hello everyone! new here and have some questions about the versahandlers, before i purchase one.
new v517(yes, i may have found one) or slightly used(100-300 hrs) v519? i know one gentleman has had both on here.
there was a question on this thread about floating the boom...what was the conclusion? i will be mowing with this machine(about 20 acres-all food plots and fire breaks).
has anyone run a
chipper off the front? i have been using a wallenstein.
did armydoc ever pull his disc with his new v519? what was the conclusion.
my first attachments will be soil conditioner, grapple, forks, bucket.
thanks for everyone's contribution over the years that has really helped me out
this forum has been great! im ditching the tractor. im no farmer joe, or farmer brown, but i do grow pine trees, oaks, pears, chestnutts and others along the base of the piedmont in ga.
As I understand it, the floating boom is an option on the v519. Mine did not come with it. I thought it did and the salesman told me it did. (It has the button to engage it float, but it doesn't work on mine. I heard it was an option (standard?) on a later version of the v519. My v519 does not have a limited slip differential, which makes it less than ideal for pulling. If one wheel slips and starts spinning, you have no traction. Not often a problem, as you can always use the bucket and boom to get you out of a jam, but for pulling a harrow, it could be an issue. That said, it is rated to tow 5,000 pounds I believe. In anycase, I have not used it for harrowing, but I don't think it would have any trouble with a light harrow (6 or 7ft). One issue would be running the hydraulic lines all the way to the take off up front.
What I have done when I needed wanted a harrow, has been to tip the teeth of the bucket down, and just push. I maintained all the fire breaks around our ~200 acre property just using just the front end bucket this way, not a problem. (the had been broken before with dozer, this was just maintenance.)
My most used attachment is the bucket. Second most is my 7ft heavy bush-hog. I've taken down 6+ inch pines and sweetgums with it as well as used it to cut my pastures. It is awesome. My next most used implement is my post-hole agar. The final most used item is a heavy garden cart, about 3ft x 5ft that I hitch to the back. Great for hauling water, tools, generator etc to where I want to go.
The last implement I'm glad I have, is a 3-point hitch that attaches to the quick attach, that includes a PTO. I use that to run my spreader and my sprayer, so the 3 point hitch was a pretty good investment. I could buy a sprayer or a spreader for the quick attach, but either one would have cost more than the little 3point hitch with PTO. You can't push a harrow with it though (don't know why I thought it might be possible, but it isn't... you can just take my word on that and not ask me how I know.
)
I don't have a grapple, but I kind of wish I did. I bought a tree puller, with a grapple bar that can be used as a grapple. I rarely use it to pull trees. Anything it can pull, I can cut with the bush-hog faster. It works very well for posts, but so does a chain wrapped around the post to the bucket. I have used the tree puller far more as a grapple more than I have as a puller, and in retrospect, I would have been better off buying a real grapple instead of the tree puller.
I don't have a soil conditioner. I did buy a land plane to maintain the driveway. The land-plane was a waste of money. I get almost as good a result just using the bucket, which is always on the machine anyhow.
My v519 is an awesome machine. It isn't perfect, but I think it would be if it had a limited slip diff and a float option for the boom. I can rig a floating quick attach with about 6 inches of play, so I can overcome the boom problem. The lack of LSD hasn't been a problem, but then I haven't tried to pull anything heavy in the mud with it either.
ArmyDoc
