I'm looking for advice, ideas, and general words of wisdom as well as any pictures related on this: I'm looking to modify my John Deere 310D Backhoe into a "do it all" forestry unit. For the most part I do cut to length ops, timber is medium to large (located in extreme NW of WA State) although lately have had alot of smaller dia jobs on stand improvement work and pre coms....I know, some of you will think it odd, but I find the Hoe works quite well in the woods and instead of having 3-4 different machines I would love to have one that I can fit out quickly for all applications.... Thanks hoedugit
In my limited experience, I have found that if a machine is not designed and built for a specific purpose, it would take a great deal of time and money to build it into something it's not. Even then, it might still be a mistake. Example: road tractors converted into dump trucks. My dad had a huge articulated tractor years ago at Vail which they bought as military surplus. I believe it was used to move large planes on airport runways IIRC. Beautiful machine, with lots of power. They added a swinging grapple boom and a few other mods, painted it all up really nice, and off it went to the woods. Well, their hearts were in the right place, but that machine never did pay for itself. One of its main problems was that is was entirely too heavy, and sunk in the mud more than once. I suspect the OP might end up finding that he sunk a lot of money into something that will never pay for itself, like the tractor at Vail. Especially in timber that size. Just my humble opinion tho.
Vigilant Humble opinions welcomed and observed!! I hear where you are coming from, I also agree (for the most part) use a machine for what it's made for and it will serve thee well!! That said, I've put nearly two years "experimenting" with the Hoe in the woods to see how it would perform before putting time, money and effort into mods. In my own humble opinion the Hoe's backbone is just a heavy duty four wheel drive tractor made for rugged everyday hard use. To date I have found that for the size of the 310D and the woods I normally work it in, it's a nimble efficient machine. Some drawbacks with to much weight in the rear from the hoe unit but easy enough to balance with weight up front (lead counter balances and liquid filled tires etc) having the hoe AND front end loader (also a 4 in 1 bucket) is SO nice when clearing out really messy access for skidding etc. As far as dumping money into it and eating it later, I have a genius welder/fabricator at my calling, lot's of material to work with, and all in all, trying to keep it simple yet efficient. Dont care if it's purty, just want it to do what needs doing...and now that I've felt it out for awhile I'm thinking it's worth a shot. Having a machine for all applications is GREAT but the overhead goes up so dramatically that it really cuts into the ability to be able to do all the "smaller" jobs that the bigger companies ignore for lack of ROI....
The 310C/D's pins pound out pretty quick under normal use, not to mention a second gear goes out when you start using it to drag things around. I think the 310 itself is a little too lightly built to consider. imo Maybe beef up a 710?
I don't know about backhoes, but excavators are forever being retro fitted for forestry use down here, bearing in mind that we don't get all the fancy John Deeres and Komatsus, even Doosan log loaders with cab risers and what not, but they still do the job, mostly they just need bigger cooling packs for the hydraulics, side panels get replaced with mesh for better airflow around the engine, roll cages and cab cages are added, that sort of thing.