Frozen Assets
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In late winter, one of our four seasons (early winter, mid winter, late winter, and bad sledding) my wife said "Don't you think it's time we could really use a backhoe around here?" Cool! Probably translated that meant "Quit picking up all this heavy junk you old fart!" The search began. I looked high and low for a backhoe to put on our old Kubota L295DT. After having local dealers look at me like I was from Mars and going through the internet and reviews and such I finally settled on the Woodmaxx WM7600. I have not been sorry about that. If you get one, get the ripper that goes on in place of the bucket, and get the hydraulic thumb. You will not regret that.
The build quality is excellent. All of the welds are smooth and strong. Things fit the way they are supposed to. It's a good unit. Oh and incidentally even with the shipping to Alaska, I saved 5500 bucks over the only thing I found locally and got much more into the bargain. If you are in the 48 or Canada they don't charge you for shipping, but I don't consider around a grand to haul 1100 pounds of stuff from New York to Alaska unreasonable.
I have not had any problems with this unit. One caveat. Everything my old Kubota is made out of heavy steel. The top link attach points are on a separate steel plat bolted to the back of the tranny. If you have a plastic and aluminum tractor with the top link attach molded into the tranny case then running a heavy 3 point backhoe might not be a great idea.
The supplied pump puts out more than enough power to run the backhoe. As far as what size tractor will handle it, horsepower is not the issue. The big deal is how heavy is your tractor. Also you really want to have a either a front end loader or some heavy counterweights. My rig is about 26 or 2800 pounds by itself, and if you really crank up the pto the backhoe can move the tractor around quite a bit. I did have to put on a short PTO extension to get the pump to clear some of the stuff around the pto. I really like that the backhoe has it's own pump.
I have been removing the stumps of some large birches that we cut down around the house. They were pretty when we built the place, but when the top 40 feet of one came crashing down one night we decided they had to go! It was a heck of a lot easier to go around the stumps busting the roots with the hoe and then chaining up to the lever (always leave a tall lever) and pulling the stumps over than horseing around forever with a chain saw and a grub hoe. We also found it handy once the root ball was standing up at the edge of the hole to use the bucket or ripper to scrape most of the dirt back into the hole. The rest we hydrauliced off with a pressure washer. Its a twofer, you really cut down the weight of the darn things, and you save all of the material. What would have taken forever took about 3 days. The thumb is fabulous for positioning stuff and yanking roots.
Today I was cutting up the levers off the stumps for firewood. These were heavy boogers. It was a trivial matter to grab them with the thumb and bucket and set them on the sawbuck. (If you heat with wood, build yourself a sawbuck!) Without the hoe and the thumb, I would have had to cut them on the ground. This thing is a real back saver.
I would reccomend one of these units to anyone in need of a 3 point backhoe. Just remember the bit about having a strong top link attach point!
The build quality is excellent. All of the welds are smooth and strong. Things fit the way they are supposed to. It's a good unit. Oh and incidentally even with the shipping to Alaska, I saved 5500 bucks over the only thing I found locally and got much more into the bargain. If you are in the 48 or Canada they don't charge you for shipping, but I don't consider around a grand to haul 1100 pounds of stuff from New York to Alaska unreasonable.
I have not had any problems with this unit. One caveat. Everything my old Kubota is made out of heavy steel. The top link attach points are on a separate steel plat bolted to the back of the tranny. If you have a plastic and aluminum tractor with the top link attach molded into the tranny case then running a heavy 3 point backhoe might not be a great idea.
The supplied pump puts out more than enough power to run the backhoe. As far as what size tractor will handle it, horsepower is not the issue. The big deal is how heavy is your tractor. Also you really want to have a either a front end loader or some heavy counterweights. My rig is about 26 or 2800 pounds by itself, and if you really crank up the pto the backhoe can move the tractor around quite a bit. I did have to put on a short PTO extension to get the pump to clear some of the stuff around the pto. I really like that the backhoe has it's own pump.
I have been removing the stumps of some large birches that we cut down around the house. They were pretty when we built the place, but when the top 40 feet of one came crashing down one night we decided they had to go! It was a heck of a lot easier to go around the stumps busting the roots with the hoe and then chaining up to the lever (always leave a tall lever) and pulling the stumps over than horseing around forever with a chain saw and a grub hoe. We also found it handy once the root ball was standing up at the edge of the hole to use the bucket or ripper to scrape most of the dirt back into the hole. The rest we hydrauliced off with a pressure washer. Its a twofer, you really cut down the weight of the darn things, and you save all of the material. What would have taken forever took about 3 days. The thumb is fabulous for positioning stuff and yanking roots.
Today I was cutting up the levers off the stumps for firewood. These were heavy boogers. It was a trivial matter to grab them with the thumb and bucket and set them on the sawbuck. (If you heat with wood, build yourself a sawbuck!) Without the hoe and the thumb, I would have had to cut them on the ground. This thing is a real back saver.
I would reccomend one of these units to anyone in need of a 3 point backhoe. Just remember the bit about having a strong top link attach point!
