Tree pushers.
Yair...as I posted on another thread it seems that few 'dozers in the U.S. are fitted with tree-pushers. Why would that be? They are standard equipment on many general contracting tractors over here...in fact in a lot of areas without one you would'nt get a job. A farmer won't stand for digging around little eighteen inch trees when you're clearing a damsite. They are much easier on the tractor too of course. Any theories? Cheers.
Never seen one until I just checked on youtube now. Have not seen one in NZ or during my travels in Alaska or Canada. How do you get them out of the way when not needed? Unhitch or fold up like an A frame on an operators tow-behind-ute? Anyway, I like the look of it, could use one on some of my tree/land clearing work.
Around here, it's pretty standard to take the trees out with an excavator, unless you are running a very big dozer on a large site. A D9 doesn't seem to need anything but a KG blade to take out about any tree.
Ran a Case 1150C back in the early 80s in western australia with a full tree arm sitting on top of a rake, that and a good set of rippers on the back made a very effective land clearing tool.
Never used a pusher, just a grubber. Most of it for mesquites. With mesquites, the tops of trees aren't what I'm after. I'm after the lowest lateral bud zone. Unless I get that up with the grubber, the tree will survive and resprout, making it even more difficult to eradicate. If I can keep the tree intact, it is easier to pull up and push over the part I'm after because now the weakest part of the tree is below the lateral bud zone. The grubber does have a large pipe offset high and to the front, but it is only forward about a 1.5' or so. Ideally, it makes contact with the trunk of the tree about a little before the grubber makes contact with the roots. As the dozer pushes and lifts the roots, that pipe starts pushing the tree over and away from the dozer. Once the the dozer pulls and pushes enough the tree starts to lean, the weight of the tree above the roots will help pull them up and out, almost acting like its own pry bar and using the ground to leverage the roots free. Then it is simply a matter of ensuring the tree is completely pushed up, and using the blade on the grubber to ensure the roots are severed below the lateral bud zone. A mesquite is very strong near the ground. A few feet above the ground, the wood is hard and fairly brittle on the old, large trees. A push bar will break the tree where it contacts the push bar, which means you no longer have the weight of the top of the tree to help leverage up the roots. Also, mesquite does not grow terribly tall, and it is very often multi-stemmed. A push bar would take a while to break off all the stems, but the tree is still very alive until the lateral bud zones are dug up and removed. The roots are softer and more flexible, so a ripper or a rake can often simply tear through them without removing them. That's why the blade on the grubber is important. It can down below all those bud zones, sever them from remaining roots, and help dig it up to the surface, where the hot Texas sun will quickly kill them. With mesquite trees that are not mature, a push bar doesn't work because the trees just simply bend over until they are below the push bar. Once you run over the tree, it simply springs back into its original shape. If you lower the blade, the blade simply cuts the tree where it contacts the tree, which will always be too high to reach the bud zones. The bud zones sprout, and the trees grow back. Only angrier and with more stems.
We have them on our D6Ds . We use a square kelley bar from a drilling rig to build them out of. They stick out from the top of the blade about 4 feet and go all the way across the front. We build boxes out of one inch thisck plate on the top outside edges of our blades to put them into. We've never had a need to remove one, but if we did, we could just pull it out of the boxes. Weve pushed down some trees with one dozer that were so heavy we had to break them up to move them with 2 dozers. With out the push rack, the tree wouldn't have budged. Also, we put a piece of one inch plate sticking out on each side about 6 inches to pull trees out of fence rows and keep brush from skipping off the side of the rack.
Scrubpuller, Not sure why US don't use tree spears. Maybe their trees aren't suitable to use a tree spear on. Maybe they have already cleared all the big timber that they are allowed to clear - like we're getting to in Australia. Hopefully my pics of our rake and spear are attached. This is on a D5N that is particularly efficient with the walkin rake(16') and the PAT blade. I have not done any damage to the angle system with the rake on this dozer or a D4H that I had the same style of system on. Between them I have probably done 4000hrs with a rake on a PAT blade. I do acknowledge that a straight blade would be a stronger system to attach a rake to but not quite as versatile when clearing undergrowth from standing forest. Firetrack
Dunno about other place's in the world, but up here by the time we get to the area to be cleared, the loggers have already removed all the marketable timber. With the advent of their new logging methods, you almost have to look in a hole to see the stump.. if they come up with a way to cut em any shorter there wouldn't be any stump left. So here landclearing takes a heavy dozer to grub out big stump with no leverage point. I know alot of people think an excavator digs stumps and they do, but not in production mode. A big dozer, followed by a traxcavator with a rake will stuff more crap in a pile in less time than any other method I know of. Grampa
Hear Hear!!!! Gramps. Agree with you all the way here. Lots of guys around here who are in the excavating business with an excavator and skid steer think they can do everytning from build four land interstate to pick their teeth with a track hoe. When its time to grub I take out D7 or D8 depending on how much to grub, how big the stuff is and what it is. Elm being the worst with root balls being very large. Don't have a decent track loader here so rake goes on one of the dozers for clean up.
