the knobs from round to square.

 

[big tee]

Mistakes happen--Needed the tractor that was hooked to our old second cart --Just bought it--no jack so used loader to unhook it--sat there for 2 days--third day this is what we saw--I can't prove it but I think the birds ate all the corn from the front of the cart--Nobody got hurt!!-15 years ago---

 

[Gary Mitchell]

I was planting corn one day and must have zoned plum out because when I got to the last run, next to the pasture fence, I forgot to hook the marker to stay up. That first hedge post did a real number on the marker, gm :-(

 

[teddy52food]

Guy was blowing snow for his friend & when he got close to the barn , he run a dead frozen calf in the blower.

 

[Donald in MN]

my dads farm had a barn with a ramp to drive into the middle bay of the barn to unload wagons onto the hay conveyor. in the far right corner there was a hay chute and straight ahead was another hay chute in an addition with a 6x6 beam across the addition opening. we use to pull the wagons up there with the 340nf or the 504nf the 340 was short enough to pull straight in but the 504 we had to turn to the left to get the wagons up to the conveyor. dad use to pull the wagons up all the time he didnt trust anyone else . one day he must have not been paying attention and dropped the front wheels of the 504 down the right side hay chute. i had to go to town to borrow a floor jack from the implement to get it up enough to get some planks under the front wheels. i wanted to take a picture of the wheels hanging down into the miking barn but mom wouldnt give me the camera she said that would just make dad mad.

 

[centash]

Filling silo with haylage with my dad, field was about 2 miles from home. Fell asleep at the wheel, drifted toward the ditch but woke up soon enough to prevent the tractor from rolling.....but not the full wagon. Only broke one small plank on the wagon, and dented the shield, but it took me hours to fork out all the haulage so that we could roll the wagons back onto its wheels. Not a happy day....

Ben

 

[tall german]

When we built our house, we had three giant piles of dirt left out of the basement. I was leveling out the last pile with a B JD and loader. I was filling a bucket full and pushed the manhole cover off of the septic tank (2' in diameter). The riser was just the right size to accommodate the narrow front of the tractor and "down she went". Two handyman jacks, a half a pickup load of blocking, two pieces of bridge plank and two hours of time and I was back leveling my dirt pile.

 

[hd6gtom]

When I was in highschool our neighbor got sick at haying time. He had a 2n, and an 8n ford. Mom sent me up to cut his hay He insisted I use that dam 2n with his 3 point mower. What a hunk of junk. Then I went to rake it, that went decent until the hunk of junk died and wouldn't restart. I went home and got dads Wd45 and sailed thru the raking. The next day I went to square bale his hay. He insisted I use his big tractor that 8n. His wife told me not to start baling till the JD baler man got there. He got there and I started baling. About every other bale the JD square baler would miss tying a bale. The baler man could not find anything wrong with the baler. It was taking forever to get done. When I got down out of site of his house, I went home and got dads D17 Allis and hooked it to his baler. We never missed tying a bale all the rest of the afternoon. The useless darn 8n didn't have enough power to run his 24T baler. This man was sick for several years. His wife and I came to an agreement, when it came time to bale hay, she would take him to his brothers about 30 miles away and keep him there until I had the hay baled and put in the barn. I used dads equipment and his rake and baler.

 

[showcrop]

(quoted from post at 22:17:22 03/21/23) When I was in highschool our neighbor got sick at haying time. He had a 2n, and an 8n ford. Mom sent me up to cut his hay He insisted I use that dam 2n with his 3 point mower. What a hunk of junk. Then I went to rake it, that went decent until the hunk of junk died and wouldn't restart. I went home and got dads Wd45 and sailed thru the raking. The next day I went to square bale his hay. He insisted I use his big tractor that 8n. His wife told me not to start baling till the JD baler man got there. He got there and I started baling. About every other bale the JD square baler would miss tying a bale. The baler man could not find anything wrong with the baler. It was taking forever to get done. When I got down out of site of his house, I went home and got dads D17 Allis and hooked it to his baler. We never missed tying a bale all the rest of the afternoon. The useless darn 8n didn't have enough power to run his 24T baler. This man was sick for several years. His wife and I came to an agreement, when it came time to bale hay, she would take him to his brothers about 30 miles away and keep him there until I had the hay baled and put in the barn. I used dads equipment and his rake and baler.

Well there is a fairy tale, LOL. 8Ns probably baled five times more hay than D-17s during those years. When I started out I pulled my baler with a 19 HP Kubota.

 

[Bill(Wis)]

Actually, what I thought to be a big mistake, running a rock the size of a basketball both ways thru the grain head of my combine
resulting in a slight wobble of the auger, turned out to be a good thing, I think. The auger grabs the slippery stuff a little better than it did prior to my ''field expedient adjustment''. (;>))

 

[Alvin 41]

We were pulling pairs of chopped haylage self unloading wagons 3 miles to unload and comming around a corner and accelerating down hill on the highway the tractor hitch pin (had a pull rope and no clip) came out and the pair of loaded wagons followed the tractor and then veered into the left lane and thtough the ditch and tipped over in a neighbors field. Had to pitch both wagons empty into an elevator to load out silage , tip both up and drag home . The rear wagon was usable after major straightening and the lead wood unloading wagon was only used for parts.

 

[TASO]

Similar situation happened in my neighborhood a few years ago. One of my neighbors and his cousin were working together in a wheat field with their Gleaner combines. They had their unloading augers out and apparently forgot about them. The two augers hit each other when the combines were going in opposite directions. They had a lot of repairing to do before they were able to operate again.