I have been operating equipment for a little over 20 years mainly in the demolition field. Now I have been hired by a road building contractor mostly doing asphalt work running a roller, skid loader, backhoe, and excavator. Now they want to throw me out to the dogs on a Cat grader. I have been reading a lot of different posts and opinions see a lot of very valuable information out there. I always am willing to listen and learn from any experienced hand old or new. They're wanting me to follow a trencher on shoulder backfilling the trench and windrowing the leftover material off of the should to the grass. I imagine this is a piece of cake for all or most of you. But for someone who has never ever been in the seat of a grader I figure this might be a place to start and get some info. It would be nice to get out in a field somewhere and paly on the machine to get a feel for it. Anyhow I'd just like to say thanks in advance to anyone offering advice or tips.
hello amscontr, providing the trench isn't to deep and doesn't need to be back filled in layers and compacted, l would windrow all the material into and directly over the trench with your moulboard pitch in an upright position, them compact the windrow with a roller, or your grader wheels until tight, then blade off excess material beyond shoulder to the grass area you mentioned. if it is not being picked up and carted away, then l would roll the moulboad all the way forward and spread the material, having the moulboard rolled all the way forward helps drop the material directly under the blade and discourages the material from traveling along the blade and windrowing out the end, hope this helps.
I would not call being asked to run a grader as being "thrown to the dogs." You ought to see it as a bump up in my opinion. michael james up there seems to have a good way to do it in my opinion.
We are looking for help on an oil pressure problem we are having - the meter is pegged on our cat 12 99e - any help on cause or fix?
D Bader, you should be able to start a new thread after 3 posts. To try to answer your question though, if it's pegged in the green all the way to the right you shouldn't have a problem if it's a Cat guage like I'm thinking it is. Have you changed the oil and filters? If it's pegged all the way to the left in the red, you've got problems. I think the best thing to do in that case is sample the oil and send for analysis to a lab, then drain the oil and look for metal(s) and/or contamination like coolant, water, dirt, etc. If you see some, I think you can drop the oil pan on a 12E without pulling the engine and have a look around. If not, I think there's inspection panels on the side of the engine that you can take off. amscontr, That's a good way to learn motor grader functions and basics by backfilling. It'll come to you. Just keep asking questions and you'll get tips from some of the pros on here. I'm not one of them, but I can bluetop given a little time on subdivision roads I contract. Just don't have to produce like the pros do every day...
On top of what MJ said I would add "Don't fall in the trench!":nono
i have done trench that was about 18" wide and 4' deep... it takes a bit to get the hang of it... I would hook the dirt pile, and windrow it about 8" high over the ditch.. once you get a starting point then it's fairly easy.. articulate the machine to keep the front wheels out of the ditch...use the back wheels to compact...they may be about a foot below ground.. just make sure you have enough dirt in the ditch..as you don't want to get hung up... just drive along wind rowing and compacting at the same time... back up and repeat.. maybe a couple of times... we always left a small windrow on top of the trench, then feather the rest of the dirt away from the trench.. That way by the time the seeders came thru and if there was some settling they would have a bit of dirt to work with... Oh it took me about a week to get the hang of it... mostly because the 70 year old operator made it look so damm easy...