roadgrading qeustion

[townlineterry]

Anybody have expierince with grading attachments like the Roadrunner or the Duragrader. Ican see they would work okay and loose gravel or dirt.
However, dispite the their claims I don't see them working well on stoney or compacted roads

Any practical expierence out there?

One option I have is Ihave a crawler with a ripper, could use that to loosen up things first.

Terry

[Willyr]

If your going to pull an attachment to level your road I suggest getting a box grader. Those flimsy toys you see on tv are for those that dont have a tractor, but can only pull it with a ATV or a car.

its only my opinion mind you.

[townlineterry]

Not refering to the tv ones, for one thing we don't have a tv, we have a life.

What I am talking about are the industrial ttype, meant to used with a skidsteer or up to 100 hp tractor. Have seen them on contruction sites, they seem to work well on new cconstruction. My qeustion is would they work for grading a road that is already established with a lot of stone and well compacted?

Terry

[steamfitter99]

At work they have a 6 wing road maintainer that works pretty well on loose gravel, it is pulled behind a 3020 and is hydraulic up and down. I would say its 16 feet wide. I am not sure what the one you are talking about looks like. I do know that if you have potholes, you have to scarify down to the bottom or they will just keep coming back. Moving gravel around makes it nice until the first rain and the vehicles wash the potholes out again. Tom.

[Willyr]

If you have a box grader your life taking care of that road will be much easier than trying to maintain a road with a grader blade.

The box grader has scarifying teeth that you can set to cut throught the hard pack. If your stones are too big, say larger than 3 inches, you will find yourself out there tossing these rocks off to the side so you can make the road look half way decent.

Granted I now have my 420 and when I finnish reworking the blade I will use it on my 1000 foot driveway.



the pic is from last winter, but you get the idea.

[Stan Disbrow]

Hi,

I think he's talking about the trail-behind grader, th kind that has it's blade mounted on a long boom such that it looks like an actual road grader (Galion, etc). But, with a tractor on the front end, rather than a dedicated engine and drive on the rear.

I have used those, and they do work well. As you note, though, they don't do all so well on compacted roads, requiring some form of a scarifier pass first. Sounds as if you have a scarifier on your crawler, so you'd be good there.

Some of the pull-type graders need hydraulic circuits, and others are manually set. Some can do all the blade motions (angle, tilt and offset) while others are more restricted.

I can say that having used box blades and grading blades that they are no match for an actual road grader. The best part about a grader is that they put the blade in the center of a long boom, so when one end or the other runs over a bump, the resulting bump produced by the blade is much smaller. With a box or grader blade right at the back of the machine, such bumps wind up larger.

Of course, the best of all is to have a dedicated road grader with a scarifier and then all your road maintenance troubles are over!

I had a 1930's Austin Westin four-wheel grader that was grand at maintaining a long driveway when I lived in NY. It had independent steering at both ends, and the wheels could be tilted as well. Talk about sweet for clearing ditches.

Unfortunately, I gave it away when I moved from NY to NC. It was too much trouble to move, plus I didn't have much land in NC at that time to need a grader for. Now that we bought this old farm, I have over a mile of dirt road to maintain once more, and sorely miss the old road grader!

Later!

Stan

[townlineterry]

If I had the patience to figure out the photo posting I would put up a photo. This thing actually is a 3 piont hitch implement.

Anyhow I think I'm on the right track useing the ripper on the crawler to loosen things up first.

I have a boxblade, it is to light even with cement blocks.

Agree with Stan, a dedicated grader is the way togo, if you can afford it. However business was so bad this year there will not be any major equipement purchases. Unless somebody is giving one away, could use a bigger dozer too.

I don't really plan on buying a grading implement, going to build my own, hopefully cheaper that I could buy one. Figured the manufactured ones are a good starting point for the the design phase.

Terry

[Lavoy]

There were some guys selling them hot and heavy in this area years ago, still a few around. The main problem was price. They were as high as $6000 for a 8' blade. That is just stupid. It think from a grading and leveling standpoint, they probably would work fine in a yard or driveway.
What they tried to do here is sell them to the townships to use in place of a road grader. In that application, they were a miserable failure. Up here, they will pull a little bit of the shoulder in every pass to get some road back from the encroaching grass. Then they move it across the road from one side to the other over the summer to allow the incorporated grass to dry and seperate from the gravel. These 3PT mounted doohickeys can't pull the shoulder in, can't blade from one side of the road to the other, and can't be used for snow in the Winter.
Lots of guys have built "road/yard drags" from two piece of grader blade at opposite angles to level out their yard.
Lavoy

[Stan Disbrow]

Hi,

I have one of these 3-pt. grading blades. I got it cheap from someone that didn't like how it worked.

I find it does only 'ok' if I first tear up the crust with the crawler. It does manage to move the loosened stuff into a crown, but is without any adjustment capability.

It does mix up the surface dirt with the stone, and manages to smooth things back out. It doesn't suffer from the 'make a larger bump out of a smaller one' effect of other blades one can put on the back of a tractor. It doesn't do a good job of cutting off an existing bump, though.

I then lightly pack down the result with an old F-150 with 150-200 gallons of water in the tank I have in the bed (it's my water hauling 'from the river to the garden' truck). It has wide tires, so it does a decent pack job.

I then switch to a landscape rake and make another pass. That moves the larger stones to the center of the road. Big ones get picked out, and the rest can sit right there. But, then, I used to do this when I had a road grader as well. Blades can't seperate stone size very well.

I then have to pack it again with the water truck. After that, the traffic does the rest - and make wheel tracks that eventually wash out and force me to do this all over again!

I had a much better time using a road grader, though. What is nice about one of those is you can make for a multi-angled crown. I also like the side-slip you can do with the blade and clean a ditch out such that the crud winds up going away from the road. Oh, and leave the machine on the roadbed all the while.

Lately, I've been looking for either another mid-sized road grader or one of those modern grader attachments for the back of the tractor. On of the ones that hook onto the drawbar and have a grading blade on a beam (like what I thought you were referring to in the first place).

Heck, I'd even take one of those old Allis or IH converted farm tractors. You know, when they put the grader attachment onto the front-end of a standard farm tractor. They don't have scarifiers, but they would work better than the grader blade does.

Later!

Stan

[Willyr]

you can get a 5 foot from NH northern for $600



http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/ ... _200325919

I had the 84" behind my 60 hp New Holland and it went for 1200 delivered.

[Ray III]

I used a box blade for years to fix my dad's driveways which are always washing out since he lives/works on a hill and there isn't enough traffic for good compaction. It is fine if you want to level gravel quickly and conveniently, but would be my last choice of equipment if you want any kind of crown in the road or ditches. Every year I had to fill the washouts back in. Also the lack of downforce even with 2 suitcase weights gets annoying, although I have wanted to try a hydraulic cylinder in place of the 3rd link for on-the-fly pitch adjustments to see if that can be corrected.

In 2007 I got the 420 crawler with the manual angle and tilt blade, and reworked one of those spots that promptly washed back out after using the box blade, crowned the road properly with a channel against the bank to carry water, and in 3 years that particular area has yet to wash out again.