Messick's, a helping hand with your land.
Neil from Messick's here.
Today is Three-Minute Thursday.
Today we'll have a short conversation
about the tire pressure ratings on tractors.
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Many of our videos
come from things that I find myself
helping customers with
in the course of the day.
This morning was one on a gentleman
asking about the proper
tire inflation pressure
for his front tires.
He was going about it looking at his front tires
and noticing that
on the sidewalls of the tires,
it lists only a max psi.
It isn't quite like your car, right?
You always know
if you swing the door open there
and look on the inside,
you'll find that little plate
telling you what to fill it up to
but on your tractor tires,
it doesn't give you that exact number.
It only tells you what the maximum inflation
is for that tire.
That's because with the equipment tires
like this when you're doing dirt work,
you really don't often want
a whole lot of excess tire pressure.
Running at lower pressures
is generally a desirable thing
because it makes the ride of the tractor
a lot better
and it gets a bigger
contact patch of that tire,
the flat part, it squishes out on the bottom,
down on the ground,
and the bigger that contact patch is,
the more traction you're going to have.
That becomes really important
with big farm tractor tires, AG tires,
when you get up into radials or bias plies,
you're making a lot of tire selections
for that exact reason,
to be able to run at those low pressures.
The funny thing
I was finding with this guy
as I was going through
and helping him through this process,
is he was looking his tires
and noticing some pretty large
maximum inflation numbers on that tire
and thinking that that's
what he needed to fill it to,
so I went and broke out his owner's manual.
Many of was forget that these things exist
but in a dealership setting,
we actually refer to your owner's
manuals fairly often.
We bring them up on the computer
to go reference information,
that's where we get those details.
Checking that tire inflation pressure there,
it gives a whole chart
of all of the different tires
that could be potentially on your tractor.
A lot of these machines,
you can have eight to 10 different
tire options for the machine.
As we're going down
through those different tire options,
you can find that
the recommended inflation pressure
on many of these machines
is nowhere near
that maximum pressure number
that's printed on the side of the tire.
In some cases,
I found differences as much as 50%,
particularly with the small front tires,
you can have some recommended pressures
as much as 40 and 50 psi
but checking your owner's manual
is going to show that they recommend
as little as half that amount of pressure
in that front tire.
I went through it and did some spot checking
to see if those numbers
were going to vary at all if we put a loader
on the front of the machine.
I also went through
and pulled the loader manuals
for machines as well,
you will find separate tire pressure charts
in the loader operator's manual
than you do for your tractor
but interestingly enough,
those charts were the same.
Every spot check that I did showed
those numbers being identical
for both with and without a loader
because of that extra weight that you could
be putting over the front.
My hunch would be there are some cases
where that probably does vary, otherwise,
they wouldn't be putting two separate charts
in two separate manuals,
so they have a front loader on your tractor.
Do go to your loader's operator's manual
to check for that front tire psi.
I hope that helps.
If you're looking at those numbers
and not quite sure what to do,
your owner's manual is the place to go.
Do remember, low tire pressures in tractors
are generally a desirable way
to operate your machine.
You don't want to go so low
that you'll break the beat off the tire,
but dropping that tire pressure down
will give you better traction
and a better ride.
If you have any parts needs for machines,
you've already got,
if you need service on a piece of equipment
or you're looking to buy something,
give us a call at Messick's.
We're available at 800-222-3373
or online at messicks.com.
Many of our videos come from things
that I find that I'm helping guys
within the course of today, of course--
sorry.
Many of our videos--
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