steverichmond
Silver Member
Do R4's count?It hain't a tractor till it gets AGs.
Traction subsoiler/ripper - enough traction?
- Thread starter Grubs
- Start date
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KJM
Silver Member
Grubs,
The issue you will have is not Hp - it's weight/traction. My soil here is clay. 100% clay. Very heavy - concrete in the summer and plastic in winter. I've pulled a single tine (home made) ripper about 12" deep with the B7100 (all 16Hp of it). No problems with the rear tyres filled and every piece of heavy steel I could find "attached" to the back of the tractor. It just slowly pulled along. Basically at less than 1/2 throttle - I hardly ever have it running hard.
"Floaters" - big chunks of rock - in the clay snag the ripper and cause wheel spin. Lifting the 3pt and then going back a couple of times fixed most of them. Hitting one stops you instantly! Very slow going - if you've got a lot of bunnies to nuke you'll be a while. Getting someone with a dozer might be cheaper!
If you've got a pile of scrap material on hand - why not cobble together a ripper to see if the tractor will pull it. Unless you engineer it well, it won't last but it'll answer the question for your tractor and your soil. Just a thought.
Best of luck. Whack those bunnies!
/Kevin
The issue you will have is not Hp - it's weight/traction. My soil here is clay. 100% clay. Very heavy - concrete in the summer and plastic in winter. I've pulled a single tine (home made) ripper about 12" deep with the B7100 (all 16Hp of it). No problems with the rear tyres filled and every piece of heavy steel I could find "attached" to the back of the tractor. It just slowly pulled along. Basically at less than 1/2 throttle - I hardly ever have it running hard.
"Floaters" - big chunks of rock - in the clay snag the ripper and cause wheel spin. Lifting the 3pt and then going back a couple of times fixed most of them. Hitting one stops you instantly! Very slow going - if you've got a lot of bunnies to nuke you'll be a while. Getting someone with a dozer might be cheaper!
If you've got a pile of scrap material on hand - why not cobble together a ripper to see if the tractor will pull it. Unless you engineer it well, it won't last but it'll answer the question for your tractor and your soil. Just a thought.
Best of luck. Whack those bunnies!
/Kevin
alchemysa
Veteran Member
If you have a ripper on the back and set the angle right it may actually increase your traction because it will pull your tractor 'down'. (I think).
I've got a B1550 with turfs. Even less power than you. My guess is you'd rip 12" easily as long as you have the angle of the tine set so its pointing well forward. But $400 is a lot to pay to find out. Can't you borrow one? Or as Kevin suggested make something out of scrap. I made a simple dual tine ripper in about 60 minutes that I attached to my front bucket. It does 8" rips easily in most soil.
And don't forget you have a rear wheel diff lock pedal.
I've got a B1550 with turfs. Even less power than you. My guess is you'd rip 12" easily as long as you have the angle of the tine set so its pointing well forward. But $400 is a lot to pay to find out. Can't you borrow one? Or as Kevin suggested make something out of scrap. I made a simple dual tine ripper in about 60 minutes that I attached to my front bucket. It does 8" rips easily in most soil.
And don't forget you have a rear wheel diff lock pedal.
Wingone
New member
I have a Case Farmall 31 with a worksaver single shank subsoiler. My 31 is 4wd with ag tires all around. Usually when I am cutting roots around a field, I will run out of traction long before I run out of horsepower. I normally will do go in the same track twice to go over about 8 inches and then down to about 12-14 inches the second time. I can tell you to that a big root will bring the little 31 hp tractor to either a quick stop or kill it. My quess is you will run out of traction real quick with turf tires. I have yet to shear the shear bolt with the little 31 hp tractor.
My quess is you will run out of traction real quick with turf tires. I have yet to shear the shear bolt with the little 31 hp tractor.Tom_H
Veteran Member
One's idea of "most soil" likely depends upon where he lives and what "most soil" is like in that area. This is not going to happen in dry clay and definitely not in a true hardpan like duripan, ironpan, or caliche. Sand or already plowed loam, yes, already busted clay, yes, but ancient, dry, heavy, compacted soils with that sized tractor just is not realistic. The duripan around here gets ripped for vinyards with a Cat D-11R:
Google Image Result for http://www.dadscats.com/media/ccmd11r
mozark
Bronze Member
To make a subsoiler go deeper you need to shorten the top link. I have a KK on my BX2350, it will only go about 14" deep. I made another tooth so it would go 20" deep, could never get it to work because the travel of the lift arms was only about 14". May be a limiting factor for you too.
alchemysa
Veteran Member
Fair comment, but bunnies usually pick pretty soft soil... at least round here they do.
KJM
Silver Member
Quite so, but I'd still give it a go. The soil here is (as I said) infinite clay with large iron floaters. But where the vegie garden is we have a quartz/ironstone hardpan layer. It's about 6 inches thick and then you get back into lurid orange clay. My home made ripper just skidded over the hardpan - I could not get it to penetrate. But when I used a 6 foot bar to knock a hole into the hardpan and dropped the ripper point into that, it worked just fine. Well, it worked anyway. Very slow with lots of wheel slip. The insanely un-ergonomic Kubota diff lock pedal is mandatory.
But a large Cat would be better! But would probably not get into the space
Curiously, the vegie garden is just about the only place on the block I've dug that actually has the hardpan layer. Murphy works perfectly when siting things, it would seem.
/Kevin