Getting really close to pulling the trigger on a dozer for a tile plow. Choice is between a 2006 Deere 850j wlt (30" pads, long track, 4500 hrs, PAT) and a 2006 D6r LGP (36" pads, long track, system one, outside blade, screens, sweeps, new paint, bit of warranty, 6500hrs, dealer maintained) Both units need regrousered. Tile plow applications seem to prefer wider pads, and undercarriage wear is next to nothing since you don't do much turning. The 6r is $9k more, and is from a highly respected tractor dealer local to me. 850J from a respected dealer the other side of the country. Personally i'm sure either way would work out well. The Cat would likely hold its value a bit better. Thoughts on which way you all would go. Ken
Ken, for what it's worth, we ran a D6R and an 850C series 2 side by side in a dozing operation building roads. The 850 would consistently outwork the D6. I do realize this is a different application, but it's first hand experience, and I thought it might give you a little input. The 850C II was brand new, and the D6R had around 1000 to 1500 hours on it. The D6 was an owner operator we brought in, and we ran the 850.
I should have mentioned the Cat has about 3000 lbs over the deere (according to the specs I can find) I know those deere units are popular...there has to be a reason for it. Thanks Alco
Yes the Cat will have better resale but it costs more.The 850 will habdle a little better.I would not buy a 6 w/o diff.steer.Maybe it is now standard.The biggest item for me would be local service. Fewer hrs might mean some thing.
The 6 does have Diff Steer. Its in really good shape too. I have known the dealer for years, and they don't sell anything even the slightest bit suspect. I know the unit was on long term rent last summer, and the renter wanted the same tractor back this year. So it must work well. I'm not leaning either way really, so I was hoping to get opinions to lean me. Ken
Ken, that's a close call. 2000 hrs difference in total hours is quite a bit, and $9K less for another 2000 hrs of working life is pretty good. There are two things I can say. One - the Cat will still be going long after the JD is scrap on a boat to China. Two - When you want to move the tractor on, the Cat will still sell like a hot scone at a church fete, even with high hours; whereas the JD will take a lot longer to sell, and you'll have to take a lot less $$'s. I'd be doing some figuring on the back of an envelope as to just how much difference in resale price there would be when it's time to move the tractor on - and also figure exactly what the value of an extra 2000 hrs of tractor life is worth to you. Then there's also the cost of financing the extra $9K. As far as performance goes, I always reckon the high-performers aren't always the best buy. Allis-Chalmers used to always outperform Cats, but they spent a lot more time in the shop accordingly, too. If a tractor is producing unreal performance, then 9 times out of 10, reliability is going to suffer. Cats are plodders, they always have been - but they stop a whole lot less than other brands, too. To me, the local agent is probably the final important factor in the equation, as Illiceman says. A tractor is only as good as the parts and service backup. I'd also be checking on JD parts prices as compared to Cat. There can be some nasty surprises there. IMO, a D6R with diff steer, an extra 3000lbs, and well-maintained, is a no-brainer as to choice. All Cats have that reserve strength of build, and an unassailable parts/service backup, and top resale value. However, an equally-well-maintained 850J with a first class dealer backup, 2000 hrs less, and with $9K extra in your pocket, could be the right answer in the bottom line figures, for your requirements.
What type of tiling will you be doing must? Pattern tiling or random around curves.Deere would do curve better because hydra-stat trans.Cat even with dif steer will not quite have as much power to both tracks as Deere,does little more slipage. Both used as a plow machine could have transmission heating problems,compared to dedcated tile plow with extra cooling systems. The extra weight of the Cat is a plus,Deere is a little light in the ass!Reason you see most of them carrying around a ripper on the rear.
Watglen, you did a nice job of summarizing the comparison between the two units being considered. As usual, you got good info in responses from members. (I am always especially in awe of Ozdozer's knowledge and ability to enlighten). My family has owned several older John Deere and Cat machines over the years. We found the John Deere didn't require as many specialized tools when doing repairs but did need to be repaired more. One sort of intangible factor: in some regions, Cat machines are considered more desirable to have on job sites. So much so, that I recall several years ago, one contractor bought an new import machine (I think it may have been a Hyundia crawler) and installed Cat decals on it. He claimed he could charge more on his hourly rate if the customer thought he was getting a Cat machine. Note how this potentially conflicts with Alco's experience where a contractor was less productive with a Cat on the same job. Maybe the Deere skinners in that case had more motivation to show up their rival. At any rate, I suspect that in the run of several years, the D6R would be your better choice.
