Back dragging: how aggressive?

[SmallChange]

I did a lot of back dragging today, smoothing up a site for a new greenhouse. But I'm always cautious because the cylinders are so extended in dump direction, and would be prone to buckling.

HOW conservative, though? Getting the bottom of the bucket vertical and dragging in a moderate gear with the front wheels held up by the bucket, well, that is very aggressive, I suppose asking for trouble.

But putting the bottom of the bucket, say, 20 or 30 degrees from vertical, and dragging in the lowest gear, is that too aggressive?

Where do you draw the line?

 

[Slowpoke Slim]

I guess it depends on what you're dragging?

I've pulled snow away from a garage door with the bucket curled all the way around and pulling the snow towards me, but that's just loose snow (usually).

I don't think I'd do it with hard dirt or packed gravel?

But I have a box blade that I can use for that kind of thing.

Usually if I'm back dragging with the bucket, it's with the heel of the bucket and it's close to parallel with the ground.

 

[SmallChange]

I'm dragging our soil, hard bank gravel and clay. It's hard to work with, but I only have maybe 3 to 5 inches piled up at the most. The bucket doesn't dig in much, maybe half an inch? This is with probably 30 to 40 degrees away from vertical.

Dragging with the heel doesn't move much of this gravel.

When I've bought topsoil, the heel works great for dragging.

 

[/pine]

A compact tractor with a fel is not a skid steer...!
IMO the former is best used for final smoothing etc...

 

[seville009]

I did a lot of dirt moving, smoothing, etc when we moved to our property 20+ years ago. There were many instances where I would raise the front wheels off the ground when doing it. Never hurt anything.

Usually it was when smoothing areas - would have the bucket angled at less than 45 degrees, trying to smooth it out with the bucket edge. Very difficult (for me at least) to smooth anything out going forward, mainly because I can never see where the bucket edge is to feather it.

Had old piles of foundation dirt to spread around. Would drive into the pike, raise the loader up high, curl the bucket down, then "slice" into the pile to break away the solid dirt, then back up and come forward to scoop up the dirt I just sliced off.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

I believe that most manufacturers recommend that the back drag angle be 15* or less.
Your loader manual should have something shown about these types of things.

 

[airbiscuit]

A tooth bar or piranha bar would do wonders for your application.

 

[SmallChange]

I believe that most manufacturers recommend that the back drag angle be 15* or less.

Is that 15 from horizontal or 15 from vertical? I'm guessing horizontal.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

Is that 15 from horizontal or 15 from vertical? I'm guessing horizontal.

Horizontal

 

[JJT]

Thousands of hours on tractors, lots of back dragging, never an issue, other than taking too big a bite and losing traction.

 

[Oaktree]

Thousands of hours on tractors, lots of back dragging, never an issue, other than taking too big a bite and losing traction.

Same here. Well, not thousands of hours but enough to have a good idea what I can and can't do.
As Pine noted, a tractor is not a skid steer (or a bulldozer) so go easy until you get a feel for what your tractor is capable of. Personally, I'd want to loosen up any hard-packed soil before I tried backdragging it.

 

[4570Man]

Back dragging at 90 degrees is a sure fire way to bend something. Back dragging at 45 or less degrees is pretty safe.

 

[Wis Bang]

Many will say I've never had a problem, but it is possible.

First year out of college I worked for a smaller road builder wit a 225 CAT excavator. They were using it bucket heel, paralell to the ground, to partially tamp the stepped sewer and water line trenches for a small develoment.

Job finished we rushed the machine to a small nearby town [cost plus] to dig up a collapsed sewer line located at the max depth this machine could dig [22' with the side-cutters on the bucket] when the ram operating the bucket started to act funny.

Turns out the packing gland on the end inside the cylinder came apart from the beating at the last job.

Mobile repair from CAT said the ram needed to be fully extended or retracted to avoid doing what we did.

This was the mid-70's and I brought the fuel truck so the boss could flush the hydraulic system with diesel fuel

 

[Gee Ray]

This might help explain the problem better.

 

[SmallChange]

This might help explain the problem better.

He shows about a 45 or 50 degree angle from vertical for the bottom of the bucket, using the edge (not the heel). But he also says this doesn't mean you can never use it angled steeply, just to usually do it more shallow, even if it takes extra passes.

He does explain that the cylinders are weaker when fully extended. There's another issue that he doesn't touch on: the linkage gives greater and greater mechanical advantage to the bucket (worse and worse to the cylinder) as the bucket goes further into the extreme dump position.

 

[mikester]

I think the bottom line is some people can operate equipment for a lifetime and never break anything, other people manage to break things doing even simple jobs like back dragging.

This is why I do not lend out expensive tools or let just anybody operate my equipment. You can't teach common sense.

 

[big bubba]

assume your machine has the float function for fel, i'd use that & let gravity do the job

 

[SmallChange]

assume your machine has the float function for fel, i'd use that & let gravity do the job

That's certainly safer, but also less effective. FWIW the Messics video shows him lifting his wheels at least some of the time. I do have float, and use it when it's effective enough.

 

[big bubba]

wise to err to caution as you have done by posting the thread. good luck with the project

 

[2manyrocks]

The FEL cylinders on a 25 hp subcompact are not the same size and strength as those on a larger tractor.