Boxblade Road & Gutter Maintenance

[3RRL]

Hi Tom,
Yup, cutting in gutters into your dirt road will sure help the rest of it. When your road dries out a little, cut them in while the sides are still soft. It will be a lot easier than when they harden up. If your road leaves ruts from water draining off of it, try to visually determine where the start is and get your gutters cut into those areas, channeling the runoff into/over the side in a lower spot, away from the rest of the road. It makes a big difference the following rainy season. It's still raining up at your place huh? It's rained here too, but not much. This last weekend we had a slight drizzle but hardly enough to get the road wet.

Hi Joe,
Can't get anything by your sharp eyes!. Funny you saw that because a fried of mine noticed the same thing, and I hadn't even noticed it myself until he pointed it out. I don't mind the wear so far, but when it starts creeping back farther I'll have to weld some plate to it. I know you've used the heck out of your boxblade bulldozing reverse. It sure cuts good that way.

Hi Dave,
I'm glad you found the thread and photos of some help. To see what I did to my drag links, go to that post above "Pushing in New Trails and Roads". On post #12 and #17 shows what I did to reinforce the drag links. Mine are 1" thick by 4" tall and I still bent them. After straightening them out, I took 2 old scarifier shanks from my boxblade. They are hardened to some degree and are 3/4" thick by 3" wide. I welded them to the underside of the drag links ... making sure they were out of the way of the sway stabilizers and other stuff. I used 7018 AC stick with several passes each side to build up a 3/4" gusset. Now they are rigid as all get out.

Hi Brian,
I know where that is. It is just a little Northeast of Julian, right? I've driven into your area before and it is very nice country. You are still not that far away, because my city home is in Rancho Cucamonga. My brother lives in San Diego. There was a fire out there in Julian a few years back when we camped there. Did it get up to around your area? BTW, I've many of your posts and I know you use the heck out of your tractor and boxblade too. You have that heavy duty Gannon don't you?

 

[MtnViewRanch]

Hi Brian,
I know where that is. It is just a little Northeast of Julian, right? I've driven into your area before and it is very nice country. You are still not that far away, because my city home is in Rancho Cucamonga. My brother lives in San Diego. There was a fire out there in Julian a few years back when we camped there. Did it get up to around your area? BTW, I've many of your posts and I know you use the heck out of your tractor and box blade too. You have that heavy duty Gannon don't you?

Hi Rob, answers are , yes, about a 30 min drive & yes, burned about 75 of our 80 acres. Lucky for me it only did about $5000 damage to my stuff. On the plus side, it cleared most of our land of unwanted brush. And yes I have a Gannon Rollover scraper that I am very happy with. One of my commercial suppliers is in Rancho Cucamonga, used to go & pick up material there all the time.

Later

 

[MJPetersen]

Rob,

I noticed that when you were showing your tob and tilt that you had very nice straight, unreinforced lift arms, but when you were showing the dozing technique that you switched to the ones that you modified. Is that because the modification gets in the way or just because? I understand why in pushing mode that the links have to be stronger. I was just curious about having extra lift arms.

If you were to modify your box blade again with the hydraulic, would you do it the same way? I read your posts on the mod.

Mike in Warsaw

 

[3RRL]

Brian,
If you ever get out this way again to see your supplier, PM me and we'll get together for a cup of coffee.

Mike,
If you look closely at the drag links, they appear to be straight but they really have a bend on both ends ... sort of like a "Z" shape except if you make the top and bottom of the Z go vertical instead of horizontal. Check the photos out again and you will see the ones I reinforced are the same ones as before, except I painted them red and added that "T" bar on the bottoms.
Here's a picture of them reinforced. See how they have a bend at each end? Those little dudes in the middle are my sway stabilizers.



About my hydraulic boxblade....
If I had to do it over again, I would probably do it in the same way. Thinking about it, I would have to power the raising and lowering of the scarifiers somehow and also be able to hold them at the level I want. I read where another poster suggested a linkage type of lifting mechanism with a pivot on the back of the boxblade. But because I had MY boxblade to work with, and the way it has it's 3pt top link hitch, I would still have to separate the inner scarifier bar from the outer ones to raise all 7, so it would still take 3 lifter bars. Stabilizing those bars when they raise up ... either by gears or linkage would still be required. So yes, I probably would do it the same way again. Now if I had a different boxblade to start with, maybe the linkage with a pivot like the Gannon's might be easier to do?
Thanks for asking.

 

[Highbeam]

Because of Rob's hydraulic scarifiers, it seems to take half an hour to pull all the pins and adjust the position of my rippers now. I even have a nice owie where I whacked my thumb into the BB while removing a stubborn spring clip.

 

[3RRL]

I even have a nice owie where I whacked my thumb into the BB while removing a stubborn spring clip.

Joe,
How about when you drop them in the dirt and can't pick them up with gloves on. Or worse yet, losing one in the dirt ... I hated that! Those spring clips suck. I never have to move mine, but if I wanted to get more or less depth, the scarifier holder bars have an easy adjustment in them. I pull out the lynch pin that hold the the bigger scarifier pin in place and move the scarifier up or down. Then line up the holes and slip the big pin back in and secure it with the lynch pin.
Here is a good picture before I finished the boxblade, of how it looks.



Here's what it looked like before.



And this is when I got done with it.




They have never fallen out and ... LOL ... I have never used them yet.
But I think I will pretty soon though? I'm planning on attaching 3 or 4 furrowers to longer shanks that will fit into those slots so I can "plow" my food plot a little easier with the box blade. I have draft control after all, so I might as well take advantage of it. Think multi-purpose boxblade.

 

[crbr]

A very interesting thread Rob. I looked at the work you did to machine fit the lifts. I envy your setup.

Very nice indeed. I am compiling that thread (last year's work you did) into a Word Document and Excel in order to keep it on file. I have captured the text and the pictures (other than a PDF screen print). I'll do this thread next.

:tiphat: