Box Scraper Changing angle to use rippers only

[BukitCase]

My ancient Gannon box (80" wide, right at 1000#) has hinged (but lockable) rear blade and hydraulic rippers - there are really only two positions, up or down. Down has an "over center" linkage so they stay put, the hydraulic cylinder releases the over center and they raise up a little above horizontal.

Down position is pretty much with shanks vertical and teeth slightly forward - this is with the box level.

When I bought mine the end pieces were severely worn and the rippers were missing. I bought new rippers and I added side pieces to bring the bottom edges back to level.

Most of my 10 acres is at a fairly good slope, so one of the first things I did was to do a "push-out" (technically a "push/pull" out), using the loader on the front of my old 580B and replacing the hoe with the factory 3ph to run the box.

This was in fairly heavy clay soil in early summer, so the soil still mostly acted like dirt instead of rock - I would drop the rippers (with one finger :=) make 3-4 passes sidehill, raise the rippers (same finger:=) then start at the upper side, drive the bucket into the loose dirt, bucket curled back and raised about a foot, then drop the box and let it fill, drive about 100 feet, dump the bucket and drive over the loose dirt, then as the front tires came down to original grade pop the box up -

Drive around one end of the area and back to top, repeat til there's no more loose dirt, then rippers down, rinse/lather/repeat...

That method got me nearly a full acre of flat level ground - did that in a 3 day weekend, estimate I moved roughly 900 cubic YARDS of material (1 yard front bucket, nearly a yard in the box)

That was BEFORE I got tired of switching the backhoe with the 3ph (can't do that with Case hoes newer than mine) and bought another tractor - I got kinda spoiled with the Case 3ph attachment, it had top/tilt, float AND power down right from the factory - took me awhile, but I added top and tilt to my old Allis 160 - bought the toplink and did my own side link, lucked out (surplus center) and found a cylinder with 10" stroke that only needed a bit of machine work instead of replacing the lower yoke -

The longer stroke on tilt lets me have nearly 2 FEET of range from hard left to hard right. Now all I need is to finish rebuild of the ripper cylinder and add another diverter to the allis ... Steve

 

[bcp]

Some box blades have sides with angled lower edges.

BSM72 – Woods Equipment

woodsequipment.com

https://www.paladinattachments.com/products/box-scraper

Bruce

 

[newbury]

<snip>

Look at this link, get the asked for dimension and that should be close to what you want for a hydraulic top link when half way extended.

What's your approximate turn around time (from order to delivery) now for a Cat 2 top link kit?

 

[3 Horse Ranch]

Take a look at pictures of new Rhino BX60 box blades and you will see that the sides are square. What you have is a very worn box blade that has been used for too long tilted forward.

Nope, it's an older model made 30 years ago and the edges are cut, not worn.

 

[Xfaxman]

Some box blades are high back style:

 

[RV1]

Just thought I'd throw some gas on the fire. I use my box blade to pull rocks and junk out and break up the soil with the unit tilted forward so the shanks are digging. Then tilt it back and smooth over or collect it all. I did notice that when we modified the King Kutter 25 years ago, there was a second set of holes in the support arms coming off of the center pin area. This allowed me to tilt the 3 point part of the box blade back a little so that when I tilted the whole thing forward, it really changed the angle of attack for the rippers. If I really want to dig, I repin the shanks to their lowest hole, but otherwise I found that the middle hole allows the shanks to dig, sometimes too much and I have to lift the blade up a bit. The sides of my box blade will dig in right next to the shanks because the shanks are pulling the blade down. I am using a quick attach, and have modified all of my attachments to fit on it.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

What's your approximate turn around time (from order to delivery) now for a Cat 2 top link kit?

Currently quoting a minimum of 34 weeks.

 

[npalen]

I agree with the concept that running ripper shanks "level" rather than tilting the box will create "suck" and allow for deeper penetration. I've found, however, that tilting the box rather than "dropping" the ripper shanks will quickly produce enough penetration to bring the compact tractor to it's knees. This is with a 5' box blade on 30 HP.

