Heh guys, I hope I'm in the right spot. I have a 5t backhoe and I'm trying to figure out how to get my driveway straight. I have an old Mitsubishi ws500 articulated backhoe with a 4 in 1 on my 2 acre property. The machine is a bit sloppy and the hydraulics drop a bit. I have about 150m of driveway which I want to re shape. My issue so far has been that the bucket just follows the bumps and I don't see how a grader blade would be any different, seeing as it would be hanging off the front. To be fair, my skills aren't great and that is unlikely to change, this is a hobby. So something relatively idiot proof would be ideal and a smudge bar would seem to be the answer. I can angle the blades vertically by hanging the backhoe out the side so the only thing I need is to be able to angle the blades to pull dirt to the middle(if there is terminology for this, please tell) I was thinking of doing this with additional grab points for the 4 in 1, ie 4 grab points total on the smudge bar so I can grab on a diagonal both ways if that makes sense. Would this sort of thing work? Do you think multiple 50mm ish high blades on the angle would shift dirt sideways or would it just fall over the top like a straight smudge bar? The ones I have seen use shs, would I need to use angle or something that cuts deeper to work with hard road base? Or rippers? Does anyone have a better idea? Looking forward to hearing from you guys and thanks in advance
Ussually when i grade with my backhoe i like to cut into the Material then flatten my bucket to cut out the high spot and a little bit of the low spots then i pull back the material because if i dont cut into the material even if you fill in the low spots as soon as you drive over them they get compacted by the wieght of the machine and it comes out sloppy. I just did this pad with my backhoe because i could not pull my skid from another job and we needed to get it done. the backhoe is not the best tool.for the job but some time.you need to make a flat head when all the fastners are phillips. To get it so you she water to both side i would give it a rough grade with the hoe portion on one area and finish it off woth the loader
I can't say how a smudge bar would work, never used one on a bucket. To make it "automatic" it would have to be much longer, long enough to span most of the distance between high spots. The 4 grab points makes a lot of sense to me, that would help a lot with finish grading, go over it at one angle, then the other angle, then straight across. That won't loosen up the road and reshape it though, not automatically. If you can't dig with any control going forward, hit just the highest spots going straight forward, then you can even up a little by scraping the high spots backwards. Hit it at one angle, then the other angle until you have enough loose to pull back to the low spot. The angles will help smooth out the corrugations.
Heh guys, thanks for the replies. monster, I think the main difference between you and me is that you have skills. I am really too scared to mill up the whole road and then hope can get it flat again. I have had limited success so far and I am never going to spend the hours on the machine to be awesome with the bucket(i don't think)In fact, it seems to be the loose stuff I have the most problems with, the bucket just digs in that much easier. I can get the hard stuff not bad by back blading in float mode but it still just follows the bumps. We are not talking corrugations here, more gentle wallowing if you will. Delmer, I was hoping to use the angle to pull material from the sides into the middle a bit like a grader. I was thinking of using 50mm angle in an upside down v instead of the more common box section to get better cutting. Just not sure if they would be high enough and if the material would just fall over the back and not shift sideways much. Obviously I would have maybe 4 or more cutters. I could potentially have rippers built in. The inspiration comes from those atv tow behind sort of box graders. I want to be able to crown though and also lift it for u turns. With the 50mm angles though it should work forwards and backwards. In terms of the length to span the lows, I was thinking maybe 2.5m long and it would be about 2.2m wide. I guess the cutters don't need to be from end to end, the rails is the main issue, maybe I could just make them longer. I want to be able to do the occasional reshape but also to go out on a Saturday morning, give it a once over and make it look awesome...the go karts tend to leave a bit of a mess. I am also secretly hoping this might serve other purposes like top dressing the paddocks but don't want to complicate things too much just now
I work with a guy that has been running a backhoe for 40 years. He's the guy that you send if you want it done right, but not fast. First or second gear, half throttle. They bought him a new LB110 New Holland. He put over 8000 hours on it, and the only marks on it were the ground contact points. He is a big fan of New Holland's front bucket, as the heal is made at a 90 degree angle. Now I can do my thing on the grader for asphalt prep, but I can't even tie his boots on the backhoe, front, or back. From watching him, I notice that he always grades with the bottom of his bucket flat, and unless he is pulling material away from a building, at away from the edge of the road, he never tips the bucket, and back drags with the cutting edge. He gathers material from both sides of the road, and pushes it to the center. He then goes to work, and back drags the center with the heal of the bucket. Now you have a higher center. Then he starts dragging either side of the crown, always in control, never on float. Anyway, it's hard to explain, bit he does his thing, you roll it, and 9 times out of 10, I never even have to grade it. He claims that the worst thing you can do is put your bucket on float. He also said that when you back drag wit the heal of your bucket, there is less of a chance of of the long flat bottom gouging the road than the back of a sharp cutting edge.
http://www.roadrunnerblade.com/skidSteerModels.html Build something like that and cut some trapezoids out of heavy plate. Grab the traps witht he 4n1 and go to town on your road. If you want to get fancy you can make the angle of the 2 cutting edges moveable. And if that's what Aussies call a smudge bar i'll go be quite now.