My tractor battery finally died. Last December the battery started to not work well. One time back then when I tried to start my tractor after 4 pm I couldn't. I ended up charging the battery and the next day the tractor started. Off-and-on since then the battery seemed to be on its last legs when starting the tractor. The charger helped. The last couple of times I didn't need a battery charger to start the tractor.
Three days ago, the last time I started the tractor, it started without a charger. I then spent three hours pushing snow away in the pasture so I could easily feed hay in the feeder to the cattle. Then yesterday I tried to start the tractor after 4 pm again. For some reason that appears to be a bad time for me to do so. The tractor started right up. Then after 30 seconds or so the tractor quit. Like it had run out of gas. When I tried to restart the tractor, the battery quickly went down. Even using the battery charger I couldn't turn the motor over long enough to start the tractor.
So I put out a few small hay bales for the cattle to eat in the corral and called it a day.
This morning I took the battery in to the "Battery's Plus" store down the road. They tested the battery and said it was no longer working, or good. Well, I had this battery from when I bought this used tractor in August 2015; so the battery lasted a long time.
The new battery cost me $150. It works. Before I tried starting the tractor I filled the tank with diesel, in case why the tractor had stopped running yesterday was because it ran out of diesel. That wasn't the reason as I now believe I had at least four gallons of diesel still in the tractor. When I tried starting the tractor this afternoon I had to turn the engine over and over and over non-stop before the engine started. It was like the diesel was taking longer to get the engine started. Then I was able to haul a large hay bale out to the feeder in the pasture. The last time I did so I had finished using the second cutting hay bales from 2021. Today I hauled out a leftover bale from 2020. I have about a dozen of these bales left before I get to my first cutting hay bales from 2021.
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