 

[Vigo327]

I got kinda spoiled with the Case 3ph attachment, it had top/tilt, float AND power down right from the factory - took me awhile, but I added top and tilt to my old Allis 160 - bought the toplink and did my own side link, lucked out (surplus center) and found a cylinder with 10" stroke that only needed a bit of machine work instead of replacing the lower yoke -

The longer stroke on tilt lets me have nearly 2 FEET of range from hard left to hard right. Now all I need is to finish rebuild of the ripper cylinder and add another diverter to the allis ... Steve

Dang, that is sweet. Im guessing the 580 weighs enough for down pressure to actually accomplish something? The only 3pt with down pressure ive ever used is on my Case garden tractor, and down-pressure was pretty much just a 'reduce traction' feature until i filled the rear tires. It could use more weight to use more down pressure but i haven't got around to that. I suspect down pressure in general is far less useful when using larger implements that weigh more in their own right. I have tiny machines and my 60" box blade is probably the heaviest implement i own (not counting a backhoe) at 350 ish pounds. I did add 115 additional lbs to it by bolting a 54" loading dock bumper to the rear face. I did notice that that made using the rear blade to push in reverse much smoother and less likely to skip up over things.

That was during the 'mockup' phase. It's nice for pushing broken cars too.

 

[BukitCase]

"Im guessing the 580 weighs enough for down pressure to actually accomplish something?"

Vigo, not as much as I woulda liked, but some - the "rest of the story" - when I bought the 580 ALL the tires were getting "tired" - so when I found the deal on the Gannon/3ph combo, I had the local tire guys come out and replace all 4. I am NOT a fan of filled tires and couldn't find any wheel weights I wanted to pay for, but just the new treads made a VERY noticeable difference in traction -

Still, each pass I described earlier started with a little down pressure on the box, which seemed to fill the box a little quicker; that was IMMEDIATELY followed with tire spinning, followed by float mode and standing on the differential lock for the remainder of the pass. IIRC, there was a few times when I had to bump the 3ph up a tiny bit to maintain forward movement...

Weight - with the hoe in place, total weight is a little over 11,000 pounds - but the hoe attachment is close to 5000 pounds of that - the 3ph attachment is really beefy, some of the steel in it is close to 1" thick - I'd estimate that unit around 1000 lbs itself, which would put tractor weight with 3ph at about 7000, plus another 1000 for the box - but in use, the box is just more DRAG.

The little Allis 160 weighs 4700 lbs, plus 540 lbs of front weights - it's not as effective with the box as the Case was, but it still beats having to swap the 3ph in order to use ANY implements, plus (with the Case) there's STILL no practical way to achieve a PTO for driven implements. I might be able to find the parts to add a PTO, but from my measurements the PTO would interfere with putting the hoe back on - meaning that the swap would ALSO entail draining the transaxle and swapping rear cover plates. Ain't goin' there...

So these days, the 580B gets used for all loader work, any real digging and as a portable crane - loader work includes about 90% of my "tinker toy" action (using any or all of the 7 2" receivers I added to the bucket.

The 2 smaller tractors share all "drag" operations, it's nice to be able to leave any TWO implements set up depending on the job - so far those include a 7' soil pulverizer, 6' tiller, 6' flail, 6' back blade, the Gannon and a spray rig mounted on a carryall frame.

The Allis has the dual range option, lowest gear runs 0.7 mph at full PTO speed, so that one gets stuck with tiller duty - the Long 460 needs TWICE as many passes to even get CLOSE to the smoothness in a tilled area, but it's GREAT with the flail or spray rig...

I don't mind having to do the occasional repair of older machines; partly because (not including implements) I only have about $17K invested in ALL THREE machines. Plus I don't hafta deal with DEF, computers, etc

Wow, as usual this "book" ended up with more chapters than intended - Later... Steve