Back dragging: how aggressive?

[Oaktree]

Thousands of hours on tractors, lots of back dragging, never an issue, other than taking too big a bite and losing traction.

Same here. Well, not thousands of hours but enough to have a good idea what I can and can't do.
As Pine noted, a tractor is not a skid steer (or a bulldozer) so go easy until you get a feel for what your tractor is capable of. Personally, I'd want to loosen up any hard-packed soil before I tried backdragging it.

 

[4570Man]

Back dragging at 90 degrees is a sure fire way to bend something. Back dragging at 45 or less degrees is pretty safe.

 

[Wis Bang]

Many will say I've never had a problem, but it is possible.

First year out of college I worked for a smaller road builder wit a 225 CAT excavator. They were using it bucket heel, paralell to the ground, to partially tamp the stepped sewer and water line trenches for a small develoment.

Job finished we rushed the machine to a small nearby town [cost plus] to dig up a collapsed sewer line located at the max depth this machine could dig [22' with the side-cutters on the bucket] when the ram operating the bucket started to act funny.

Turns out the packing gland on the end inside the cylinder came apart from the beating at the last job.

Mobile repair from CAT said the ram needed to be fully extended or retracted to avoid doing what we did.

This was the mid-70's and I brought the fuel truck so the boss could flush the hydraulic system with diesel fuel

 

[Gee Ray]

This might help explain the problem better.

 

[SmallChange]

This might help explain the problem better.

He shows about a 45 or 50 degree angle from vertical for the bottom of the bucket, using the edge (not the heel). But he also says this doesn't mean you can never use it angled steeply, just to usually do it more shallow, even if it takes extra passes.

He does explain that the cylinders are weaker when fully extended. There's another issue that he doesn't touch on: the linkage gives greater and greater mechanical advantage to the bucket (worse and worse to the cylinder) as the bucket goes further into the extreme dump position.

 

[mikester]

I think the bottom line is some people can operate equipment for a lifetime and never break anything, other people manage to break things doing even simple jobs like back dragging.

This is why I do not lend out expensive tools or let just anybody operate my equipment. You can't teach common sense.

 

[big bubba]

assume your machine has the float function for fel, i'd use that & let gravity do the job

 

[SmallChange]

assume your machine has the float function for fel, i'd use that & let gravity do the job

That's certainly safer, but also less effective. FWIW the Messics video shows him lifting his wheels at least some of the time. I do have float, and use it when it's effective enough.

 

[big bubba]

wise to err to caution as you have done by posting the thread. good luck with the project

 

[2manyrocks]

The FEL cylinders on a 25 hp subcompact are not the same size and strength as those on a larger tractor.