best attachment for 20"+ rocks

Anonymous Poster · Dec 5, 2001

Re: Rooter bucket rocks

Kent, forgot to ask. What kind of rear ballast do you need on your tractor with the Rooter bucket?

Kent · Dec 5, 2001

Tractor stability

I have 5 acres, 1 of which is "flat". The rest is sloped between 5 and 15 degrees (angle). It is heavily wooded and typical New England rocky.

My dream machine was a 4-wheel drive (perhaps articulated) low-slung tractor like the Holder (
http://www.holdertractor.com/c870h/main-c870h.html) or even the Wilkov-5000 (http://www.wisconsineng.com/index.htm) but there wasn't a dealer anywhere near me, or in the US for that matter! The key is having 4 same-sized wheels. Articulation is a bonus.

I haven't driven a skidsteer, but have never heard from anyone that they are "great in the woods" or on slopes. I suspect not. Don't get your hopes up on anything that is not specifically built for rough terrain or slopes. There are other tractors out there, like Steiner or Ventrac, which may be better on slopes. What you buy should look more like a logging skidder than a farm tractor if you want to handle the woods and hills. Moreover, I have learned the expensive lesson that there is no one tractor that will do everything you want to do.

So, I compromised and bought a traditional tractor, a New Holland TC-40D, thinking it could handle traversing the rocky slopes on my property as long as I followed all the safety recommendations. When I "measured" the slopes before I bought the tractor, they didn't seem that steep. But sitting on the tractor, they are immense and impossible. Sure, it can go up/down the slopes (they aren't mountains), but forget about crossing even the most minor slopes. Just roll a tire over a small rock or into a small divot, carry just a little weight in the FEL, and forget it. All the center of gravity rules are now violated. The problem is not so much slope angle in one direction, but when you combine the cross slope and the down slope, I can very quickly get into spots where I start to feel the upslope wheel(s) starting to unload. Not a good feeling. So I back up slowly and try to find a better way around by inching past that rock/divot. Sure, I can go straight up/down a somewhat steep slope (such as for mowing), but what do you do need to turn around? Unless you have a flat area at either end, you can't do it. Simply impossible with any speed or sense of security. I have approached 15 degrees going straight across a smooth slope, but I was sure I was going to tip over, and got off of it as soon as possible. I am comfortable at 5 degrees as long as there aren't any rocks/divots. But that 5 degrees quickly turns into 25 degrees when that big rear wheel rolls over that rock.

And carrying any type of a load in the FEL DOWN any type of slope is dicey. Even when I use my 900 lb. box blade as a counterweight, this isn't even enough in some cases…the rear wheels like to come off the ground (you have never seen a bucket come down so quickly to get them back down!). Another not-so-fun feeling. I have to dump some weight and ease my way down or back down (not too much fun either).

So I have learned the limitations of a traditional farm tractor! Don't get me wrong. It has done amazing things around here. But some of the projects I envisioned doing before I got the tractor will simply not get done using that machine. And someday, I'll move to a flatter piece of ground, so given that the tractor is a 20 year investment, it will more than pay for itself wherever I live.

DVerbarg · Dec 5, 2001

Re: Rooter bucket rocks

Kent,

Very cool tool. I've thought about a backhoe a few times but never very seriously due to the high cost. That rooter looks very interesting. I have many needs to dig trenches a couple feet deep, remove old tree stumps, etc but have successfully found excuses to do other projects to avoid digging by hand. Have come very close to spending hundreds to rent the equipment to do it all over a couple weekends but have trouble parting with that much money and not having any toys in return.

I think that a new item was just added to my list (make that two new items: quick attach bracket and rooter). Now wish I had gotten the quick attach when I bought the tractor...

DaveV

Anonymous Poster · Dec 5, 2001

Re: Tractor stability

Thanks again, Kent. I was thinking a Bobcat with steel tracks might be OK in the relatively flat areas. I might be wrong, and I would have no intention of tackling the steeper hills. ASV is another possibility as a tracked machine. By the way, do you think the loader on an Kubota L3010 (1000 lb lift) could handle the Rooter?