I say ditto what construct'o said in his second sentence. there is a real good reason that dedicated tiling machines are sold.
If your Serious!!!!!! Here is one for sale already to go !!!!!!!
Construct'O, that's a whole lot bigger machine than he's looking for. To top it off, those 1050Cs are just repainted Liebherrs, and haven't enjoyed a very good reputation.
I'm not sure how the JD crawlers have improved in the last 25-30 yrs, but I do know when the first 750's showed up here in Oz around 1980-81, they had an awful lot of overheating problems with them for the first few years. Hydrostatic transmissions don't normally do all that well on long, steady, heavy pulls, because of the amount of heat they produce. If you're not working much in moderate-to-high ambient temperatures, then maybe this is not such a problem.
that was his point, alco/oz.. one look at a bron and you can see that plow tiling is a whole different ball game, if you don't want to trench.
we ran quite a few 850j machines on the rightoway. didnt really have any problems out of the machine itself to speak of. we did have a lot of problems with the PAT blade and cframe group. deere redesigned it to an outside cframe like a 6 and now call it a 850k. for what its worth though i would recomend the cat mainly because of parts availability and dealer service. just my two cents
I would not own a jd dozer bigger than a 700, I have ran a 850j a lot and it was the worst dozer i have ever been on, it had no power to the tracks, no down presure on the blade and has no traction. It also had alot of wireing problems and some trans problems. A 6r is more than worth 9k extra.
Weight difference between an 850JWLT and a D6RLGP is ~1300lbs. Because of the narrower tracks, the 850 will have ~.5 psi higher ground pressure. Check that the extra foot from the LPG/C-Frame doesn't put you into pilot car requirements in your area. I'd pick the 850 for the hystat, little bit of personal preference, and not wanting to pay more for more hours. The price will even out some with shipping, but it's still 2000 more hours. Some general dozer/plow info I've picked up. Dozers will pull better with a couple thousand pounds hanging off the front of the blade. Couple have guys have made concrete weight blocks that attach to root rake mounts. Wayne's builds mounted plows for both dozers. I'm not sure if they have quick-attach plates for the dozers.
Good point on the wt.Also pulling a tile plow will mean very slow speeds as well as very very good depth control.The slower the speed the more wt.needed to pull a given load.
Yair . . . OzDozer Never were truer words said! LOL. Cheers.
Looks like I'm going to go with the 6r. System one undercarriage. 36" pads. I'm a little worried about the track tensioners though. They are extended with 6-8" of chrome showing. Thats a lot more than i have seen in pics. Is that too much? CAT undercarriage inspection shows the various components are running 30-40% worn. Indications are that the undercarriage still has lots of life. But the track tensioners leave me wondering. What would you make of that? Ken
Update I rented the 6r i had picked out for a week pushing dirt. Turns out, this tractor, which i thought was in great shape, left a lot to be desired. Most importantly, the tracks were toast. Engine/trans/hydraulics were good, not great. Blew a hydraulic line at the 30hr mark. I sent it home and the dealer gave me a nice break on the rental. Moving on, I found a virtually identical unit at another dealer, and CAT was in the process of installing new tracks and extreme service pads. They installed rebuilt idlers as well, and did an inspection on the rest of the undercarriage. The dealer was re-pinning and bushing the hardnose, cleaned rads, and did a complete service on the whole rig. I did the SOS on the engine/trans/hyd/finals and it all came back green. This tractor is coming tomorrow for a weeks rent ( again, when you spend your own money you want to be sure) Rent comes off the purchase price. In the meantime, I did a deal on getting a plow built, and electo-hydraulic controls. Also spent a few weeks in school getting the courses I need to work toward certification as a full fledged tile installation contractor ( for what its worth). Ontario has very rigorous requirements before you can install tile for others. Its a real pita, but it ensures quality work gets done. Doing lots of quoting too, so that is promising. Ken
d6r owner pulling a pull type plow ive got a 9pn (series 1 lgp) i pull a zd soil max plow. i run in pretty good dirt around here, but she does really good, like 8" boot 5.5ft deep in really good conditions by myself. i run a d155 komatsu counterweight up frt on my reinforced root rake mounts. works nice as i had root rake need also. it just unpins and i can go doze in the field also. takes prob 5 min to unpin with a guy helping. without the counterweight the dozer rears back pretty bad. i rented a 6xl before i bought the setup i got. my grousers are 40% and plan on welding on extentions down the road. everyone i know who has a dozer smaller then 60k lbs runs a stringer or counterweight up front. pulling with it reared back is hard on the back of the undercarriage. i run a honda self contained for the hyd on the plow, usually around 1250-1350rpm's. no heat problems, but if you got a weaker tq convertor maybe to could be a issue.if i remember right, the gauge doesnt make it normal (10 oclock on gauge) most the time and about 11-12 on a real hard pull....i think 2 oclock is getting hot i do think a deere would be better for the turns and if your going to run the hyd off the dozer because you can run higher rpms when pulling....i only have a hard time turning sharp or when the ground is really hard, like no till cornstalks in a dry year....in those situations i just push the frt of blade with the backhoe....ive has to do it three times in one year total.
