I'm planning to build a couple of 2+ acre ponds. will also be doing misc. farm work such as terrace and waterway recon. Soil types are mostly sandy loam to red shale with a small amount of clay. I see open bowl, ejection and elevating types. I have a td25c and a 250hp articulated 4wd ag tractor with PTO that I can use. The cycle times would be faster with the ag tractor (power shift) but the crawler would have a lot more grunt. Want the most bang for my buck. Thanks , Dirt
Several things to consider: 1. Elevating scraper needs hydraulics to run the elevator, does your tractor have the GPM to run the elevator fast enough without overheating? Does your dozer? Ejector type probably better, also a little cheaper to buy. 2. 250 HP might pull one in a very low gear but will load slow and should have dual wheels, travel will be faster. How far do you have to haul? If you have a long distance, dig and build a berm with dozer, then do the long haul with the tractor, the loose material will load faster with the tractor. 3. If you are going to cut shale, you either need teeth on the scraper or a way to rip it ahead of time. 4. Need seperate hydraulics to lift the bowl and run the ejector. controlling the cut depth requires pretty sensative control or you end up wiith ocean waves.
Teeth? what for? I cut shale with my Cat 70 and Cat 80 behind a D7 and D8 all the time without teeth. If your material is going to get boney enough that you need teeth or a riper than the material you have is not going to be much good for building a dam for a pond. Depending upon how hard the shale gets I would stay away from a a paddle wheel machine.
I was more thinking that he might try to pull the scraper with that farm tractor and I doubt it would pull through shale. Also some of the lighter scrapers won't have the weight to bite in.
a td-25 and a nice cat 80 or bucyrus pan would be ideal.
Couple of pics of IH TD25B & CAT 463 & CAT 80.
If you want to cut shale with a tractor/scraper combination leave everything but steel tracks at home. The tires or rubber tracks are going to be junk in no time. Have seen it happen around here over and over. You are going to need a push machine to get the job done. Here we even use a push Cat behind my machines when the going gets tough.
Dirt Poor, maybe we aren't looking at the same animal. Are you thinking of the scrapers as shown in the pictures or the smaller Miskin, Reynolds type scrapers that we see behind the Big JD FWD tractors, up to 3 units in a row?
I'm open to any suggestions. It seems that the Reynolds type pans are the latest, greatest, coolest toys at the present time. But I never have been cool. It looked to me like my td25c would pull one of those in two. I kind of like the idea of the old cable scrapers converted to hyd, but they aren't cheap either. There are quite a few Hancock pto elevating scrapers around here. Maybe just use one of them on the ag tractor and push windrows with the dozer. Dirt
Reynolds is out of business. Why double handle the material by putting it in a windrow than load and haul with a second machine. Scrapers don't load that great out of a windrow either unless they are a paddle wheel machine. Get a scraper, put it behind steel tracks and cut and load at the same time. Do it that way here all of the time.