Rear Blade Homemade gauge wheel for rear blade. Will this work?

[wsc9tt]

I bought a used Land Pride rear lade off Craigslist for $200. The frame is kinda bent up but the blade is straight and the TNT can adjust for the warped mount.

But for driveway maintenance I understand a gauge wheel makes it much easier to get a smooth contour.

Land Pride's gauge wheels are pretty beefy and I don't think they fit on this blade:

So I want thinking about making my own using a trailer tongue jack:

Buy one of those and take it to my local welding wizard and have him build an arm that goes out the back and mounts the jack. Perhaps with like a receiver mount so it can be easily removed when not needed.

Will that work? The only problem I see is that I may have to upgrade the wheels to something a bit beefier. It is worth the difference in functionality of the blade?

 

[MESSMAKER]

I don't think it will handle the stress. I would think a front castor wheel off an old ztr would be better. I like the receiver idea.

 

[RDrancher]

I agree...you'll tear that trailer jack up in no time. The receiver idea is great. If you could find an old brush hog tire and fork, that would work too.

 

[wsc9tt]

Well in theory the wheel will be rolling over already smoothed ground...
And looking at junk at Harbor Freight I could switch the caster to something like this:

with a 10in wheel.


The idea of the jack is that I needed a height adjustment. But perhaps I can do something like this:

With a solid rubber wheel barrow tire and a jack like this:

This way the stress is on the diagonal arm instead of the place where the jack mounts to the frame.

 

[jeff9366]

You are operating in dirt. Dirt and dust are going to immobilize both the axle bearings and castor twist on the ideas you have posted so far.

Bigger wheels castor better than small in dirt, plus they have more "float" which is needed to resist downward pressure. For castor, you need a shaft within a sleeve with a zerk' grease fitting, like factory gauge wheels or Rotary Cutter tail wheels.

Due to leverage, a lot of stress is applied to gauge wheel frames.

You may become very adept at adjusting the TnT and can do without gauge wheels.

 

[BukitCase]

Agree with all the above - if you only wanna do this ONCE, I would recommend you stop looking at Harbor Freight (for this, anyway) and go here -

5X8X15" TAIL WHEEL ASSEMBLY- H.D. FORK 1 1/2" YOKE

I have one of HF's DUAL wheel trailer jacks mounted on a single 16 foot tube gate, it rides on packed, smooth gravel, and it's ALL IT CAN DO to support one end of a gate I can pick up and carry around and still (sorta) roll.

Your choice, just tryin' to save you the time/money of doing it TWICE... Steve

 

[edkemper]

That harbor freight duel wheel stand is barely heavy enough for my 5x8 light duty utility trailer on concrete. Very insufficient on uneven terrain with any weight on the trailer.

Think heavier duty for sure otherwise, about 10 minute timeframe. (Including a 5 minute warm-up)

 

[jeff9366]

Here is a germane link to a thread in the T-B-N archive which will be very helpful for you.

LINK:

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/customization/232563-gauge-wheels-tail-wheel.html

 

[wsc9tt]

Here is a germane link to thread which will be very helpful in the T-B-N archive for you.

LINK:

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/customization/232563-gauge-wheels-tail-wheel.html

Thank you Jeff. That was a very interesting thread. I was also amused by the guy who built his own gauge wheels to save money and then talked about how it was difficult to back into the garage without hitting the Lamborghini. Of course later you find that Lamborghini made tractors.

Anyway nice design, but reading his experiences using it I think you really want thick wheels that will float on loose gravel to get good performance.

 

[CalG]

I've got this

http://www.yorkmodern.com/catalog/images/TA2.jpg

I replaced the mechanical lift and lower linkage with a hydraulic cylinder controlled bu the Aux.

Works very well behind either the Hurlimann or the Bolens.

Crown can be adjusted with tire inflation. But by in large, the unit follows the lay of the land. Just not the ripples.

With the grader bar down. the rake acts just like a scraper blade.

When the ground is hard, it's hard to do much but skate across the surface.