tj, I would love to see some pics of your rig. I plan on rigging up the stringer and basket on the blade with some sort of quick on-off arrangment. Others thought the JD would have issues with overheating on long pulls. This 6r series 3 is just a beast, i'm loving it. The track and pads are brand new. I get to rub the paint off. Pushes like a beast. Digging a lagoon right now. The plow I am having built is like this one. This one is mounted on a 750j It is a near parallel beam design, with power swing, and tonnage. Tonnage is a function that allows you to add or subtract weight on the plow by adjusting the up/down pressure in the lift cylinder. You can lift the rear of the tractor off the ground. Its used in soft bottom conditions to prevent the plow from dropping below grade. It will reach 6' comfortably, but likely wont be able to pull that deep. I pull a trench, and straddle it. Works well and its quick. I have boots to 12" coming. Power feeder and mast pop off so i can drop the shank and doz without it. The money is in the controls. They are nearly more than the plow. CAT sent me instruction for hooking the plow to the hydraulics, and I have a hydraulics technician doing it so it isnt cobbled up. I expect it should work well, unless there is something I haven't heard about yet. From what i understand, turning is simply a matter of swinging the plow to the side and steering like a rudder. How do you like your soil max?
update Update, Little by little this plow is coming together. Hydraulics are up and working well so far. Wiring up the controls Monday, then test and certify. Initially the plow looked better than it worked, plunged badly, hard to control, impossible to grade. Industry consultant had me add a little plate under the shoe and that brought it into line. Much more stable and predictable now.
Nice looking rig there Watglen Thanks for the update
Update, I wanted to pass along my experience so far on this tile plow. This plow had a strong (overwhelming) tendency to lift the rear end. Under all conditions, with plow in the soil even a little, the rear of the tractor would lift off the ground several feet. This happened as soon as forward motion started. I had some experts, as well as the designer, suppliers, and everyone else involved with putting this rig together. We quickly concluded that the top pin at the cab window was too high. There is a similar plow with slightly different geometry out working. It seems to work well. So we undertook to lower the pin 8" Took a lot of doing, and especially a lot of line boring, but it did the trick. Tractor runs nice and level now. Pulls really easy when the runs are shallow, and pulls like an angry rhino when the runs are deep. Long story short, there is more to designing a tile plow than pulling out the welder.
Glad to hear you are getting things sorted out.Been a long summer and expensive one here also.Do you wish you had just went with a dedicated tile plow now? Farmers here are buying there own (tractor) tile plows faster then they can build them,then they show up on the for sale sites . I always hate to see something new having to be rebuilt.Good luck
how are you doing, Denny? hope everything is ok..
