New Roads

[fabrej]

I have a new 2005 Kubota BX2230. I have been putting it through its paces up at our remote mountain property. The little tractor really is something. It builds roads way better than I thought it would. It may take a while to cut and move the dirt but it is certainly up to the task from what I have seen. The one road you see goes up the hill and connects to an existing road. The other roads leads from our rustic cabin in the direction of an old gold mine (I still have a ways to go on that one). I have been putting these projects off for about 4 years now because I did not want to spend any more $ on hiring a backhoe.

Regards,
James

 

[EddieWalker]

James,

Nice pics!! Looks like you had a real fun project there. I personally just love creating new roads and trails through my woods. It's one of those things I didn't realize how much fun it could be until I did my first one. Now I look forward to it!!!

Thanks for sharing,
Eddie

 

[ratter]

Very nice! What implelment(s) did you use?

 

[fabrej]

Believe it or not, the only dirt moving attachment I have right now is the front end loader. I got a chance to get pretty efficient with it over the last few weekends up there.

I have a back blade on order. I hope it will be here next week. I have some roads with a cut bank that I need to level out. Every year when the snow melts, some of the cut bank falls down on the road and it is starting to get skinny in spots.

James

 

[3RRL]

Well you sure did a nice job of getting the road level cutting through those side hills. Especially since you don't have a way to tilt the front bucket. I found that the hardest to do because I could dig but had to attack at different angles to get the road level somewhat. Then I'd use the box blade tilted down on one side and bulldoze backwards to remove the slope in the road. How in the heck did you manage that with only your bucket? Nice work.

 

[fabrej]

I dug the left side and then dropped it on the right (downhill side of grade). I continue this until I have enough on the right side to smooth out and pack down with the bottom of the bucket. I find that the trick to this is to have level ground under the wheels before continuing. As soon as it starts to slope, I stop and fix it. Sometimes that means bringing in some dirt. Other times it means having the bucket in an almost dump mode and dragging it backwards a little bit at a time to lower the left side down and to get a pile to pick up and move to the right side. It is slow going.

Don't get me wrong - I am no tractor expert. I have only had the BX2230 for about a month now and have a total of 55 hours on it. I am "trying" to be somewhat gentle on her so I can get it broken in. Years before this I had an old 2 wheel drive Ford 1000 with only 3 point attachments. It was worthless up in the mountains and I got tired of craning my neck backwards to see what I was doing.

One of my main problems is getting the tractor back into our remote property on the mountain roads. I have to ford a small creek and go around the corner of a rock outcropping. I squeeze the BX on a 3500# 4x8 trailer and it works great. When I had my longer, heavier Ford 1000 on a larger trailer, I had to leave the trailer and drive the tractor back in the last mile.

James

 

[dubba]

Nice job, but... Where are the rocks??? I don't even see any in the banks.

P.S. Don't forget to blow out that air filter every 20 hours or less in that extremely dusty enviroment..

 

[fabrej]

Nice catch! I did not run into any rocks on these two pictured roads. I was lucky. I have other areas where I have had to bring in my electric jackhammer to persuade the rock to move out of the way.

You are right on the air filter. It was bad. We need some rain out there in the worst way.