Kent · Dec 5, 2001

Rooter and horsepower

I have 40 HP, and when cutting 4" roots, it takes a half-dozen or so "stabs" to break them a little at a time. If too tough, I move outwards a foot and try again. When doing this, I would slide under the root with the Rooter bucket tip/angled side (it is shaped like a big wedge) until the engine started to overload (RPM starts to drop, get some black smoke), and then back up ASAP before it stalled. Unfortunately, the HST on the TC40 tends to (for lack of a better description) keep "pushing forward" under load even though you have let your foot off the forward pedal, so you really have to be aware of the load and hit the reverse pedal as soon as it starts to bog down. (as you may know, the TC40 has two HST pedals, not the single treadle pedal design like the middle size TC's).

My whole point here is that sure, having a larger tractor would have been nice, and I don't think you would have luck with huge tree balls with anything smaller than 40 HP. I think I reached the limit of its capabilities. But with foot diameter trees or less, no problem with something smaller.

By the way, this past weekend, I used the Rooter bucket to transplant six 8-10' pine trees. Don't know if they'll live or not, but getting the entire root system out was no problem! The center of the root ball ends up resting on the tip of the bucket. I used two guide ropes to secure the tree mid-trunk to the curl arms and then leaned the bucket forward a bit to put tension on the ropes while driving to the new spot. Then just slide the roots down into the new hole. The largest tree, though, had just too much dirt and I couldn't go down the slight incline w/o the rear wheels starting to unload. So I had to break most of the dirt off the root ball. Even with the 900 lb box blade, that extra leverage of the long nose bucket was just too much. When digging out big rocks and stumps, I would just push them around anyway and not try to pick them up (just didn't want to do this to the pine tree root ball I wanted to protect!)

So in addition to HP, the weight of your tractor makes a difference too. Heavier is better. I tried using the Rooter bucket with no rear weight, with the rear blade (450 lbs), and with the box blade (900 lbs). Best results with the box blade both in cutting roots and lifting. Plus the box blade has the least amount of swing, so it felt more solid all around. Plus, I used the box blade running backwards to push dirt back into the hole.

Kent · Dec 5, 2001

RE: 1000 lift enough?

Don't know! The 16LA loader on the TC40 says 1,800-2,000 lbs. But I think this assumes that much weight on the back to counterweight (which I don't and can never have, really) AND you would also subtract the weight of the bucket (and the weight of the quick-attach unit). So when I have the 4-in-one bucket installed (heavy), the lifting capacity is much less than if I had a standard bucket. The thing about the Rooter bucket is that it is only a couple of hundred pounds (I can roll it around end-to-end by hand), which is lighter than any full-size bucket. But because it can carry less volume than a regular bucket, I would think that this would translate into greater lifting power than what you see with a regular bucket. But it is still very easy to get locked in under a heavy rock or root and have no curl or boom strength left.

You do have several things going for you with the Rooter bucket: greater leverage due to its length (you'll learn how to scoop almost like a backhoe), those teeth, and the fact that you are concentrating all your power on about 8" at the tip (like a needlenose pliers). Oh, one more thing. Because of its length when straight out, I can see the tip looking down the sloping TC40 hood, so I know where I am going to start angling down to dig the hole.

Did I mention that I liked the Rooter bucket? OK, the drawback is that it is useless for backfilling or smoothing. Switch back to the big bucket for that work or use the box blade in reverse.

Geeze, I sound like a Rooter bucket salesman. I'll stop now....

DVerbarg · Dec 5, 2001

Re: RE: 1000 lift enough?

Kent,

I'm glad you are stopping the talk about the Rooter. I've been salivating about what I could do with the Rooter. Still trying to figure out how I could talk my CFO into releasing some money from our furniture fund in order to get one but don't know if it is worth risking ... /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

DaveV