Well, no, not really. Its a long drawn out thought process that got me to this point. I started out with a tractor drawn 3pt hitch plow of my own design. It worked well, but had a few shortcomings. Wet weather was an issue, as was heel lift in deep pulls. I looked at a drawbar plow, and after discussing it with a manufacturer I decided against it. This fellow does a bunch of tiling and sells drawbar plows. He walked me through the various scenarios including articulated 4wd, quad-trac, and dozer on a drawbar plow. In the end I was never convinced heel lift wouldn't be an issue at some point. Traction is always an issue. So I moved toward a double link plow, which is what everyone puts on dozers. However, the manufacturer was just reentering the business, and still had a few things to work out. Double link plows operate in float at all times. Often you will see the dozer needs front end wt to stay level. This plow design actually wants to roll the tractor forward on its nose, and uses an advanced hydraulic control circuit to apply a constant lift on the lift cylinder. It works really well, and adds up to something like 30,000# to the tractor. The harder it pulls the more downforce you can apply, and traction is not an issue. It works really slick (with the current redesign) Long story short, I believe in this approach enough to promote it, or buy another. Plus, if i need to I can still use the blade to push out cuts, backfill, carry the stringer. Remove the shank in about 15 minutes and it works even more like a dozer. Ken
well good job watglen! the amount of man hours in your project must be staggering, just to get it built, let alone refabricate things that go blooey. I would enjoy watching it work.. one thought.. might be a bad one too, but it might help if the top link placement was variable..could be a track on the mounting plate with rollers on the end of the cylinder rod, would take another hyd circuit but this might help you find the right spot it needs to be in while pulling?
i dont mean to sound dumb but what is tile cutting? and what is its purpose
Don't think that idea didn't cross my mind while I was trying to figure out where to move the pin. It cost so much to rework that you don't want to get it wrong again. I took an educated stab at it, seems about right now. The pitching of the tractor is a function of the moment applied by the top and bottom links. That changes constantly with soil conditions, depth, angle of the links, etc etc etc. It interesting that when the pin was in the original location it took a lot of management to keep the plow in the ground. The lift force is controlled by a small dial on the control panel. It was a fine line between the dozer ass lifting and the shank lifting. Took constant attention, and occasionally it got away from me. The plow would just pop right out of the ground. With the new design you can basically set the pressure at around 400 psi and leave it alone. If you feel your seat start to rise, dial it up a tiny bit, and you drop back down. Its also an interesting thought experiment to consider how that pin location affects the handling of the tractor. As far as seeing it work, I would love to get a video, but I am pretty busy running it. Lots of videos online doing this sort of thing though. "tile cutting"??? Not sure where you are getting that.
Got some video finally, not the best but it's what I got. http://youtu.be/crniaEPL-SY http://youtu.be/9fyqsiabBrk Hope the link works.
Tile plow I was wondering what brand of plow you have. What is their contact info. Thanks John
Hi nd, She's a custom built rig. Kind of a knock off built by a menonite fellow. He built 2 like this and gave up. There is more to building a tile plow than you think. This one works well now, but took a pile of rework to get it there. Ken
Pulling point I noticed in the pictures that the bottom linkage is mounted to the machine above the centerline of the frame, much higher than where a drawbar would be, wonder if that played a part in your weight transfer issues. The knife works like a lever in these setups pulling hard on the lower link and pushing even more so on the top. I really like some of his design, I think the mounting may have been the downfall. John QUOTE=watglen;496744]Hi nd, She's a custom built rig. Kind of a knock off built by a menonite fellow. He built 2 like this and gave up. There is more to building a tile plow than you think. This one works well now, but took a pile of rework to get it there. Ken[/QUOTE]
Yes, thats right. Actually, the whole geometry is an exercise in compromise. What I mean by that is, the ideal geometry varies with operating conditions. So deep, shallow, hard, soft, etc etc etc all comes into play. Our problem initially was the top link on the dozer was too high, causing it to roll up on its nose. And the deeper you got, it worse it got. So we rebuilt it lower, and that helped a lot. However, there is no right place for it. Under its current design, it still rolls forward on the nose when you get deep and hard pulling. It isn't as bad as before, and you control it hydraulically. If you mount it too low, it starts to lift the nose. Its all about tradeoffs. I was talking to a long time employee of the company this plow kinda copied. His company has many decades designing plows, learning, redesigning. He said when they did this design they rebuilt it 3 times to get it close enough to sell it. This being their 3rd official design. So even the best of the best can't say "build it like this and it will work" There is a lot more to it than you think. And, to make things worse, the geometry and forces don't scale. So scaling up a geometry from a D4 to a D8 is doomed to fail. The D8 is a whole new ballgame as they say. It was a learning experience, glad I didn't pay for it.