Grading Bulldozing With A Box Blade

[Harv]

<font color=blue>I find it very effective and especially with the swing back type boxblades</font color=blue>

Now that's an interesting point, J. As you may recall from an earlier thread, I find that flappy rear blade a bit of a frustration. It never occurred to me to try using it backwards. /w3tcompact/icons/clever.gif

Now I'm anxious to try this out. Unfortunately I'll have little to boxblade but sticky mud for a while, so I may not get to it until things dry out a bit. My conclusion from this thread so far is that I will be taking minimal risk if I stick to areas with reasonaly good soil conditions and approach it "gingerly" (is that an okay term to use for tractorin'?).

 

[ronjhall]

Harv
A few months ago I posted a thread on <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.tractorbynet.com/cgi-bin/compact/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=owning&Number=68537&Search=true&Forum=All_Forums&Words=27-2910%20top&Match=Entire%20Phrase&Searchpage=0&Limit=50&Old=allposts&Main=68537>27-2910 Top Link Bracket.</A> I don't know what type of bracket you have on your tractor but give this tread a look. The standard bracket on a B series may not be strong enough if a solid object is hit when working in reverse.

The one on right is original.

 

[MChalkley]

I went through about 6 of the threaded rods that screw into the turnbuckles that control the amount of side-to-side play the implement has when I had the L3710GST. I determined that the damage was coming about equally from hitting a root or rock with the corner of the 8' heavy duty blade and "bulldozing" backwards with the box scraper.

When I got the L4310HST with the square tube-in-a-tube adjusters, I never had any more problems, despite the fact that I used the same implements with even more power and traction than I had before.

I never had any problems with anything else on the three point hitch on either machine.

 

[bky]

well in my opion the 3 pt is made for pulling not pushing.all though i have pushed a few times i have bent the lift arm on the one side but i wasnt pushing evenly on the box scraper. took it the the local fab shop and the bent it back stright at noo cost.

 

[MarkV]

Mark,

That turnbuckle is the weak link on my B21 also. On mine the end of the turnbuckle as “U” shaped bracket with eyes on the end for a pin. Those darn eyes are elongated to where it takes a hammer and punch to remove the pin./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif I believe that my rear blade is the biggest problem. If you take and catch a rock on the end of the blade it puts a lot of stress on that turnbuckle.

MarkV

 

[MChalkley]

MarkV - You might check the new L-series style adjusters at your Kubota dealer. They just might fit and they're a whole lot more robust than the turnbuckle type. I hated those things. And the drop-a-pin-in-a-hole adjustment approach is so much easier, too.

 

[GlueGuy]

Funny you should mention that. I just did something like this last Sunday.

The next door neighbor is putting in a new fence, and wanted the area along the fence line to be more level than what it was (undulations). It was also sloped pretty close to the maximum that I'm comfortable with (13 degrees on my tilt meter /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif).

So I angled the boxblade to cut into the slope, and bulldozed backward to push out the fence line. This made me more comfortable (Me and Lucy are on the "less sloping part that's just been leveled), and seemed to work OK, except when I hit the occasional rock. With Lucy, I run out of traction before I run out of power. So in those situations, I just raised the blade a notch or two, and tried again.

 

[frank_f15]

as long a s u ain't doing 50 mph, i don't see where it would be a problem. as i always say SLOW AND EASY.

 

[Harv]

Ron -

The top link bracket on my li'l L may be a bit heftier (see attached), but the tractor itself is also heavier, so there's that much more weight to slam into the immovable object.

GlueGuy just confirmed that it can be done, but I think Frank has probably hit on the key -- go slow. Whenever I'm engaging dirt I'm generally at the low end of low range anyway, so that part should seem natural enough.

 

[glennmac]

I've "bulldozed" by driving backward with my backblade facing backward. That's how I plow snow. I've had some hard bangs into protruding rocks with no damage.

I think you are all missing the subtle physics here. If you are driving forward and you hit something with the bottom edge of a blade on your 3ph, your lower two arms are being stretched but your top link is compressed. If you are pushing backward (bulldozing) and the bottom edge of your blade hits something, your two bottom arms are being compressed but your top link is being stretched. So the only difference that forward or backward collisions makes is which arms get stretched and which get compressed. I don't know enough about the construction of the three arms to say that one pattern of compression/stretching is worse on the whole than the other.

Right?! We need Patrickq to explain this.