Road grader blade-add 3pt. & blade adj. PICS

   / Road grader blade-add 3pt. & blade adj. PICS #1  

Rustyiron

Super Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2011
Messages
6,220
Location
Lakes Region, Maine
Tractor
M 9540 Kubota
Some shots of the progress on the 3pt hook up and the up and down adj. for the blades. At first I was going to just put a ridgid 3pt. but then decided that a "floating" top link might help the blade follow the grade changes (up/down hill), thinking that this will keep the blade on the ground and keep it from cutting in (or lifting up) when the tractor is not on the same "plane" as the grader, I was thinking about how a properly adjusted bush hog or rear finish mower has that type of top link adjustment to keep the mower from doing as described. I thought about just using a chain, but with a little thinking I came up with a swinging link that allows about 10" of travel before the top link reaches it limit. I hope that this is not too much. I figure that I'll set it in the middle and have equal movement in either direction. I also made to lay flat by pulling one pin when using it on the skid steer. (the first 4 pics) The other 4 show the blade adjustment. I just went for simplicity and used a pc. of 1" all thread and made a crank/handle for it. It is all bolt on in case I later find that frequent adjustments are handy and hydraulics are needed. I tried to show the adjustability with the one photo showing the blade all the way down for spreading, about 3.5" and the other (hard to see) shows the other extreme, with a 1.5" cut (runners above the cutting edge). It ended up with 5" total vertical travel, and I'm wondering if I should have split the travel (2.5" above or below) and be able to get more wear out of the cutting edges ($350/pair). If this proves to be a problem, I'll drill another set of mounting holes below the existing ones to gain more blade life.
 

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   / Road grader blade-add 3pt. & blade adj. PICS #2  
I'm thinking of building something like that myself. Probably not as heavy duty though. Do you think the one adjuster on each side will be strong enough? I was thinking of having one near each slot, two per side. Not having TnT with a float valve means having an adjustable top link is a wise idea (or I'll have to get on and off to dis/connect the top link). Can you lock your design in or does it always float?
 
   / Road grader blade-add 3pt. & blade adj. PICS
  • Thread Starter
#3  
crazyal, after building the adjustment "stuff" I wondered really how often will I change the depth? I guess time will tell. There's a lot of parts involved with it and it works ok, but it can bind up and you have to step on the high side to unbind it, not really so hard to do but a disapointment. I got in a hurry with some of my welding and put some distortion into those main side "plates" , I know better and thought that I jumped around enough with my welding but I still warped it some and is causing the runner to drag while adjusting. I think that if all I wanted to use it for was road grading, a simple runner or skid shoe with a selection of holes at different hights might be ok, not as convienient but would work.
The top link is only "loose" I thought about making a locking provision but all I need to do (later) if I want it to lock is drill a hole and drop a pin through. I think that around my place I'll prolly use the skid steer mostly. I put the 3pt. on in hoping that I might gat a few local "jobs" to do and the tractor can drive there much faster. As far as te stregnth you mentioned, yesterday I had it on a floor jack under the blade support in order to remove the adjusting parts for painting. Well the jack must have been on a bolt for the cutting edge and it slipped off and fell a few inches, it bent that 1/2 x 31/4 plate the screw goes thu! so today I beefed it up. 2 adjusters might be the way to go, but it would be nice to be able to crank both at once if you were coordinated enough.
 
   / Road grader blade-add 3pt. & blade adj. PICS #4  
I especially like the horseshoe. Nice touch. This rig reminds me of a mini version of the Jersey spreaders we used on the front of dozers, except we had wheels instead of skids.
Nice rugged looking build.
 
 
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