Ballast Bucket

catdozer · Feb 3, 2012

Came across this old HEAVY John Deere bucket and that we never use anymore. and well i was figuring i could make this into a nice ballast box or ballast bucket!

so i mounted the bottom hooks and made it fit the Imatch hitch. just have to make the toplink tomorrow. it weights abut 400 lbs empty so its going to get a layer of concrete on the bottom then filled with some old cast iron wheel weights, then fill with sand and top off with a cap of concrete and form a tray to put chains etc in. thinking im going to end up with about 900 to 1000 lbs of good ballast :thumbsup: hope this works well!! :licking:

catdozer · Feb 3, 2012

forgot pictures

:tractor:

JB4310 · Feb 3, 2012

Looks good, will make a handy carrier if you need to move alot of tools etc. Like having a trunk. looks big enough I'd leave it with just loose ballast so you could dump it if you need the storage space.
I made a contraption where I can put a regular JD front bucket on my I match too. Haven't really had a need for it yet.

JB

catdozer · Feb 6, 2012

Yep all finished I can't believe how nice it is. Got about an hour today of cleaning trails, and it was not tippy with the grapple on, here's what I did from start to finish, step 1- place 1 80# bag of quick crete, 2- put moist sand in, 3- put 2 large HEAVY rocks in, 4- put more sand in and metal scraps wet down and compact. 5- mix 3 more 80# bags and cap with concrete. But always put the PVC coupler in first, so I dug a 4in area out put a 4in coupler so can a pipe on or keep flat. It is very heavy!!! Just have to weld some stands on to keep it from rolling back.

catdozer · May 17, 2012

Here it is all finished, went into the woods with grapple it performed quite well, I thought I would loose visibility but I just lowered it and all was fine. Carrys tools quite well.