Re: tree pushers Pretty much all contractors have pushers on their dozers around here, I just recently put an upper stop and lock to hold the pusher up vertically on a 6h with an angle tilt, used an old track link assembley and a 4140 pin, welded 1 half to the back of the pusher hinge and the other half to the back of the top of the blade, this allows the pusher to be held up vertically so its out of the way when using the full height of the blade for roading, i'll post some photos after i'm out there next.
Wow firetrack it shure looks like it is dry there do you need the triangle swamp pads very often?
Here in East TX we have soft ground so its pretty easy to dig around the tree some and pop it out.
Cowman, I have the missfortune to operate in some of the makers worst country. It can be dust flying in one area and soup 50m away. It is called "coastal wallum". Normally I don't have the self cleaning LGP plates on the machine but when I do I tend to leave them on for awhile as it is a big job to change the plates back. But I now have two sets of chains and plates. One with 20" standard grousers and one with 30" LGP on. In softer ground the LGP plates sure do have some push power but in hard ground they are not so nice to operate - rough!. They'll shake the fillings out of your teeth!!. The LGP plates are hard on chains and I don't like to use them unless necessary or I'm too lazy to change them. Currently I have the LGP system on as we are doing roading and clearing tracks for a mineral exploration operation here. We prep for 3 drill rigs and then clean up after them. I have the D5N, JCB 3CX backhoe(absolutely usless in wet conditions), Hitachi 35U excavator and JD 328D skid steer on site. I have a set of McLaren over the tire protrack tracks for the JD328D so it can work in the wet. We are currently in our wet season. I have a 3.5tone trailer ball on fitted on the back of the rippers on the dozer(and rear of the JD328D) so I can tow the Bore Loggers and the drillers trailers around in the wet. The LGP plates are on for about 40% of the time. All the drill rigs are on tracks. We also have a 20' x 8' steel flatbottomsed sled on which we can put stuff(like portable toilets and portable sheds etc) and tow into extremely wet areas with the dozer. I have made it verrrry clear that if I'm towing the sled out and the portable toilet tips over it's staying in the bush, I'm not getting out to put it back on! The D5N with the 16' rake is really efficient and can get over the ground. I also have a D7 with 20' rake and in some instances the D5N will get more done, and do a better job, in a day. All in all both pretty good units. I don't bring the D7 into the wallum country unless it has been dry for a while. Firetrack
My father had dozers for many years up until the early 70s and always had a spear on one of the pair of tractors that he used for pulling scrub. As he preferred cable blades over hydraulic for earth work, at least one dozer would always have a double drum winch so he could use one side for the blade and the other side for the spear. The cable from the second side of the winch went out the top side of the winch, up and over two sheaves mounted on top of the canopy on the main 'roll bars' then down above the centre scrub bar, over a roller mounted on the radiator bar of the canopy and then attached to the cross bar of the spear. He had the spears set up to rest on the top of the blade and had fitted mounts on the top of the 'C' frame just forward of the trunnions which attached the frame to the dozer. The spear was pinned into these fittings so it could pivot independently of the blade. This way he could get the spear higher up for more leverage on big trees and also allowed the spear to be positioned almost vertically out of the way for earthworks etc. When pulling, if they encountered a big tree that the chain wouldn't pull over, the tractor with the spear would drop back and 'start' the tree so the chain could complete the task. Unfortunately, the only photo I have of any of our dozers is one that does not show any part of the spear on that machine, but it does show that things don't always go well when pulling scrub. Both dozers are 17A D7s which were pulling scrub downhill in steep country when an inexperienced operator on one machine ran up onto a stump which caused it to drop it's shoulder and roll. Blade and spear were raised at the time and if he had thought to drop them the incident may not have happened. The photo does not give a true indication of the steepness of the hill but you can see some plowed flat ground at the top edge of the photo. The inverted 7 had the spear on, and you can just see the chain attached to the drawbar. The other 7 has a front mounted winch and mounted hydraulic rippers. Scrub Puller; this is just over the hill from you in around 1970. Gary
Sorry for this second post;m I'm trying to get the photo to display and I can not edit my original post. Hope this works! My father had dozers for many years up until the early 70s and always had a spear on one of the pair of tractors that he used for pulling scrub. As he preferred cable blades over hydraulic for earth work, at least one dozer would always have a double drum winch so he could use one side for the blade and the other side for the spear. The cable from the second side of the winch went out the top side of the winch, up and over two sheaves mounted on top of the canopy on the main 'roll bars' then down above the centre scrub bar, over a roller mounted on the radiator bar of the canopy and then attached to the cross bar of the spear. He had the spears set up to rest on the top of the blade and had fitted mounts on the top of the 'C' frame just forward of the trunnions which attached the frame to the dozer. The spear was pinned into these fittings so it could pivot independently of the blade. This way he could get the spear higher up for more leverage on big trees and also allowed the spear to be positioned almost vertically out of the way for earthworks etc. When pulling, if they encountered a big tree that the chain wouldn't pull over, the tractor with the spear would drop back and 'start' the tree so the chain could complete the task. Unfortunately, the only photo I have of any of our dozers is one that does not show any part of the spear on that machine, but it does show that things don't always go well when pulling scrub.
