Looking at buying a grader attachment for a T-250 Bobcat to maintain our farm roads, anyone got comments pro or con on these attachments or advice on which ones work the best. Thanks
JBGASH, I have considered a grader to complement the capabilities of my SVL-90. I have researched this and the consensus is they may perform reasonably with loose material but to cut there is not enough weight up front to keep the blade down. I would get a demonstration or see someone in real world circumstances operating one.
KSSS is running a Bobcat grader on Case skid steers... I believe he has a thread here about it.
Here a video from a grader attachement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0e9foQim6c On the right site on youtube you finde more example videos
I just priced one... $26,000 including the laser equip.
I ran one for a couple days last summer covering tile trenches. They work ok. Like Legdoc says, they're ok for loose material, but not the best for cutting. For grading your roads, maybe this might be better. http://bilmfg.com/pages/cp.html
The heavy Bobcat models (the two largest models) work really well, I have 96" model and I think it is perfect. There is a larger model but I think in harder material it would ride up and not dig in more. I built a pretty complex large parking lot with it this year. With a high hp tracked machine behind it you can make some pretty impressive cuts with it in soft material. I worked it in some hard packed clay material and the blade will ride up, you can either make shallower cuts or run a scarifier over the area which is what I did. It is not really much different than any grader in that respect. I paid 13K for it new and about another $500 to get it converted over to run on my machine. I think for the money and the capability it provides, it is an excellent attachment. It absolutely works better in loose or soft material than hard material, it is not a 140H but after researching similar attachments that are available (not many) this BC grader is the best. Working in tight areas, or you don't do enough of this work to justify owning a full size blade it works well. It you need to cut hard clay or compacted pit run you may need to run a scarifier over the area first, really not a game breaker as far as I am concerned. I initially wanted to buy a compact grader, and I may at some point get one, but this attachment will certainly work for me in the mean time.
I have done miles of driveways and roads with a tractor and boxblade. The tilt on one side and hyd. toplink go together to make it one nice [and cheap] road grader.
Here a video from a GF Gordini grader attachement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqsTJemQkAA