Has anyone on site used a brush cutter on a 450 Case crawler ? Will a common pull behind bush hog work ?
The shaft on the back of your 450 isn't the right splines for a brush cutter. And they're not made for the torque that it would see. If you want to put a brush cutter on you need to get one that is hydraulically operated.
So it's made for a winch ?
Yes that's all it's for.
Thanks Coy for that valuable info
I've heard of a Case 350 dozer running a mower, but I don't know if the guy who told it had actually done it.
Ok. I was only wanting to cut steep pasture field grass/broomsage....no heavy duty brush cutting. Ill find another method........maybe DR brush cutter on 4wheeler
That'll work even better maybe
Buy an engine driven hog, or use the blade instead of a hog. If you were farther north, I'd say bulldozer over frozen ground. It works much like shaving your face. I twisted the transmission shaft on a farm tractor doing hog work. Bush hogs come in two drive trains. One uses shear pins, the other uses a stack of clutch disks. I heartily endorse the shear pin variety. My dozer has a constant running PTO. I wouldn't think you'd want that either. Many times you want to stop the hog.
a bulldozer on steep frozen ground not a great idea. the mower on a quad is a nice idea. or get a neighbor to do it
As catman says, if it is very steep crawlers slide sideways on frozen ground, until they hit something, then they roll over.
That's true unless you have real good grousers on pads frozen slope is not a good idea.
Local loggers use "corks" I believe the correct word is caulks. A short piece of grouser stock is welded to the grouser. The favorite pattern is two short pieces on one grouser, One in the middle on the next. The boys who worked for a large scale logging business used to talk of a crawler moved to the woods before it'd been corked. They said you'd need new pants. When they rolled over You'd either spill battery acid on them, or soil yourself. Either way you needed pants afterward
It is called corking or ice lugs. If going this route make sure to have a good clean ground connection on each individual track pad you are welding on. You want the current to take the shortest route possible.
I weld old nuts to the grousers on the skid loader to help keep it between the ditches on hard pack snow & ice . HeavyEquipmentForums
I took a lot of fascinating and scary rides down frozen slopes as steep as 3/1. The taller the grousers the faster I went ! D6s and D8Ns. One time in particular I will never forget is how far water flew through the air when I hit the bottom of the slope and broke through the ice.
You sir, are a lucky man. I guess I am too. I've never experienced it, (I'm a coward). The brother of an in law of mine had a big crew of loggers. He once bought ten John Deere 350 crawlers at once. They were delivered to the woods without being caulked. That winter there were a lot of new wool pants bought. After tumbling sideways down a mountain, if you didn't get battery acid on your pants, you at least soiled yourself. These tractors are NARROW, TALL, and roll easily. I dare say JD 350 is the most plentiful logging tractor in VT. Once loggers made a killing on US Forest Service logging contracts. Very few loggers were able to meet the federal requirements to be eligible to bid, there was no competition. Federal timber cruisers were notorious for underestimating the value of timber on a lot. Contracts were 5 year. If you pay for timber five years from now, at today's value, let it grow five years, and quality jumps as size of log increases. It was worth the trouble to seek USFS contracts. Federal specifications for acceptable tractors were (I believe) taken from John Deere 350 specifications. Pay for half what you get, pay five year ago prices, add five years growth, grade improves with size. You'd almost have to do something wrong to fail to prosper.