PAUL - Yes, there's still a few farmer's that use CaCl. But with today's FWA, radial tires, and taller low sidewall profile tires, the amount of CaCl per tire is reduced. The old 18.4 x 34's & 38's held a LOT more fluid than today's 46, & even 50" rim diameters. With fluid you get a tendency to POWER HOP with today's high HP tractors. You have to play with inflation PSI and weight a lot more to control that hopping. It's caused when the tire squats under a hard pull, then spins a bit, then raises up a bit, and gets a good bite again, squats, and starts all over and over again. From comments I've read over on RPM's forum a 250-350+ HP tractor can get to bouncing bad enough you get tossed around the cab pretty good before you can hit the clutch.
You want to run as light as you can to reduce compaction, but heavy enough to keep 5-10% slippage. And pulling smaller implements faster as opposed to pulling larger implements as best you can helps too. Good comparison was right here by my house last fall. Neighbor across the road pulls about three feet too wide a chisel plow with a 200 HP tractor. HUGE rack of suitcase weights to plant the FWA axle, plus a row of 18-20 more suitcase weights hanging off the back of his 3-pt hitch to plant the rear axle and he creeps along 3-4 MPH and when pulling up the hill towards the road his slippage must be 30-40%. Guy that farms on my side of the road has the same size tractor, 200 HP, also FWA, but his chisel plow is 3 ft narrower and he runs no extra weights on the back, just the full rack on the frt of his MX-210. He can run 5-6 MPH and his slippage is right around the 10% range, maybe 15-20% in tough areas.
Running all that extra weight tying the drive wheels of the tractor hard and fast to the ground does bad things to the final drives too. Best way to measure efficency now days is "Gallons per acre" for most jobs. When you're spinning your wheels you're wasting fuel. And ag diesel is around $3.40/gallon so you don't want to waste much if any of it when you're burning 15-18 gal/hour.
Especially @ $1.75/ hour.
