Well. I got tired of waiting on the JD dealer and traded for a real tractor. Here it is:
As you can see, this blade has angle, tilt, and offset; its just all by hand and all a struggle. But it works, and I've kept up a half mile of driveway for 18 years with it. The only thing it won't do is pull a ditch, so I made a second blade for that:
I have't used it this year and had to scrape the leaves off, but maybe you can tell how it works. The ground needs to be damp for either blade to do much digging, though the big blade does a decent job of moving gravel around anytime.
They finally delivered my new tractor yesterday:
It seems like a fine machine, and has a lot more power than the old 5210. I used it several hours on the roads, and I found I can do a much better job of grading the roads with it than I could with the D3 dozer. I can turn around and see what the rear blade is doing and make the needed adjustments, whereas with the dozer it was always a guess. The tractor and loader are nothing unusual, but I know some of you are interested in the rear blade. Here it is:
I had ordered a model 2307 with 2 hyd, and they sent a 2308 with 3 hyd. Of course, there is nowhere to hook the offset cylinder, though I could unplug one of the others and set it over if I wanted. I don't think I will ever want to do that. The blade is already wider than the tractor and I've already found out that hitting a root with the edge of the blade is gonna jerk the tractor violently to the side. I thought I had probably bent my new blade, but no harm done.
After grading on the roads a while, I tried to scrape a fire lane and see how it worked. My idea was to scrape the grass off with the front bucket and then use the rear blade to turn the dirt over. I found that the bucket really isn't needed; that heavy blade rolled it over just fine by itself. I moved a couple of small trees out of the lane with the loader; its just a matter of time before I rip off a hyd hose doing that. I'm gonna have to be a lot more careful than I was with the dozer.
So far I am happy with the trade and I think I did the right thing. This one machine is not gonna do a better job than I could do with 2, but it should be much easier on me to keep up the new tractor than it was to keep up the other 2. Thanks again to all for the help. I am very glad you guys convinced me I needed a heavier blade than what I was considering.