For farm use in light soil I am thinking about removing the teeth from the 24" bucket on an E35. This should improve grading and ditch cleaning. I still will want to do some excavation with this bucket; but have a 16" bucket for tough digging. What are the pros and cons?
On the bucket you are planning on removing the teeth will there still be the shanks there or are you planning on taking those off as well? I've seen a lot of guys that will take a piece of flat steel and weld it across the teeth effectively making it a smooth bottom bucket and they will keep an extra set of teeth around to do heavy digging so all they have to do is knock the pins out of the teeth and replace one with the other.
Shanks would be removed leaving a toothless, flat, cutting edge.
That's completely your choice, and no doubt would make a very good ditching bucket. But before you go through all that work cutting the shanks off smooth, like chevy94 stated, weld a bar on the teeth. I've done a bunch of them and it works just fine. Just offering options.
Or find a 30-36" or so ditching bucket if that's what you want?
I agree with welding a steel plate across the teeth. If you do decide to take the teeth and shanks off, you'll need some sort of cutting edge on the bucket in order to not wear the bucket itself.
No sense in destroying a bucket by cutting the shanks off, then to do it right you need to fab up some sort of expendable cutting edge. Of else you'll be replacing that bucket in no time. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I use a 40" smooth on my e32. Hoe doesn't leave without it. Highly recommend it and only about $1000
My dealer asked $1,400 for the 39" Bobcat grading bucket; but recommend against it...said it was too large for a 3.5 ton excavator. Brinkhead, is your bucket a Bobcat or what? Thanks!
Yup that's the same one. I cut out the center webbing so it's easy to clean out. Then welded another cutting edge on the existing to make up the strength. Doing that for 3 years no problems. Only time it makes the machine light is when I use it with the swivel attachment as well and it's heavy muck. My machine is a long arm, cab and thumb. I even considered the 52" for stoning in foundations.
That corrects my dealer sales guy's opinion on bucket size. I believe I can go without the swivel for my work around the farm.
Hi there Clguest, I have a 2014 E35 (Long Arm) here in OZ, I run 4ton buckets on my digger, I have 8",12",14",18",24",(48"batter/mud) buckets & ripper, all my buckets run CAT style teeth and on my 24" I have a "pin blade" which was made by cutting of 5 teeth right back nearly to the adaptors then welding on a nice piece of sharp cutting edge which I plasma cut around each tooth before welding, I can remove the whole edge by knocking the pins out and re-fit standard teeth when needed, I mainly use this bucket for locating services and looking for sewer connections. The E35 handles the 48" bucket fine, full reach over the side you need to be a little careful with wet clay or sand.