5488 power hop

I have a 5488 w/fwa.18/42 loaded inner duals. This thing will really powerhop when under a hard pull. Had 14 100 pound weights on front and removed all but 2. maybe a little better. Do i need more weight on the rear? or is it just a charictaristic of radial tires? Thanks, Jeff. Just thought, got 10psi in rear and 14 in front.

Play with the tire pressure, front is trying to out pull rear. Customer had a magnum hopping all over one day, it rained a little that night and tractor pulled fine next. Can drive you crazy.

May have got ahead of myself again, I am assuming you have front wheel assist.

Raise front pressure to 20 to 25 PSI. Fluid and radials do not work well together. You would be better off losing the fluid and going with cast weight or if you must have fluid switch to bias tires.

Well here is my two cents worth on this subject , first off ya don't have enough air pressure in the rears bring them up to 16-18 and on the ft. if the ft weights are on it as a ft assist with out the weight does not do much good they need more air then ya have . Now with what little experence i have with this we went thru this way back many years ago with a ft assist oliver . The tire sizes must be the same size as what it came from the factory and ya have to watch when changing brands as to the tire hight . If lets say that you change ft tires and the brand that yyou replaced with is a taller one then the last set were even though they may say the same size on the side wall and inch can make a huge difference and you can get a drive line bind up and it will hop . Just about like the old 4x4 pick up with the 4.10 rear axel and the 4.09 ft not much difference in the gear but on a dry hard dirt road or like in the winter your on ice and snow then dry roads that drive line would get real tight real fast and when ya hit a slick spot you could feel it unwind OR if ya tryed to take them out of four wheel drive you could not move the shifter until ya either backed up to take the stress off the drive line or ya got it into something soft or slick. If you continued to drive on a hard surface it would hop to relieve the stress or it would break something. SO this is a few things to check and as far as running fluid in the rears it is done around here and and i know that Firestone did a lot of testing on this when they brought out the radial as the Ag test center is not far from me I use to have a couple friends that worked there.

Here are the general rules for weighting and ballasting an MFD tractor to minimize power hop.

-Tractor should be weighted 35% front 65% rear.
-Inflate tires to specifications for the axle load.
-If power hop persists, raise front tire psi in 2 psi increments. Do this up to 3-4 times.
-If front axle psi adjustment does not work, return to specs. and lower rear psi in 2 pound increments.
-If all else fails try to reduce front weight and increase rear weight.

Typically, power hop is caused by too much pulling from the front axle relative to the rear. To eliminate hop the goal is to reduce the traction on the front axle and increase the rear.

Check out these links for more info:
http://www.canr.msu.edu/vanburen/tractortireballastmgmt.pdf
http://ohioline.osu.edu/aex-fact/0530.html
http://www.michelinag.com/agx/en-US/htbuyt/control_power_hop/power_hop_mfwa_tractor.jsp
http://asae.frymulti.com/data/pdf/6/phit2008/LecSeries32_fry.pdf
http://bsesrv214.bse.vt.edu/Hop/


-Harvesterguy