Found a guy that has a Fleco V shear blade came off a d8h he thought it was from a 63-65 model and that it would fit my d8k I have some info measurements on it this is what he told me. center to center of trunion balls Clamps 117 inches 115 inches from trunion mount to where the curve starts along the push arms 113-114 inches between push arms 12ft over all outside to outside the cutting edge measures 15 inches wide I know that d8h and 8k are pretty much the same but?
Cool ! I take it that your in Florida now & cant just run out & measure the Cat D8K ?
no that job did not work out the guy was a dud however something better came along I just returned from Tennesee. they are turning me loose on shearing raking burning over 1000 plus acres the d8k is out in the mud. and 20 miles away.
Ok , yeah member DPete might chime in as he has owned some D8K's We are in the mud as well fiat with all the rain / ice .It's winter time . Tennessee job cleanup after the forest fires ?
no just cattle rancher everything is pretty flat also so not on a mountain soil is to wet at the moment, looked sandy a bit this sounds like a big job but it would be small to a Texan or louisana man it was clear cut about 8-10 years ago so there is some stumps biggest I seen id 20" and then there are some trees 8" mostly and brushy undergrowth they just want to shear it sweep it up and burn it.
Got it fiat41b . I would proceed with caution & extreme prejudice ? Ask allot of questions while talking to the customer ? No one in my area is even thinking about clearing ground for cattle ? Not disputing what the man wants to do just make sure he is able to pay you for your service Bro !
Cat blades interchange between H-s and K-s with modification. I don't know anything about Fleco. The push arms connect to the blade differently on a K than on a H but you have push arms on your Fleco blade so that should be ok. What's different is the way the lift cylinders connect to the back of the moldboard. H-s use a pin through the rod end, K-s have a split rod end that clamps around a ball welded to the moldboard. If you replace your lift cylinder rods or modify the Fleco moldboard to a K spec, you should be ok, as long as your Fleco blade dimensions are similar to an H blade in all other respects.
yea I did notice that the fleco used strait pins my k has the ball style I was mostly concerned with the width of the push arms and the trunions cat performance book says a 8k has 7.0 ft track gauge 8h is the same at 7.0 cat performance book says a 8k has 10ft width and 8h has 9.1" width would that be outside of trunion or track frame and or standard track pads 22" or 24" These farmers must have it going on pretty big out fit and they also have new cat dozer with kg rake ect they will pay me daily if thats how I would like it. hoping to get over 40 acres a day sheared with 9h and 8k
Fiat, we have a few cattle ranchers in my area (NE Tx)that clear big sections of land like you are talking about. Most folks end up buying thier own equipment for a project this size though. Last summer I cleared 210 acres of grown up locust thicket to run my cows on. This sounds like an interesting project hope it goes well for you. Are you going to burn the brush? That's were we are at now, think we have burned about 50-60 piles and have that many more to go. Burning that much brush is a scary deal. Keep thinking sooner or later one is going to have a run away on me. Good luck with the blade there is a slicer blade on craiglist in my area for sale. Looks like it would make brush clearing much easier.
js300 they did get a new cat 6 t with kg and rake very nice machine and probably have done 200 ac they just want to speed up a bit so its shear with the 9 and 8 some how I got tangled into cleaning up the mess and burning it does not have to be spotless, that was my biggest concern, I took a few pics but my camera went dead if I can get 2 acres per hr per machine then I'm doing great hope it does go well. I found a rake 40 ft wide its in aust. and folds up for 22000 don't know if is available looks like its fitted to a 9g or h. I wish I had some thing like that. rockland manufacturing made a 24' wide rake 9ft tall for the fiat41b I have a copy of it and production #'s it was clearing 6 acres per hrs at 250' push stacking into windrows 12-15' high. wish I could find that old rake Bowen Contracting out of Muskegon Mi. that project was early 70's waste water management in Muskegon county Mi.
