Mid mount hydraulic grader blade

[jenkinsph]

Having a grader blade mounted between the wheels is an advantage for smoothing and grading, I don't think anyone would argue with that.
Being somewhat lazy, I am always looking for the easy way to do things. Back in 1989 I had a Case 1370 and bought a 10' rear blade for it, all hydraulic functions. Good blade with plenty of weight to grade and ditch the drives. Still had the issue of making dips since it was so far behind the tractor. So I went shopping in West Texas for some wheel assemblies to add to the rear. After looking for a couple of days I found some combine front wheels with frames to add to the rear blade mast. I set them up with a cylinder to enable me to raise them up fully out of the way for ditching and when down they were about 7' behind the blade. While this made the whole rear blade setup rather long it did a great job of smoothing up the roads on our ranch.

Today I can get similar results much easier with a land plane grader, at a fraction of the cost. Long skids on a landplane equal to the wheelbase of a given tractor will grade about as smooth as a center mounted blade.

All that said, I think a small landplane grader with skids approximating the x748 wheelbase would give you good results and would be alot easier to attach. I need to build one soon and will post a thread and pics when I do.

Here's some pics of the driveway I finished today, spread about 36 yards with the 110 and 4520 with landplane. Worked this by myself so it took almost twelve hours to get it done getting rid of the ice from left over snows.

 

[beenthere]

jenk
Some nice ponderosa pine in the last pic. Are the others mostly pp too?

Really nice looking place you have there.

I agree with your understanding of the grader blade underneath.

 

[wcampbell47]

The X748 weighs in at just over 1,000 lbs. You would be able to do very light dirt work with a grader blade. The grader blade is a nice idea so long as you don't have rough spots or want to spread delivered material. The low ground clearance could high center the tractor. I have had issues with my mmm hanging up.

I thought about a mm grader blade until I came across the land plane. For me the land plane is more versatile. It will raise high enough that I can get out of a bad situation. By adjusting the top link I can cause it to dig or just level. I can load up the land plane enough to cause the tractor to lose traction in a heartbeat. I don't have the dolphin effect like you get with a box blade. It is easy to attach and detach. The older I get the more I like that.

The X748 looks like a super mowing machine.

I recently bought my 2nd Orange tractor. I hauled it away from the dealer without writing a check. No money down, 0% interest for 60 months. I have billed over $4K in work and made 1 payment just over $300. I like working on their money. JD offers similar deals.

If gardening is in your future buy the implements in the original purchase and let them carry the note. That way you don't have to scrape and save to purchase at a later date. I can handle $300 a month easier than I can come up with $18k. Works for me.

Think outside the box. You are not getting younger. Buy the tools that will make life easier in the years to come. Cheers!

 

[jenkinsph]

jenk
Some nice ponderosa pine in the last pic. Are the others mostly pp too?

Really nice looking place you have there.

I agree with your understanding of the grader blade underneath.

This area is a mixture of Ponderosa, Pinon and Mesquite for the most part. I think most of the Mesquite have been removed from this yard years ago.

This is one of my customers houses, been a long term hvac/plumbing account.

 

[ctlguy]

I have been around a few of the mid mount grader blades for the x500 units that where out before the x700's. I am not aware of any changes though. Not really any more difficult than mounting your deck, but from what I saw they did very little as far as grading. Unless you where grading loose gravel or mulch or similar landscaping I kind of thought they where a joke but maybe they have improved since then. If you get one let us know your thoughts.

 

[petes]

Hydraulic downforce will probably lift the tractor causing loss of traction more often than you think.

I built a mid-mount grader blade for my WheelHorse 224. The tractor probably weights ~500lbs. Lift is not hydraulic, but uses the belly mower lift arms (powered by a manual lever) to lift and can angle with telescoping arms. The rear of the arms are pinned to a some angle iron bolted to the frame behind the rear axle. The slight downangle of the arms enabling angleing either side of the blade forward and down at the same time for crowning a driveway. The ends of the blade that stick out from under the tractor can be used as footrests if extra downforce on the blade is needed.

I find that it works pretty well for scraping and leveling a gravel driveway (controlling weeds, some re-contouring). I've used it to push some dirt around to fill in stump holes. Now that I have a 3pt boxblade and Kubota B7100, I don't use the Wheelhorse for pushing, but may again since it was much easier to fit in tight spaces and had better control for fine leveling and contouring for runoff.

Construction is pretty simple and only took a few hours to fabricate. I recommend having one, but mine only cost about $10 in scrap steel and a couple bolts. If it cost over $4-500 I'd probably go for a boxblade instead.

 

[bcp]

I've used two.

One was on a riding mower and the other was a Cat 12.

The little one worked fine in loose material and tight quarters. It would not cut into anything solid, but it was worth having. Much more useful to the homeowner and small farmer than the Cat 12.

Bruce

 

[smilindave]

don't waste your money on it. I had one for my 316 and although it looked pretty cool, it took much longer to grade any high spots. Get a box blade. Its much more versatile and does a much better job.

 

[zzvyb6]

Anyone thought of using the Ratchet Rake fixture with some downforce hardware to create a toothed mid mount grader? The bucket mount is OK, but it tends to dig if you are too aggressive with forward angle. That causes the front axle to lift on my rig.

I'm thinking of an H arm attached at the front frame and a cylinder for downforce. This would allow me to use my York rake as a followup tool, all in one pass.