It was time to make my three dump truck loads of road base (used to build a ramp for unloading my dozer) go away today. I used several bucket loads to build some walkways, but had a big pile left to play with and improve our road. I did manage to quickly spread the base around but it looked like an angry ocean with waves and swells. After about a half an hour I gave up with the dozer. I couldn't even backblade and produce good results. Very frustrating. :Banghead The right hand has to be in motion almost 100% of the time to keep the blade properly positioned. Read somewhere in the forum you need to be pushing a full blade of material but I didn't have that much room to operate - the material was dumped where our road curves and Y's off so I didn't have long straightaways to work with. I resorted to my trusty and familiar Kubota and box blade and managed to make it look fairly decent. At least I am now very comfortable with making the dozer go where I want it to go - that's some progress.
It helps doing dirtwork to angle your blade, especially when your learning. This takes a little of the washboarding out. You also got to develop the "Bubble in your Butt". You will feel the dozer going a little uphill or downhill and you correct for it while its happening. Don't feel bad, these little dozers take some getting used to. Also just because you got a dozer don't mean you have to use it on every job. If a job is faster with the tractor and box blade that's what I would use.:usa
I thought the bubble was exclusive to Arizona operators...lol
like i tell apprentices; an angle dozer will kick your azz for a long time before it gives up its secrets. keep plugging.
Thanks guys! I had a feeling it was going to take a long time to get semi-good with the blade, that feeling was right-on. I'll try to work on my bubble!
I tried pushing dirt with my "new to me" 1950 TD6 at the 2009 HCEA show. I was trying to level piles, trying was the operative word . Made lots of "waves"o. Fortunately the guy next to me with the TD-25 could level it all out in 1 pass . Takes time & practice to get half way decent. I hope to spend some time in a sand pit this summer "practicing"
I wish I had a sand pit to practice in - I do have a small tank (dry at the moment) that needs some help. About 20 dump truck loads of caliche was taken out to use for site prep when I had my shop built, so I need to level the area out and make it look better. Think I'll play there this week.
When I started on a small machine I found out that half throttle worked well. I would then just set the blade on the ground and just pick up a little to carry some weight and then put the machine in forward. The blade with pick up a little bit of material and the machine will pitch down a little. As it picks up more material in front you just pick up a small amount more on the blade and don't change it unless your terrain changes. If you start to hand jack the thing just stop, back up a little and start the blade setting procedure again and start over. All the small dozers have that short set of tracks and they will all pitch as the load increases on the blade. It just takes time to get used to it and be able to react before the wash board starts happening. Good Luck!
Great tip! Ah-ha! A useful tip :drinkup Thanks very much John. I walked over my road efforts just a while ago and it still needs some touch-up. Might give the blade another try.
It doesn´t take a small dozer to make unwanted waves. I once operated a D7D with a heavy angle dozer blade and nothing but a drawbar on the back trying to level some volcanic ash. Either I was being terribly clumsy (well I was a newbee) or this was a hopeless machine to make a grade with!! Dozers of that vintage also had transverse springs at the front instead of a solid equalizer bar, and that didn´t make things better.
That's nice to know! I followed John C's advice about positioning the blade a little above grade and keeping the speed down - that worked the best. It's a small improvement, but a improvement. This was in reverse Maybe I'll figure out how to do this going forward!
The D7F (drawbar in rear) that we once owned was absolutely the "clumsiest" dozer that we've ever had. Terrible balance. It's one of the few cases where the machine could be at fault. That's why, I guess, that it's in the weeds rusting away.
Hang in there, John; but I'm gonna tell ya. Grading road-base material on your dozer might not be the preferred arena to learn. That can be pretty tough.... almost as bad as granular sand. Better go "warm-up" in some dirt, where you don't have to "carry the blade" for the entire push.
I agree here John...when I operated for a living building drilling locations and rig access roads, I could cut a nice smooth pad and driveway when the blade was able to "rest" on solid ground part of the time. After oil field work dried up and I went to work for a site contractor, grading small rock and sand took a LOT of time to get right. Best of luck to you and your new dozer.
In a ideal situation you would have the dump truck spread the gravel. A good driver will do a better job of even distribution than practically any grading machine can. Of course it helps if the road you doze out is smooth for the truck to run on. Having to start with a pile of gravel and than push it out, your tractor with loader and back blade is a better tool. In that situation I would use the loader bucket to load the gravel and dump it somewhat evenly along road. Than you could touch up with the dozer by careful back blading. That also would act to compact the gravel. Sounds like you will have a lot of fun with your new dozer. Sure looks like a nice machine.
Thanks again for the encouragement guys! It seemed like all of a sudden, operating the dozer just 'came' to me. I'm real comfortable now in the seat making it go. I know it will just take time a patience to get a feel for the blade. Speaking of the seat, I removed it and the arm rests yesterday and took it to an auto upholstery shop to have it redone. That seat must have weighed 75 pounds! I had to put the loader bucket at the rear of the dozer and cajole the seat into the bucket. I asked the shop guy what colors other than black he had, a yellow maybe? Nope. Grays, other colors, then he showed me CAMO! Wow! Should I? Yes - lets do it in camo! The skirt around the suspension base will be black. The seat should look real sharp. I'll post a picture when I reinstall it. He should have it completed in a couple of days.