Both dozers are 17A D7s which were pulling scrub downhill in steep country when an inexperienced operator on one machine ran up onto a stump which caused it to drop it's shoulder and roll. Blade and spear were raised at the time and if he had thought to drop them the incident may not have happened. The photo does not give a true indication of the steepness of the hill but you can see some plowed flat ground at the top edge of the photo. The inverted 7 had the spear on, and you can just see the chain attached to the drawbar. The other 7 has a front mounted winch and mounted hydraulic rippers. Scrub Puller; this is just over the hill from you in around 1970. GaryHere in East Texas, the push bars disapeared with the passing of the old smaller low horsepower dozers like the D7 3T and 17A. D7G's or larger are the medicine of choice now. You don't need a pushbar when you have the grunt to just push them over and out. What few have to be dug are not worth the hassle of a bar sticking out in front in the way.
wrwtexan Plenty of trees left around here that a D9 won't rattle without a spear. Away from my PC for a week now - going to Taipei Firetrack
Yair... Yair firetrack I know the feeling, we have walked away and left yellowjackets standing even double tagging with these..... Cheers.
Most of the good farmland has been cleared long ago and what has come back is small enough to push or the small stuff is removed and they are left for cattle to graze around. Would love to see clearing on such a large scale. Maybe something in the range of a 10 or 475 size machine for the big ones...
Hi Firetrack, have you been pleased with your over the tires tracks on your JD328D when working in the wet? Do you have all rubber tracks or just steel? Are the McLaren over the tire tracks any good or some other brands are better?
Hillboy, can't answer any of your questions yet as we haven't had any wet conditions yet - think we're about to get some though. My OTT are mcLaren steel with the rubber pads. I'll keep you informed on how we make out. Been away in Taiwan for a week or so - good place to visit but wouldn't want to live there. Firetrack
Scrub Puller, Found Coolibah trees on the river flats of the Dawson valley to be able to sort the men from the boys. Who made the canopy's for the dozers in the pictures. The look good - suppose you don't need a duck tail if you don't have rippers fitted. I had my last ones made by kawana engineering in Rocky. Couple of years ago the local water authority pulled 750acres of some of the biggest gum and iron bark I have ever seen. Had 2 x 9's (high tracks) with chain(no spears), 1 x D7G with 22' rake and 25tonne Cat excavator(to dig out anything that they couldn't push and there was a lot they couldn't even get the willy wagtail to get out of his nest.) Just raked it all and burnt before the conservationalists realised what was happening. We never even had the chance to cut out any of the big billets. I had a D4H cleanig up the fire heaps and down around the waters edge. Good timber gone to waste, but there are different rules for gov't!! Firetrack
We just use excavators to clear trees with grapples. That way you can dig out the roots if you need to. All the damn cottonwoods around here have super strong root structures. It's not easy to push them over with a dozer. Plus with an excavator you can rip all of the limbs off, and stoke and feed the fire
Yair...it's good to get a bit of traffic going on a thread. A couple of answers and some questions. North Texan any chances of some pictures of a grubber? It sounds a bit like a cutter bar but mounted on the front. A cutter bar is a horizontal blade attached to the outside tines of a ripper. I used to make them out of (say) three by twelve ASAB or Bisalloy...what ever high tensile we could get cheapish. Some blokes just welded it to the ripper boots but I always found it was easier to pull if they were hinged onto the back of the tine. mostly it was sufficient to work them eight or ten inches deep. they were really good when raking land for cultivation...and the hinged design was less likely to bend if you were lifting out some stumps. Over the top of the blade spears were never in the way even when doing dirt work...they were never taken off. The front of the blade type as shown on the nine walking up onto the trailer obviously could be a problem for any serious pushing. I was no trouble just to push up a pile of dirt and leave them resting...it was just a matter of removing two sixteenth clearance pins. Those nines were fitted up for the scrub by McGaw Engineering in Brisbane a small outfit that did mostly sawmill work...the boss did the design work and they made it happen. These were probably the first two hydraulic nines ever to go into the scrub. You will notice the plumbing on the rams has been modified to get it tucked in behind the engine side covers. The belly pans and plates were remanufactured to make the machines pretty much impervious to sticks. There were water tanks in the canopies for fire fighting and we had an oxy set on one machine for repairing chain. The machines would have benifitted from rippers as they were unballanced in reverse...I'll try and post a picture of one trying to back out of a bog. How things change. Excavators are all the go now but back in the sixty's an out fit clearing power lines built an enormous treepusher with about a thirty foot lift on a D7. In operation the seven put the spear in place...and then a D8 came in on either side and pushed against the trunnions. They were tipping out bluegums along a water course that were six or seven feet through...it was one of those crazy Government contracts that stipulates the country must be 'grubbed'. I saw the old D7 years later in a yard down near Tamworth and they'd added a big steel wheel from a cable ripper to take some weight of the spear...I reckon they'd probably done a few idlers and rollers.
