Questions about the PowerTrac 425

[SpringHollow]

You forgot the dump trailer and dump truck. A rough terrain man lift would be nice too.

Ken

 

[Marks481]

You don't know Virginia....we always hit a rock! from fist-sized to huge boulders to plain old bedrock. Ya never know what you're going to hit but it's always something.

I guess it depends where in the state you live. I lived in Fairfax county, and didn't have as much problem there as when I lived in CT.

 

[Clumber]

Hi,
My wife and I live near Winchester VA near north Mountain in the GW National Forest on 42 acres with a mile long private blue stone road. I have a PT425 with many attachments. You are welcomed to visit and test drive the tractor with attachments. I have a special rake that adds on to the lite material bucket that I use to maintain the road. Send a private message if interested.

Recommend that you hire someone to do the ditches as the PTs are not designed for tilting. Maintaining the ditches with a 425 will be easy. Also, your road may need drainage pipes underneath tp prevent washouts as mine does. I have several neighbors with large to small equipment to cheaply do the stuff I need that I can't do with the PT.

Patrick

 

[Marks481]

Recommend that you hire someone to do the ditches as the PTs are not designed for tilting.

???

PT425 will handle a slope of up to 20º in comfort; anything more than that and you should be looking for a machine with dual wheels on each side.

Or are you saying that it would be difficult to cut a vee shaped ditch with the PT? You could by cutting it from each side with a bucket, you can angle the bucket down.

 

[jfischer]

Here is the ditch to the back of my side yard,and it almost has a slight uphill to it, so to make enough drop to let the water flow, I had to have a friend with a skid steer and LONG bucket flip it all up to the right, then I took my John Deere at the time and moved a lot of dirt and stumps and such, and now with the PT425 I have used the back blade to smooth things out and it flows right in the ditch from either side, and road does not wash at all. It also had a few trees that were in it, and we had to dig all the stumps and roots out of it.

Biggest thing was the road was washing further up towards the front of the picture, and coming across my yard, and drainage field, and was washing things pretty good when we got a hard rain. Also put in 2 30 foot culverts to drive across there, and as long as you blow the leaves out in the Fall it works pretty good. That PT will take the angle from the right side and drag things right out of the ditch, but it is too wide for me to straddle it with the machine to use the mini hoe.

 

[Clumber]

???

PT425 will handle a slope of up to 20º in comfort; anything more than that and you should be looking for a machine with dual wheels on each side.

Or are you saying that it would be difficult to cut a vee shaped ditch with the PT? You could by cutting it from each side with a bucket, you can angle the bucket down.

I meant the attachments, in general, do not tilt the way a grader's blade can tilt or rotate to create a slope or even a vee shaped ditch...

 

[GirlWhoWantsTractor]

Hi,
My wife and I live near Winchester VA near north Mountain in the GW National Forest on 42 acres with a mile long private blue stone road. I have a PT425 with many attachments. You are welcomed to visit and test drive the tractor with attachments. I have a special rake that adds on to the lite material bucket that I use to maintain the road. Send a private message if interested.

Recommend that you hire someone to do the ditches as the PTs are not designed for tilting. Maintaining the ditches with a 425 will be easy. Also, your road may need drainage pipes underneath tp prevent washouts as mine does. I have several neighbors with large to small equipment to cheaply do the stuff I need that I can't do with the PT.

Patrick

Thanks for the invite. That's very kind. Would like to see a picture of the rake. Does it allow you to maintain your road driving FORWARD?

"Hiring someone" sounds easy but isn't around here. We have one traffic light in the entire county, no McDonalds, no Walmart, no hospital or other medical facility. In short, sparsely populated with very few businesses. The few good contractors are booked year-round (took us 2 years to get the electrician to come out). The companies from nearby cities always say they never go "all the way out there." It's the price you pay for living in the boonies. I could tell you stories of attempting to get workers--the yahoos who don't know what they're doing, the scary ones with swastika tattoos or who are on drugs--but I won't. So yeah, "hire someone" is a good solution....in theory.

This is one reason for buying some kind of tractor; to be less dependent on hiring this stuff out.

I'm pretty disappointed the PT can't pull any rear attachments. Seems like a major missing feature. And I can't see driving a box blade BACKWARDS up our roads, with a ditch on one side and a steep drop-off on the other. Have realized tractors aren't really designed for rough steep property like ours. Will have to think about this some more.

It's obvious that anything will be a compromise. Just have to figure out what makes sense.

 

[GirlWhoWantsTractor]

I guess it depends where in the state you live. I lived in Fairfax county, and didn't have as much problem there as when I lived in CT.

I used to live in Fairfax County. Go a bit west of that, into the mountains, and there's rocks a plenty.

 

[SpringHollow]

I recently saw someone here who had a Bobcat "tractor" of some sort that was like a cross between a skid steer and a tractor, could be had with 3 pt on the back. No idea how good it is on slopes.

Ken

 

[woodlandfarms]

As noted, there is a lot wrong with the pt... I love mine but it is not my first choice. This is...

http://www.antoniocarraro.it/na

Sold in the USA and hugely expensive. Like marriage tractor ownership is about compromise