Z-Michigan
Veteran Member
OK - fairly new to tractors. I have a new Deere 5105 (50hp utility, gear transmission) with a 522 front end loader (2100lbs lift capacity) with just the standard 73" materials bucket. I would like to make sure that I'm not abusing my setup and risking damage or premature wear to the FEL. I should note that I am planning to grease all the FEL fittings on the regular schedule, which I think is every 10 hours of use. Can anyone tell me if the following tasks are OK for this basic setup or really require something like a skidsteer or industrial backhoe loader?
1) Digging through soil that is mostly dirt but has a few rocks (of all sizes) and tree roots. I think this is pretty well within the OK realm, but just to confirm.
2) Digging through an old fencerow berm that has a lot of rocks in the 6-12" range, along with a decent amount of soil and some decent sized tree roots up to 3" diameter or so. I have already been doing a little bit of this with fair success, but I don't want to wear out my FEL in 50 hours.
3) Pushing into a pile of all rock in the 6-18" range and picking up buckets of loose rock to move elsewhere. The rockpile is from years of rock picking in our fields. I haven't tried this yet and I'm wondering if this is something that will damage the bucket or wear out the pivot points.
4) Moving single large rocks of 24-36" across in the bucket - probably slowly pushing the bucket under them until they're all the way in, and then wrapping chains around as needed to keep them in while moving them to another spot on our property.
5) Moving rocks larger than 36" - probably too heavy to lift, I think I would be digging around them and then just pushing them with the FEL bucket like a dozer. I know I've seen some pics on here of people doing this, but not sure how hard it is on the equipment.
Thanks in advance!
1) Digging through soil that is mostly dirt but has a few rocks (of all sizes) and tree roots. I think this is pretty well within the OK realm, but just to confirm.
2) Digging through an old fencerow berm that has a lot of rocks in the 6-12" range, along with a decent amount of soil and some decent sized tree roots up to 3" diameter or so. I have already been doing a little bit of this with fair success, but I don't want to wear out my FEL in 50 hours.
3) Pushing into a pile of all rock in the 6-18" range and picking up buckets of loose rock to move elsewhere. The rockpile is from years of rock picking in our fields. I haven't tried this yet and I'm wondering if this is something that will damage the bucket or wear out the pivot points.
4) Moving single large rocks of 24-36" across in the bucket - probably slowly pushing the bucket under them until they're all the way in, and then wrapping chains around as needed to keep them in while moving them to another spot on our property.
5) Moving rocks larger than 36" - probably too heavy to lift, I think I would be digging around them and then just pushing them with the FEL bucket like a dozer. I know I've seen some pics on here of people doing this, but not sure how hard it is on the equipment.
Thanks in advance!