Christmas in October...

bcarter · Oct 17, 2000

My 2710 finally arrived last Tuesday! (After waiting for Woods to deliver the hoe and subframe to the dealer for over a month) What a fantastic piece of machinery! I've only been able to spend 10 hours or so playing (or working depending on your perspective /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif), but I've already managed to put a dent in the grading I had to do. (Anyone know of some way that the length of a day can be changed from 24 hours to say, 36 hours so I can have some time for tractoring?)

I did almost lose it the first day I had it though... It seems that a neighbor two houses down rented a Kubota from the local dealer over the long weekend. I had gone into the house for a minute when the dealer came to pick it up and he saw mine in the front yard. He assumed that someone had written the wrong house number... He had the ramps down on the trailer and was headed for the tractor when I intercepted him. He was mortified when I pointed to the tractor he was looking for two houses down. I keep it in the garage anytime I'm not using it now!

Thomas · Oct 17, 2000

Yep Bill,one can get a lot of work done w/ those type of machine,heck and it more fun than work. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Indeed that was a close call of losing your Kubota. /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

Now that you got your backhoe I guess the next rainy day of no tractor time /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gifyou be making a change on your edit profile. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Take care and play safe down there.

Thomas..NH /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

MarkV · Oct 17, 2000

Way to go Bill. I'll be looking forward to hearing how you like that backhoe. Now that rental yard driver has no idea what kind of danger he was in. All new daddies will go to extremes to protect their babies./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Harv · Oct 17, 2000

Congratulations, Bill!

Say, old pal, old buddy -- I was just thinking about my culvert projects, you see, and, well, I don't have a backhoe, old friend, and I thought maybe... you know... and it's only a few thousand miles, and... /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

bcarter · Oct 18, 2000

Harv (old buddy, old pal /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif),

You're more than welcome to use my backhoe anytime. All you have to do is come on out to get it, and bring it back when you're done. Or...you might ask my local dealer to come by and pick it up for you. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

MarkV,

I've dug a couple of holes with it (just for practice) and I may never go back to a shovel again! (Although I did break out the shovel to locate the gas line for my propane tank - not something you want to find with a backhoe /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif) I also dug out several large rocks (maybe a little bigger than an 8-cylinder engine) with little or no effort.

I had the controls "swapped" to match the excavator control pattern that I already know, and the only shortcoming I can find is that the "float" position for the boom control is no longer available (they moved the hoses and relief valves to move the control functions rather than unstacking and re-assembling the spools - which would have moved the spool with the float position). The only time I miss it is if I'm trying to just skim a little dirt off the bottom of a hole, or if I use the backhoe to grade with. I've discovered that the loader works OK for the grading (although I need to raise the stablizer, get off the hoe and jump back on the tractor), and if I dig the hole deep enough no one notices that the bottom isn't "skimmed" so I guess I'll manage /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif.

Bill