Mahindra Max 26XL HST - A New Owner's Journal

[shooterdon]

Oddly, when all I had was my garden tractor pulling a lightweight 36" little Brinly box blade, it was actually easier to do the smoothing out, as I could set it to float and skim along the dips and bumps. OTOH, it lacked power/weight so to change the grade at all required about a million passes.

All the videos you see of people cruising along merrily box-blading a drive are on a level driveway! Yeah, "level" is easy.

EXACTLY!!

When the dips are 20-30 apart I doubt even a land plane will level a driveway unless we take take dozens and dozens of passes. I have considered adding 8 2x6痴 skids to a box blade to increase the length. My little pea brain looks at the old hand jointer planes used to prepare wood. Longer was always better. There is a reason road graders are so long.

I know the 2x6痴 would not last long, but they are cheap. And once the drive is level, they would not be needed again.

MVR made a good point IF the land plane will work, that is a better option. And I assume it will not need a hydraulic top link to get the job done....saving another few hundred $$$. Sorry for the thread hijack. I may start another thread on this issue.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

EXACTLY!!


When the dips are 20-30 apart I doubt even a land plane will level a driveway unless we take take dozens and dozens of passes. I have considered adding 8 2x6ç—´ skids to a box blade to increase the length. My little pea brain looks at the old hand jointer planes used to prepare wood. Longer was always better. There is a reason road graders are so long.

I know the 2x6ç—´ would not last long, but they are cheap. And once the drive is level, they would not be needed again.

MVR made a good point IF the land plane will work, that is a better option. And I assume it will not need a hydraulic top link to get the job done....saving another few hundred $$$. Sorry for the thread hijack. I may start another thread on this issue.

If the dips are that big, please tell me what implement is not going to take dozens of trips to get them filled in.

A LPGS probably would not be the implement of choice with the dips being 20'-30' long. A box blade would be easier to cut and fill those types of areas. But for wash boarding and general overall maintenance, it's pretty hard to beat a LPGS.

I have 4 different implements for working roads, Roll over Box Blade (ROBB), rear blade, land scape rake and a land plane grading scraper (LPGS). Each implement excels in its own right. The LPGS is my go to implement for general road maintenance.

If the moisture content was just right, I would not hesitate to fill those large dips using my LPGS.

 

[GirlWhoWantsTractor]

Month 3: Adjustments Done. Next project: FALL GARDEN.

Tractor was picked up last Tues and returned on Thurs as promised. No more "creep" and the parking brake seems to set fine now.

I've basically been fussing with the driveway for 3 months off and on, whenever the moisture level was right, trying different implements and techniques, making mistakes and fixing them. It was time to call it DONE! Here is one short section:


SEEDS FOR THE FALL GARDEN HAVE ARRIVED! :thumbsup: Need to move all the random piles of compost into one pile in a convenient location, and widen the whole thing a bit. Also need one part absolutely flat for my new HF greenhouse. The garden cuts diagonally into a hill to take advantage of a southern orientation, so a lot of weird angles. Was hoping to make it wide enough to turn the Max around in, but realized if I did that, I'd have a 2-foot bank on the uphill side. Even the small existing 10" bank creates a hazard for mowing and even for walking around. (Ask me what happens when the mower drops a wheel over it. ) So am just widening it about 2 feet.

Have learned, when you have a tractor and a project, HAVE A PLAN. For boxblading, digging, grading, anything. Because a tractor is powerful enough to make a pretty big mess pretty fast. Which is the current state of the garden. Actually looks worse than before I touched it. I asked Jay to help me draw a plan: location of greenhouse, compost pile, fence posts, etc. He said, "Anything that looks less like the Battle of the Somme would be good." :laughing: Indeed it would.

So here's the current mess (it's actually steeper than it looks in the pic; the garden is JUST to the right in the driveway pic):


The piles of green on the left are sod, where I'm widening the garden on the left. I first shave off the grass plus 4-6 inches of dirt, to be used elsewhere on bare patches. The Piranha Tooth Bar cuts through like a sharp knife, resulting in perfect sod. I'm thinking about how much work removing sod is by hand. (Buy a tractor, folks. You won't regret it. )

This is a lot of FEL work, on a constantly changing slope. Slopes with a fully loaded FEL still make me cautious. Slopes with FEL lifted pretty high to dump on top of the compost pile make me a tad nervous. Of course the BB is on. BB also helps to smooth out some of the mess I inevitably make.

Am also trying to learn how to use the "corners" of the FEL control, the ones that both raise/lower and curl/uncurl at the same time. Boy, THAT's a real learning curve, at least for me, but will keep trying. Gave Jay a few laughs though.

 

[GirlWhoWantsTractor]

Month 3 con't: Work continues on the Battle of the Somme (aka my garden)

Made a little progress today consolidating the compost pile. Looks a little better. Before and during:


Once the garden is laid out I plan to slap on the scarifiers, set them all the way down, and hopefully break up the hardpan. Particularly in the carrot bed, as they never grow well here. They hit the hardpan and get discouraged I guess. It's nice to see even digging down deep, how good and black the soil is after 5 years of gardening/composting. And full of fat earthworms. Quite a contrast with the rest of the red concrete they call soil around here.

