First post here guys, just bought a tidy D31PL-18 with 4000 hrs on it, it'll be doing light scrub clearing here on our 30, 300 and 600ac farms here in Oz, just pushing lantana, guava tree, and other light scrub/small trees to clear way for more pastures. I started building a stick rake for it recently and doing the sums on the steel it looks like it'll weigh in at 420kg worse case, its a 3m rake. Now the old man is in my ear telling me the dozer probably wont even lift it. Gotta say, I'm doubting it quite highly as I've seen plenty of little D3 and D4 dozers with 3m rakes on them such as the ones below but he's starting to put some doubt in my mind. I only have the owners manual it came with, I have a shop manual on the way from the states but its probably another week away yet and i'll have the rake done this weekend but im worried it'll be pointless if the poor little dozer wont even lift it. So does anyone on here by chance have an idea or facts from a manual regarding the actual lift capacity of these machines at factory spec?? Otherwise I'll just have to wait and see after I finish it on the weekend. Pic below of an example and a pic of the big girl, don't have any pics of my rake but it basically will look like the pic below but with a bit of 40x40x3 rhs and mesh above the blade to help carry the harder to hold scrub like lantana that likes to roll over the blade. Thanks, Browndog.
If it is only 420KG's I think it will handle it ok for lifting. We made one for our old D6C about 2 or 3 years ago & it weighed in a tone ton & it handles it fine. You can really feel it on the front though, when you lift it up.