Ford 1220 stump removal disaster

Hi all, I have a Ford 1220 compact tractor with front loader and 4WD. It has a little over 500 hours. This is my first tractor and I have gained experience with it over the past couple years slowly clearing a couple acre lot, grading it and removing small stumps. Well you experts probably know that it hasn't gotten the best care since it is a small tractor and probably shouldn't be used to remove stumps, especially dead on with the bucket jamming/forcing the front wheels into the ground. Well with all this dry weather, the ground like a rock, I removed two stumps, then went for the third and bang, it felt and sounded like the front frame of the tractor was slammed with a sledge hammer.

To my surprise I was able to back the tractor up, but quickly noticed that the front wheels were locking up, at least one side. I can't determine if they both lock at the same time. I think only one will drag, then release, then maybe lock again on the next rotation. I slowly got it back to the garage. It does it in both 2WD and 4WD. However when I jacked the whole tractor off the ground, all seems fine. The front wheels disengage in 2WD and engage in 4WD and spin counter to each other. When off and I manually spin the wheels, they feel normal with no crunching, grinding, or jamming. Also with the tractor on and in drive, no jamming, it appears normal. When I put the tractor back on the ground, in forward, reverse, 2WD or 4WD the momentary jamming starts again. Also a small leak has started on the right side of the tractor and I have attached a picture. The amount of fluid in the picture is from the last 24 hours roughly.

I am a novice, have done basic truck maintenance such as ball joints, idler arms, alternators, all easy stuff. I sure would like to try and fix this myself, but am guessing it will be far too complicated for me. I have access to quite a few tools though.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.


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If it were me, I'd start tearing into that right front wheel assembly. It's leaking anyhow. I'm betting something let loose in that gear reduction box.

(quoted from post at 18:04:22 09/27/17) If it were me, I'd start tearing into that right front wheel assembly. It's leaking anyhow. I'm betting something let loose in that gear reduction box.

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Thanks, I just bought a shop manual and plan to start doing that. Based on what your seeing, is a break in the gear reduction box a less catastrophic break than others that might happen perhaps further back? Also, I am not seeing a whole lot of available parts for these machines, if the part were not available, is it possible to unlink the front axle and make this a 2WD machine?

Well you broke something in that right hand wheel drive. Your going to have to pull it apart. Your abuse broke a part on a tractor that is going to be hard to find parts for. That compact tractor was built by Shibaura for Ford. Parts have been hard to get for years. Your only hope is that you broke a bearing or a more generic part. If you broke the gears or the housing itself then your going to spend a fair amount of money and time finding the parts you need.

Now that I am done chewing your butt. LOL IF you have basic mechanical skills you can fix this. The link below goes to Ford/New Holland's parts webs site. It will give you a good picture of the parts in your front end. You can print out the parts diagram. Using it you can get it apart to see what broke. I would lean towards the gear that is hooked to the wheel spindle itself. This would be #34 in the parts diagram. Maybe the pinion gears #24. Hope that the housing ,#23, did not get damaged.

I Looked at these parts and they are not being shown being available from Ford/NH. I figured this would be the case. Even common stuff is hard to find for these tractors. Since they where not made by Ford they are not supported very well.

https://partstore.agriculture.newholland.com/us/parts-search.html#epc::mr61813ar258838
Ford 1220 MFWD front axle break down.

I have seen them made into 2wd tractors. You may also be able to find the parts used. There are several salvage yards that specialize in compact tractors. Stevens being one.

Hopefully you learned the valuable lesson
that loader tractors aren't bulldozers.
There is nothing that can't be fixed given
enough time and money.

I need a good chewing out. It has dawned on me how outrageous it is to damage a machine like this for no reason using it like a bulldozer. Should of never happened, but I do hope this will be seared in my memory to respect these machines much more in the future. Thanks for the advice and direction.

I bought my wife a 1920 20 odd years ago and over the years that little tractor has done a lot of
work that it was never intended to do and that she was not aware it was doing, they are tough.
Always had good luck finding what I needed from weavers compact tractor salvage in Shippensburg PA.

www.compactractorparts.com

As the others say, can be a real hunt and seek finding used parts for it.

I have a 1720, and they sure are nice little machines for what they are. Wish the parts would be a little easier to find, it's will be a sad day when
something bad breaks on mine.

Paul