Also filled in a couple of bad dips in the sloped yard above the garden. These are a couple feet deep and rather unpleasant to negotiate with the riding mowers. Dropping a wheel into one on the tractor with a FEL full of dirt is not something I want to do. So scooped about 8 loads of my handy fill dirt and got it filled in. (Would have taken me a week by hand.)

After having a taste of fall last week, we're now having the hottest weather of the year. This is weird because fall comes early in the mountains and my hottest month is usually July. It was so hot and sunny (84ｰ) I could only work for a couple hours at a time, then had to come inside and cool off. Yes, I really can't take the heat.

Too hot/dry to plant grass right now, and I think planting the fall garden will have to wait a bit too. Hopefully by then I'll have the garden tidied up, fence posts in, and the greenhouse in place.

None of this would be possible without the tractor, or at least prolly wouldn't have happened, as it would be a ton of back-breaking labor.

 

[majorwager]

Guess I can't really express my thoughts about the message in the post, screenshot, below w\o receiving a message from Mohammad
The thread containing the message appears at top of screenshot.

 

[GirlWhoWantsTractor]

Guess I can't really express my thoughts about the message in the post, screenshot, below w\o receiving a message from Mohammad
The thread containing the message appears at top of screenshot.

Turned out to be an interesting thread; thanks for sharing. Everyone has their opinion!

 

[GirlWhoWantsTractor]

Month 4.

Three weeks of rain meant almost zero hours on the tractor, but it was sunny today, so walked up and pulled off the tarp that's been over the tractor all this time. Cautiously, just to make sure a nest of rabid raccoons hadn't moved in. Also pulled all the equipment out of my *Wretched Old Barn* and the newer Husqv was pretty well cocooned with spider webs.....ugh. I start her up and a grand-daddy longlegs emerges from the steering wheel and I scream....I actually don't mind THEM at all but was keyed up and the surprise factor kicked in. I threw him off into the grass. Then applied canned-spider-death liberally and it's sitting in the driveway. The smaller Husqv was less-so but did have a d@***ed mouse nest in the round thingy on top with the plastic vented thing. Plus a nice collection of nibbled nuts and acorns around the battery. Luckily nothing living--or dead--inside but unscrewed it and cleaned it all out. This is why I hate that barn and need a new one. The tractor was spider-free, I think because a) it wasn't in the barn, and b) it's been liberally sprayed with Fluid Film, which I discovered spiders hate, and it kills them on contact too. If you've read anything I write you know I don't kill anything, not even mice, but I make an exception for spiders. It's just a phobia I have and can't help it.

An older fawn was hanging around, even with all the engines going, and trying to approach me, so I put out some corn for him in case he's lost his mama.

Started on the mowing of my foot-high lawn (no chance to mow for 3 weeks due to rain). The grass looks very, very happy right now.

I'd like to say I had some driveway work to do after the hurricane, but everything performed flawlessly, so I just drove around and did a little smoothing here and there for the heck of it. Looking forward to some serious seat-time this weekend. It's time to get the fall garden in and I have a bit more to do on the "Battle of the Somme" though it's almost there.

Also time for the 50-hour service. A milestone.

 

[Molalla1]

Month 4.

Three weeks of rain meant almost zero hours on the tractor, but it was sunny today, so walked up and pulled off the tarp that's been over the tractor all this time. Cautiously, just to make sure a nest of rabid raccoons hadn't moved in. Also pulled all the equipment out of my *Wretched Old Barn* and the newer Husqv was pretty well cocooned with spider webs.....ugh. I start her up and a grand-daddy longlegs emerges from the steering wheel and I scream....I actually don't mind THEM at all but was keyed up and the surprise factor kicked in. I threw him off into the grass. Then applied canned-spider-death liberally and it's sitting in the driveway. The smaller Husqv was less-so but did have a d@***ed mouse nest in the round thingy on top with the plastic vented thing. Plus a nice collection of nibbled nuts and acorns around the battery. Luckily nothing living--or dead--inside but unscrewed it and cleaned it all out. This is why I hate that barn and need a new one. The tractor was spider-free, I think because a) it wasn't in the barn, and b) it's been liberally sprayed with Fluid Film, which I discovered spiders hate, and it kills them on contact too. If you've read anything I write you know I don't kill anything, not even mice, but I make an exception for spiders. It's just a phobia I have and can't help it.

An older fawn was hanging around, even with all the engines going, and trying to approach me, so I put out some corn for him in case he's lost his mama.

Started on the mowing of my foot-high lawn (no chance to mow for 3 weeks due to rain). The grass looks very, very happy right now.

I'd like to say I had some driveway work to do after the hurricane, but everything performed flawlessly, so I just drove around and did a little smoothing here and there for the heck of it. Looking forward to some serious seat-time this weekend. It's time to get the fall garden in and I have a bit more to do on the "Battle of the Somme" though it's almost there.

Also time for the 50-hour service. A milestone.

Kill the spiders and you will have more bugs.

 

[GirlWhoWantsTractor]

Kill the spiders and you will have more bugs.

Fine, as I don't mind other bugs. At all.

 

[majorwager]

This thread is important, it should remain at top of this forum, except the references to bugs.