http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDK8qY0EKoo:D
What happens next?
Yair . . . watglen . I would say that is in Brazil but, for grazing, similar country in Australia is often seeded, left for a couple of years to develop a body of grass and then burnt in the "dry" season just before the rains and reseeded into the ash. For cropping you can go in straight away with one of these . . . It is cheaper to burn first of course as obviously there will be less material to be handled by the rake. If there has been a real good burn the pin wheel as shown below can sometimes go straight in. After a first working with disks they are often used (sometimes after each working) to windrow remaining roots and sticks. They can be fitted with a flame thrower to light the windrows, or, I have even seen windrows picked up with a Wabco egg beater scraper. Cheers
Now that's something I want to see! That would be one hell of a zombie killer too.:cool2
That is really something. Would be neat to see running.
I had forgotten about these heavy duty wheel rakes to scrub threw up a picture of one. Video i stumbled across a few months ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk7seEArCZQ
Why the elaborate enclosure on the cat?
Yair . . . wilko . That is a scrub pulling canopy to protect the machine and operator from falling trees and branches. The machines work at WOT in second gear in heavy dust day and night . . . although I can't see lights on that one. The operator has to be confident that within reason he is safe from any tree in the bush. It is not uncommon to have the tops and limbs of large trees come down on the tractor. There is no time for much finesse and the aim is to give them a glancing jab with the corner of the blade or pusher and continue on with out backing off, just ease on with the decal and once they start to go just swing away. One of the big problems with building canopies was strengthening the running boards to give something to bolt them to . . . difficult and expensive. Our tractors also had the treatment underneath, completely rebuilt belly guards stiffened up with 3/4" and 1" plate. We took delivery of a pair of these Christmas Eve 1965 . . . . They worked for eleven hours on Christmas Day . . . the going rate was fifty dollars an hour each and that included the chain. If you look closely you can see the flood light enclosures built into the front legs of the canopy and the sidelights just forward of the operators position. They had watertanks up in there for flooding belly guards in case of fire and we had an oxy set stowed somewhere for chain repairs. Cheers.
Understood. I was just thinking you would hardly be able to see out of that setup.
Yair . . . wilko . Vision is okay. After a while the mesh sort of "disappears" and you are not aware of it. The only place of much concern is the panel on the bottom left where you look through to see the blade . . . if we were doing dirtwork I modified it so it could be unbolted but in fact it never happened . . . you developed different reference points and ran the blade by feel. That is always the most dangerous area on an oval track machine. Logs come up at an angle over the equalizer between the track and engine . . .you just don't see them coming. In the stickshift days you could really be in trouble as they bust the mesh in and hold the master clutch engaged . . . an instinctive arm around both steering clutches is all that has saved a lot of blokes. In truth though on such properly fitted out tractors very few operators were hurt. Cheers.
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I like the properly fitted tractors for clearing. I have done some with no more than sweeps and side screens. It can get rough at times. I remember well one time a limb whipped out of the pile as I was easing into the stack with the decelerator held down. One branch pushed the decel pedal up, taking the tractor to full throttle, while a limb about 6" diameter was headed right for my midsection. It would have skewered me if I had not thought to throw it into reverse in a hurry. That will get your attention.
Two Saturday's ago I was in the dirt pit getting a head start on Monday with my track hoe. I was on top of the ridge clearing topsoil and taking a few trees down. The sun was directly to my right on the ridge creating a terrible glare. I reach up to pull some topsoil down and there was a small pine tree that was buried in the topsoil, the bucket took a bite and flipped the pine up and straight into the windshield. It didn't come horizontally into the cab but rather when it fell back down about 5" of it came down on the glass. Scared the hell out of me as I didn't see it coming due to the glare from the sun. I need to retrofit the demo/FOPS guard I have for a C/D series regular cab to the 321.:cool2 Be careful out there.
My favorite reason for telling new operators to work over their idlers rather than their sprockets! I've had a similar situation where one came through the cab and activated the travel levers in reverse while I was working over my sprockets... ended with me throwing the safety lever while standing on the seat. ops I prefer excavators to dozers for clearing, unless its a larger dozer (8+), too many opportunities to get beat up.
I like a loader for clearing too. The thing about my incident was there were just a few saplings growing in the topsoil but that's all it took.. BTW - I was working over my idlers.
acivil, what exactly do you mean by working over your idlers instead of your sprockets?
You do all your work with the bucket with the idlers in front of you. This way if a tree branch comes into the cab and hit the travel leavers you have a 99% chance they will put the machine in reverse and back away from the tree instead of walking you into the tree and possibly crushing you into the seat.