My B2650 story - New capabilities for us

[k0ua]

Great journal and pix. It looks like you are getting a lot of good use from your machine. If you want an extra measure of versatility and you have a lot of logs , brush and rocks to move, it is hard to beat a grapple. I would recommend the same grapple I have which is the EA 50 inch single lid "wicked" grapple . I realize you are getting along pretty good without it, but it just makes life easier. Instead of getting off to load brush onto your forks, you can just grab and go without leaving the seat with a grapple.

 

[allthumbs23]

the head thing freaks me out. nice tractor though

 

[tractorshopper]

In post #10, the shadow had a head...

Yes, we love pics of tractors doing work, headless or not!

 

[northtractorsearch]

Hello everyone,

That is an interesting point about the grapple. I believe that I would have to get another front remote put in. We will have to make note of how often we would find a grapple relevant and go forward from there. It looks really nice on your tractor James!

As far as our weekend, as always, another round of activities completed. I must say I am impressed with the capabilities of the tractor once again. The ground clearance is perfect for our uses, going over some rotten wood and rocky mud ground. I am also impressed with the ability to push some of the deadwood out of the way. Managed to get 2 jobs done that we aimed with the tractor, putting a dock in, and collecting firewood (rather than cleaning up junk trees). The high range speed is also nice when traveling great distances.


With the full day's rain on Saturday, we were a little bit worried when we were 50 feet into the bush from the driveway with 700lbs of tree on the loader. I can remember getting the lawntractor stuck just driving on flat ground... Anyway, we kept the load as low as possible, went slow, in low range, 4WD - had to lock the diff - but it climbed right over. I will have to get a picture of the boulder it climbed up. To the tractor it was a flat face probably 3/4 of a foot tall, but it backed the back wheels overtop then pulled the front wheels up - with 700lbs of tree in it!


I have some photos of all of the activities, if you are interested, read on.








First, collecting firewood

As I mentioned, unfortunately there was some rain and even snow this weekend:

To get to the tree we ended up basically driving the tractor into the bush off the driveway:

We had to push some other fell trees, brush and rocks out of the way, you can see it on the side, as well as the fact that there are no scrub trees in the path we took - pushed pulled bent or drove them out of the way:

You can just see the stump of the birch tree in the centre of the picture, as well as a log close to the base of the trunk that turned out to be rotten so we left it:

On the right-hand middle of the photo, 21 birch logs collected in 20" segments for splitting, piling and burning later. I think I am going to buy a woodsplitter, any recommendations? Anyway, to do this in the past it would have taken us a grueling full day, I believe it took us about 2 hours:

The dock comes next

One of the strangest things you might have seen lifted by a tractor - dock crib - not very heavy but awkward, even with 2 people. Especially on a slippery hill:

Once the cribs go in (the water is cold BTW, somewhere in the 40f range), are leveled, we can load the decking. You can see the skids that earlier photos were taken of:

We got pretty close with the tractor, we normally have to load them on a trailer and the lawntractor cannot pull it back up the subtle hill.

The end result:

Short version:

The ground clearance and ability to get through rough wet terrain is phenomenal. 20 hours so far. Let me know what you think of the stories. Hopefully this narrative is reasonably interesting to someone out there!

 

[k0ua]

Hopefully this narrative is reasonably interesting to someone out there!

Yes, it is.
One thing as a precaution. When descending hills, even slight ones like heading down to the lake, make sure you are in 4WD. An interesting phenomenon can occur on slippery surfaces going downhill if you are in 2WD the rear wheels can break traction and slip on the surface and no amount of braking with the brakes will stop your slide as it is the contact patch of the rear tires that do not have sufficient purchase with the ground that is the problem.

With 4 tires making contact with the ground and resisting a slide you are better off. But if you are in 2WD the front tires just "freewheel" and don't really help you any. You may not experience this as readily as you have a nice ballast on the back called a backhoe. This usually manifests itself on slippery ground, going downhill with a load of some sort on the front in the bucket or on the forks and insufficient ballast on the rear.

I have experienced this several times on various tractors, and seeing your tractor so close to the lake made me think of this. The immediate solution is to drop the bucket or load to the ground to act as a brake or if you are not going to hit anything at the bottom, you can just ride it out. But if there are obstacles, the end result can be a turned over tractor if you turn too sharply to avoid them.

Good luck and happy tractoring.

 

[motownbrowne]

the head thing freaks me out. nice tractor though

I agree. If you want to remain anonymous, just get off the tractor for the photo shoot...

 

[northtractorsearch]

I agree. If you want to remain anonymous, just get off the tractor for the photo shoot...

Yea we do this now.

Yes, it is.
One thing as a precaution. When descending hills, even slight ones like heading down to the lake, make sure you are in 4WD. An interesting phenomenon can occur on slippery surfaces going downhill if you are in 2WD the rear wheels can break traction and slip on the surface and no amount of braking with the brakes will stop your slide as it is the contact patch of the rear tires that do not have sufficient purchase with the ground that is the problem.

With 4 tires making contact with the ground and resisting a slide you are better off. But if you are in 2WD the front tires just "freewheel" and don't really help you any. You may not experience this as readily as you have a nice ballast on the back called a backhoe. This usually manifests itself on slippery ground, going downhill with a load of some sort on the front in the bucket or on the forks and insufficient ballast on the rear.

I have experienced this several times on various tractors, and seeing your tractor so close to the lake made me think of this. The immediate solution is to drop the bucket or load to the ground to act as a brake or if you are not going to hit anything at the bottom, you can just ride it out. But if there are obstacles, the end result can be a turned over tractor if you turn too sharply to avoid them.

Good luck and happy tractoring.

Good point about this, definitely we will do this from now on.



Well this weekend we found out we have a cracked bucket curl hydraulic line, so that put a bit of a damper on the activities as far as the backhoe goes. We were planning to dig an ~4x4 hole, but that was a no go. We'll get a replacement from Kubota for the future. We split a bunch of wood, using the loader to carry the wood to the pile. We cleaned up another old dock piece and trudged another path through the bush. We were able to take the aluminum boat out of the water with the loader and ropes around the hook.

One of the interesting tasks we completed was creating a step out of a piece of fell spruce and taking away the old rotten set of stairs. We don't have a sawmill, but we do have a chainsaw and bar guide that was given to us 15 years ago. We gave it a try and it came out pretty well. The chainsaw bar was about 2 inches too short to cut all the way through, so we stood it up with the tractor and did the other side:

The end result:

We will seal and add a non-slip cover later, as well as leveling it permanently, instead of with spare dock hardware

 

[Paystar]

Great pics Northtractorsearch! Good to see people getting good use out of their tractors and getting real work done.
You're like me, not to be seen in pictures, LOL.

I gotta say though you're making me real nervous seeing your bucket curled right back with all that split firewood in it. I'd hate to see a piece fall on your shiny new hood.

 

[northtractorsearch]

Hello everyone,

~35 hours on the tractor now. We fixed the hydraulic line and have had no additional problems in that regard.

Since the last post, we have taken down another couple trees and chipped some of them. Moving the wood chips is great with the bucket. We also dug out a rotted old (40 years) "culvert" (actually old boiler) and replaced it with a 1 foot diameter plastic culvert. We then moved 12 yards of gravel to both provide a roof to this culvert, and flatten out the driveway. Lastly, there were a couple rotten trees that we pushed down, one with the backhoe and one with the loader. A 3 foot diameter culvert needs to be replaced, we're still working on a plan for that. Photos of the existing activities are available if interested.

 

[mecan]

Glad that 2650 is working out for you, had mine since August and up to 160hrs, great little tractor.