This is how I have done it in the past at our place - get the driver to dump and roll forward. The big pile of base I just spread out was there for the unloading ramp. Since I don't have to make money with the machine, it is the ultimate big boy toy :cool2 .
I have always enjoyed earth moving equipment. I have been fortunate to operate several types and own a few through the years. I have not made my living by them, though I have supplemented my income by doing work here and there operating them. It is a vice. I like my "Dirty pictures" (pictures of dozers, excavators and the like) to view and dream about. Sounds like a interesting choice on having a Camo seat. Now you just need to put on a rifle rack to complement the decor. ointhead
learnin how John: Don't feel bad about the washboarding. I think a lot of us have had that problem when we first started out. A couple of years ago I bought a 953 track loader (bucket Cat) and thought now I got the situation under control. turned out my washboarding was something to get used to as well. I found too that throtleing back and taking it a bit slower was helpful, but later I got the opprotunity to watch a more experienced excavator running his machine and found that one of the things he did was to work the dirt loose first and then "spread it" it seemed to me at the time that when he did that it took a lot of "bucking" out of his machine and softened the impacts/washboarding. he explained to me later that it helps him to "grade by the seat the pants" by taking the jerking motion out of the machine. Now that I have had the opprotunity to have seat time, watching someone else work seems to have more meaning and techniques become more apparent. hope this helps,
Having a dozer with something heavy at the back, e.g. a ripper is quite imperial for a good balance in grading work. Either that or an LGP tractor with a long undercarrage. Although I´m no expert operator I have been spreading gravel without problems on relatively small LGP machines. I find it more problematic to maintain the correct height though
For those not used to texas talk a tank is a pond to the rest of us and a tank to us is a pond.
Ye-haw :Cowboy I thought a pond was really a tank :Cowboy Just when the ground was drying out from an inch of rain a few days ago, we got almost another inch just a while ago. I'll need to wait again for the ground to dry out to go play in the tank... Got the seat back from the upholsterer last week and installed - the camo looks really neat. Now as somebody suggested, I need to find a place for a gun rack.
the smaller the dozer the harder it is to learn to operate, but the less mess you make while learning... Here are some pointers. Angle your blade all the way left or right, that may help reduce washboarding. Monte makes a good point about having properly loosened material, maybe you have a box blade with ripper teeth on your kubota, try ripping with that. As for learning machine balance, try crawling on top of a 4x4 or 6x6 placed perpendicular to your tracks, then blindfold your self, and learn to "feel" the dozers tip. Then gradually reduce the size of the object. Make sure no bystanders are around and it would probably be good to have a saftey person around with an air horn. Another thing to remember is that you can steer the machine with the tilt feature, by dipping one corner the machine will pull to that corner... Hope this helps...
Very useful tips - thanks! I've played again in the base and I'm concentrating on feeling the dozer's attitude and keeping a close eye on the blade. I did have the blade angled which immensely helped to reduce washboarding. Then I was having a problem keeping the blade parallel to the surface - I could not see the blade edge closest to the dozer. I still had to clean up the road and redistribute some material with the box blade (I do have rippers on the box), but as somebody else pointed out, use the best tool to get the job done which might not be the dozer. You can't help but to appreciate the good operators that make it look so easy!
Sounds as if you are catching on. I use a simple double bubble (right angle to each other) level mounted next to my arm rest that was set at known machine level to help me obtain grade. It might be a thought. Get used to where the top of your blade is your sighting plane. You might want to set the blade on a level service at various degrees of angle so that you can have a idea what it looks like when dozing level. Hope any of that helps.
Good ideas! Matt - this is weird - I was thinking about using a bubble level as well. There are some large bubble levels designed for RVs that I might try. That's a good tip about referencing the top of the blade - I'll have to investigate that idea.
Oh No, John! You didn't! Cover that seat in camo? Hope you don't have to sell it anytime soon.:ban ................. But seriously, if you're concerned about your slope, call these folks. You can Google 'em. Agri-Drain Corporation. They'll sell you an inexpensive Grade Gauge that you can simply mount on your hood and then, you've got it. No more guessing about your work! You'll find it extremely helpful.:drinkup
Oh yes - camo! I probably won't cover the rest of the dozer in Mossy Oak though :drinkup. Good idea. Their levels are a little pricey at $60. Here's a large selection of RV levels at Camping world I found.
I almost always use a tractor and a back blade to finish smoothing out my roads. I can do it much faster then using the dozer. Getting it mostly smoothed out with the dozer first is the key to quick finish with the tractor.. Go play in the pond where you can just push and push, tear it up and smooth it out. you'll find it much easier to get the feel of grading in soft dirt. The biggest problem I found leaning to grade roads was soft and hard spots, the soft spots the grousers would of course sink in and the hard they would ride on top creating a wash board from the start, if not fully paying attention and going very very slow.
I've tried many differant ways spreading gravel and dirt. Time in the seat will help u the most. I always angle my blade half way or so. Get a grade u r happy with, put far corner of blade at that level. Watch that corner, level blade and don't worry about other side, it will take care of itself. I found not taking whole width of blade helps me, not to much material rolling of the backside.
I Keep the back of the seat up and tight to my back. Thats what tells me what my dozer is doing as it pushes and falls away from me. I have seen some guys running with the seat laid back like they are cool but I don't remember them being very good.
first time dozer grading good post!