We have a JD 2310 soil finisher that's a couple years old. A few days ago we discovered a bracket broken from it's tubing. This bracket was completely severed, and only the 2nd ( of two) bracket on that far RH section was carrying the drag & basket. It was pulled away & wasn't going to last much longer. If it had broken, the whole section would've departed from the soil finisher frame. Our 2310 has the JD factory optioned rolling basket & coil tine harrow. Nothing was added or modified by us. Also no previous damage to this unit.

As you can see in photo #2, the weld did not break, the metal below the weld completely tore out of the tube. We did have to weld the bracket back on to that tube. Then we added gussets to distribute some of the weld load back further on the tube. No engineering work there...we just thought it looked like it needed that. Then, we examined the outer section on the LH end of the finisher. We could see some "blistered" paint indicating that there was some stress to the weld there also. So, we cut gussets & had them welded on the tubes to prevent an in-field breakage, or worse yet, potentially preventing losing the drag on the highway with traffic following. I'd recommend to other JD 2310 owner/operators to examine the weld areas on those brackets & consider your own preventive measures like addng gussets. Again, the welds are not breaking, the metal behind the welds is pulling apart. The center sections don't seem to have that problem, perhaps due to the fact that they have larger tubing frames, thereby giving more surface to support the bracket weldment.

Perhaps photos will help. Note that on the initial repair, no time was taken to repaint welded areas. Today they got painted.

Photo below shows u-bolt bracket that was severed from the tube. You can see the weld itself is intact:

Below shows the remaining bracket that had only about 25% area remaining intact. It was bent away more, but we pushed it back by lifting the drag/basket w/a forklift:

Below shows the initial repair welds that our friend Skeez did to get us back in the field.

Since today was a rainout in NE IL, we added gussets to the LH end of the finisher bar. We spotted a few flakes of paint missing indicating

that stress of some type was appearing.

I think the problem is solved.

S.C.B. Farms, thanks for info. I did not realize the frame had a separate warranty. I'll check into that today & report back.

Thanks

Good catch and good repair.

It's sickening how much all this stuff costs but is still sometimes plagued with design problems to save an additional few $ in material and time over building something that will last and have strength above and beyond what it is expected to endure.

Sounds like some designers need to take a few more courses from certified welders about what types of welds and gussets are appropriate for different structural situations. 

Glad you caught this before it became a much more serious accident and/or repair. 

Will be interesting to see what sort of responses you get about it.