Brotek Ripper/Trencher?

[Hotwheels]

I would like to buy the Brotek ripper to work on some stumps ... I understand there is a trencher attachment too, but I cannot get any information from Brotek ... three unanswered emails. If these are still in production, does anyone have an image of the trenching attachment? And, anyone have a phone number for Richard ... just can't seem to get in touch.
Thanks

 

[Stradbash]

It has been my experience that when I get no response..., Richard is out of town. Otherwise, he has been very good at getting back to me when I email him.

I have the ripper and like it, though I wish the tractor had more power to push it through things... I do not have the trenching attachment.

 

[Hotwheels]

Thanks ... I did finally get a reply from him and I plan to call him tomorrow with my questions. I hope the trenching attachment will help with some of the irrigation lines I have to put down. The ripper may help with some of the tougher stumps i need to extract.
Thanks
JR

 

[keyman1808]

Hotwheels PM me your email and I will forward the .pdf file of the Brotek stuff they sent me

 

[Tom_H]

I have hardpan that's like concrete. The tooth on my Brotek ripper was dull after two minutes of digging in it. I took it to the Kubota service dept. where they ground and reshaped the tooth into a stud and bored a hole through it. The parts guy found some small pointed teeth that now bolt onto that stud. They can be replaced when they become dull. I plan to test it out tomorrow. My new Pengo auger dug itself too deep into the hardpan and is frozen in place. I hope I can scratch/dig it out with the bh and the modified Brotek ripper.

 

[Singlecoil]

I have used the ripper a lot and think it is great. It helps to have a loader full of rock to keep the front end of the tractor from coming off the ground when you are trying to snap roots.
As for the trencher, I have that as well, but haven't found a good use for it yet. I put down about 300 feet of french drain this summer and thought it would be handy for that, but I ended up needed to just use the standard backhoe bucket.
Next summer I'll probably put some sprinkler pipe and wire down, and I'm thinking I'll use it for that. My plan is to set the RPM's of the tractor quite low so that the tractor will stop moving if I hit a rock with the trencher. If the RPM's are low enough, I'm thinking the tractor will stop before the backhoe will get damaged. Then the plan is to go very slowly and either hand feed the pipe (using a volunteer) or attach an angled pipe to the trencher to feed it into the trench the way I've seen some folks on here use a subsoiler.

Using the trencher like a backhoe doesn't seem to work that well in my opinion. You end up moving a bunch of dirt around, but can't get it out of the trench.

 

[Jabroni]

I have the ripper, and have not had much success with it. 2 problems I've encountered. First, the tooth and machine are just plain not strong enought to rip thru the roots on the stumps I'm dealing with. Secondly, as you're working you're gouging the soil, not removing it. So it's nearly impossible to see what you're dealing with. I have used it on small trees < 5" diameter, both hardwood and pines, and it will deal with those. But I've had problems with the larger pines and oak stumps. They have required excavating around the stump, then manually cutting the large stabilizing roots so the stump could be rocked back and forth to loosen it.

 

[Tom_H]

My modified Brotek ripper did pretty well. The hardpan (technically Duripan) we have is almost water impermeable, but if you keep it covered with water for several weeks, a trace amount of water will seep in and give it the slightest hint of humidity inside the stuff. While it is still very hard, this seems to make a bit of a difference in being able to penetrate the stuff. I gave the section a few days for the water on top that I had been irrigating it with to evaporate. The modified ripper was able to penetrate about 1" and as I curled the ripper back towards the tractor, it very slowly ripped the pan into chunks averaging about 10" x 6" x 1". These were still about the strength of concrete, even with the trace humidity inside them. I got down about 25" in depth yesterday, but there is about 47" more to go. The auger can wiggle a bit from side to side now, but the Woods BH6000 didn't have the strength to yank it upwards even a millimeter. As I get deeper, the pan seems ever so slightly not quite as hard and I may switch to the 9" bucket (modified with tiger teeth). Excavating the spoils with a shovel is a pain. The bucket has more difficulty than the ripper because the pressure is spread out over more area, while the modified ripper concentrates the force into one small point.

Even though I could have done without the time loss this is taking, it is still fun to use the tractor and a little innovation to problem solve.

____

Post Script, an afterthought

I was thinking about what Jabroni said about the strength and also the soil not getting removed. Some of the big rigs have buckets with teeth patterns of teeth not all the same length. Some have the teeth long on one end, descending in length to the other. Some buckets have a long center tooth, very short teeth to the outsides, snd medium in between. I wish I could get a bucket that is about 7" wide and 14" from front to rear (excluding teeth). There would be 3 bolt on teeth. The outer teeth would be 2.5" single spike mini-tigers. The center tooth would be a 1/2 scale version of a Brotek ripper, with the tooth being a small single tiger point, and the shank would have the sharpened curved cutting edge like the Brotek. The teeth points and the cutting edge on the curled center shank would all be carbide and relatively sharp. I think that would give Jabroni a better chance to be able to slice through roots and remove the equivalent of 2 shovelfulls of soil. It would give me the ability to slowly rip my hardpan and then go back to scoop and excavate the spoils.