A rake that big would be something to see. We have a local guy farming and ranching around 14,000 acres he has all the equipment you could imagine. When he decides to clear something they can really get after it. The guy I had running my little 850 case could do about 1acre in 5-6 hours in the really thick stuff. I think it took around 450 hours on the dozer and 200 on the skid steer to clean up 210 acres. Sure would have been nice to have equipment like you are talking about.
As there so too here as to clearing for cattle. Price is down for now but while was up some did do some straightening up for more pasture. Only issues we have is multiflora roses, honey locusts and erosion from too much cleared ground allowing runoff to move too fast. Damned rose and locust come up from root stock, fast as you take down heavy trees the roots emerge. We use a mix of 2-4-D, Crossbow and Tordon as a general spray for new pastures as the thorns erupt. Can give them a run for the money but have to keep it up every few years which also kills off the clover and other leafy ground plants, slows but not harmful to base grasses. Between cost of clearing and additional spraying pasturage opening has all but stopped.
DMiller, 95% of what we cleared was Honey Locust. It's amazing how fast they take over a pasture around here. We use Grazon Next to kill the regrowth, does a great job and isn't too hard on grasses. I've found that spraying pastures every year is the best money spent so it is figured into the cost every year. You are right though doze a locust down and 10 more come back from the broken roots. The other thing that suprised me was the 10-15' tap roots on them.
Yair . . . With large tractors and wide rakes you can sometimes near double production by pushing into heaps rather than windrows. Just work back and forth on a face, let the rake load up and let the heaps form where they will, the tractor will tell you . . . nothing pisses me off more than watching a tractor struggle to make it to the windrow to keep the windrow straight. This rake would work well on that application . . . . Cheers.
That's like the one I was talking about but it has sections that look like you could fold up, is there any video's on these working? If I had that 40'er 5 passes at a 200ft push would just be shy of 1 acre thats a lot for one tractor.
That's cool ! sounds like you may be on to something pretty good fiat . Did not mean to sound pessimistic in post #6 just use a little caution . If they are big grain farmers the cattle operation might be a hedge against low corn price ? Cheap corn feed it to the cattle ? My Grand Dad would do this only on a smaller scale back in the day . Farmed around 150 acres of crop ground and had about 200 head of cattle . Would sell part of the crop depending on price , store some in the crib /silo, and the cattle ate the rest in form of chopped silage & ground corn feed to fatten them out quicker . These guys may be looking at the same set up only on a bigger scale to combat market price fluctuations ?
A little trivial but Rockland also had a relationship with Fiat-Allis back in the day building a clearing blade for the HD 41 . This blade was built for two 41's and 60 ' foot wide ! I like the second picture of the Grove TM setting it on the flatbed trailer http://www.rocklandmfg.com/index.php?page=about-rockland
big daddy it was called
Yeah fiat , imagine it was an impressive unit with the two HD-41's behind the 60 foot wide clearing blade . But then again most of the time smaller units in numbers win on projects .
Thorns I had a friend in Mt Vernon with 140 acres he said was covered in thorns. I assumed locust. How did you clear yours. Thanks
Popsied, I used a couple different methods. I started with a Skid Steer and a CLFab tree puller. This worked good and pulled the trees roots and all. Probably did 75-80 acres like this. Once I bought the dozer and found an operator he just pushed the bigger ones over and angled the blade a popped the smaller ones out. Locust trees are pretty soft which causes problems with pushing or pulling them. They kind of tend to just bend over, good thing is they have a shallow bulb with a long tap root so once you get the hang of it they come up fairly easy. The trees seemed to be either 4-6" and 20' tall or 1-2" 6-10' tall. Both sizes had thier own issues. It was unbelievable how thick and growed up this place was and how it looks now. Most days I thought I needed my head examined for buying it. Looks great now though. I'm guessing you mean Mt. Vernon, Tx? If so that's about 20 miles from me.