Driveway SCRAPER or Driveway GRADER ?

[Piston]

http://s666.photobucket.com/user/IRColeman/media/scraper_zps0e96447c.jpg.html

Thanks!

 

[IC Smoke]

Ian,get the landplane.I bought a Befco landplane last year,it works great. Stop by and see how it works.Frank

Thanks sir! I will have to stop in!

 

[crazyal]

Ian,get the landplane.I bought a Befco landplane last year,it works great. Stop by and see how it works.Frank

So far the only issue I have is I have worn out the steel skids on my BEFCO. They are easily replaced but I decided to hard face them by welding them. We'll see how well that works. It was the front corner that got the most wear so I could have reversed them. Messicks has them for $33 each.

 

[IC Smoke]

would that be due to the top link being too short on your 3 point? seems like the skid pads should wear even and the cutting edge on the land plane would be taking the brunt of the wear?

 

[crazyal]

When you use the rippers it wants to tip the GS onto the front edge. Keeping your top link the correct length helps a lot. But any play in both the top link and bottom arms comes into play. Since the BEFCO is set up so someone with a quick hitch can use it there's some play. I made some spacers for the top link to keep it centered. Since my drive is not flat it's not as easy as setting the top link and forgetting about it. Also I wasn't as good as I should have been keeping the nut on the top link tight. Remember the rear lifting 1/4" over a 4' span works out to be about 1/16" of an inch of play if your top link and bottom arms are a foot apart so the slightest bit of play or not level and you'll wear the front edge. But over the 3 years I have had my BEFCO I have used it about a dozen times a year. What I don't know is if using it on hard packed dry gravel (something I do too often because of free time restraints) wears it more than waiting until after some rain when things are softer.

Both the blades and rippers show almost no wear.

 

[Danny C]

Argue away Brian. Actually, I respect your opinion on the subject and I respect Steve's too.

I agree that for washboard, the double blade is probably a plus. In fact, I'll take your word for it. We don't really get that around here, but being from the So Cal Acton area I do understand. (I get your dirt ).

Around here with our clay (calling it dirt is questionable) and limestone road base, potholes are the real problem. The ground pumps and holds water in spots and then sinks below the road. Dragging a landplane up and down the driveway just fills up the holes with loose material, makes it look pretty and then the potholes return in the same spot a few weeks or months later. For re-grading a road here, rippers and a box blade work faster and better for me.

What do I know...I'm an old skiploader hand...so shoot me. :laughing:

I'm going to grade out a couple of select fill pads and FORCE myself to use the landplane (with blades set flush) instead of the box blade to spin 'em out. I'll get back to you on my opinion.

It's been my experience that filling potholes with loose material only causes the potholes to come back in a few weeks. The loose material just doesn't bond to the other material which necessitates the use of rippers to loosen the materials to at least the depth of the potholes before grading. Compacting a freshly graded driveway is advisable too.

 

[Danny C]

I'm looking to buy a land plane or have one built with rippers for my tractor. I've always has construction equipment for my raod maintenance before, so I don't have a lot of experience with lan planes. Most of the land planes I have seen have pretty short skids. Why is that? I would think a longer skid (not wider) would be better at taking out rises and dips. Is it that most only use them for filling in potholes and washboards instead of re-grading like I'm thinking of doing? It seems to me that 8-10ft long skids on a 50hp tractor would be ideal. Please advise!

 

[Gordon Gould]

It's been my experience that filling potholes with loose material only causes the potholes to come back in a few weeks. The loose material just doesn't bond to the other material which necessitates the use of rippers to loosen the materials to at least the depth of the potholes before grading. Compacting a freshly graded driveway is advisable too.

Old thread but good discussion... I agree with you Danny. But would like to add that the land plane grading scraper should be doing a lot more than moving around loose surface material to fill in low spots. If it is working right it cuts down into the road leaving a hard flat under surface with a loose layer of freshly mixed gravel on top which should be compacted for best long lasting results. The trick with pot holes is to go over them with the LPGS when they are first forming so you can cut down to the bottom. For your own road that should be no problem. For comercial work you probably won't be called until the drive needs serious work and is beyond using just a LPGS for repair.

 

[jenkinsph]

I'm looking to buy a land plane or have one built with rippers for my tractor. I've always has construction equipment for my raod maintenance before, so I don't have a lot of experience with lan planes. Most of the land planes I have seen have pretty short skids. Why is that? I would think a longer skid (not wider) would be better at taking out rises and dips. Is it that most only use them for filling in potholes and washboards instead of re-grading like I'm thinking of doing? It seems to me that 8-10ft long skids on a 50hp tractor would be ideal. Please advise!

I don't have to deal with pot holes much in my locale but agree that ripping them is important.
About the skid length, most are short to save money and make shipping size easier to deal with. Making the skids too long can make the landplane cumbersome to deal with too. Both of my current landplanes have 60" running surfaces one is 4' wide and one 8' wide. If all I used them for was driveway touch ups I would prefer longer skids on the 8' landplane, maybe 6' skids. I am not sure you would benefit that much more having 10' skids in most cases as it would be very cumbersome and the added weight you would need to maintain ground contact might be more than a 50 hp tractor can handle.

As Gordon mentioned you have to trim the toplink when using the landplane and having the skids too long would make this difficult.

 

[jenkinsph]

Gordon,
You bring up a good point about commercial work, I suspect that is the case for RDRancher in that he is called in to perform a major overhaul of the roads and needs to cut them deeply to get to the bottom of the pot holes. Landplanes make more sense for routine maintenance imo, once you get the road in shape try to keep it that way.