here are some pics of the one i made for my D3C lgp it works great somebody that has never used one would be surprised at how much easier it makes pushing trees.
Yair...jwest. They do make a difference don't they? More leverage and down pressure on tractor...makes it a lot easier on machine. Just a comment...you may find yours will work even better if you weld a piece of old cutting edge along the front of the pipe...maybe even cut some teeth in it to stop the bugger sliding up the tree. Cheers.
10-4 i have one that i welded to the side of the pipe and works great. thanks
Found a tree pusher essential for most timber work, for both pushing & stacking. A D8H with a pusher would bounce of a solid box tree in moist black soil so there was little hope without one. The pusher kept limbs/branches etc from coming over the blabe whilst stacking. Left the pusher on while dam sinking, stockpiling gravel , quarry work etc.
I never seen tree pushers in this part of the world. Most of the bigger clearing jobs I have been around have been done with a 973 trackloader. It will reach up much the same and get the leverage needed to tip most of the big trees over, then with the clam, clean up and load them out as well. I was on one job with 100' plus tall Eucalyptus trees to be dropped. Found one big one, about 8' around about 6 feet up from the ground, and over 150' tall. I was on a D-8K, and spent a coupl of hours digging and ripping roots on 3 sides. I could not even shake that tree. I built a ramp up about 10' tall, so I could get the blade about 15 ft up in the tree. I could make it wiggle, but barely. We brought the D-9H over and pushed on the rippers of the 8. That got it moving a bit more, but it wasn't going over yet. We lined another D-8H or K, I forget, up behind the D-9, and all 3 of us pushed. It finallt started to go. After it leande a little ways, we had to stop and rework the ramp, so I would not fall when the tree finally went down. Seeing and hearing the stories, a tree pusher would have been good to have that day.
i am looking at building one for my d6c not as heavy as the ones pictured above does anybody have a bunch of pictures they could post to give me ideas to engneer one for my self i am kinda leaning towards the style of tree pusher that mounts to the blade with pins that will pivot with up pressure. any suggestions would be great.
Jwest, Have a look at the tree spear on my D5N. It mounts on the top of the blade but all the push is on the pads in the middle of the blade. It will pivot up. Don't be suckered into making them light as you will only bend it. My spear should have had a slightly longer push bar at the end so that you can go up to trees on a fence line and hook them back. If you want some close up photos and metal sizes I am happy to oblige. I also have a very simple one man system for fitting and removing - 5 to 8 mins max on your own without any other machine helping. D6C and D5N would require a similar spear size. Firetrack
Firetrak ifyou do not mind would you post more pictures of your spear and mounting system and steel specs that would be very helpful. Thanks
Yep, no problem. May take a couple of days though. Firetrack
A video of a HD16 fited with tree pusher ,knocking down o couple of trees . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYF4NqbJ1_I
Tree pusher jwest, sorry to take so long in getting these pics to you Not sure if these pics actually went so will try again if I have failed in my attempt at IT. Main frame is made from 5 x 5/8 angle welded to form box. Rear cross brace is 4 x 1/2 RHS Centre brace is 2.5" x 3/8' RHS Pin is 1 1/2" Side plates for pin is 1" plate distance between outside of mounting plates is 42" Distance between outside of main frame where it meets push bar is 22" Push bar is 26.5" wide(would be better if it was another 3" each side as you could then hook trees on fence lines etc and pull them back. Length from Centre of mounting pin hole to front of pushbar is 70" Distance from rear of rear brace to rear of push bar is 60" The short grips on the front of the pushbar are made from 1 1/4" plate the push pad is 6" x 1/2" and the brace for this is made from 1/2" plate as well. Firetrack
tree pushers jwest, couple of more pics of the grips on the front of the pusher - these are very important as they help you grip and lift the tree out when pushing. The other pics are oftsome of the conditions were working in. now have OTT on the skid steer and we have a tow ball fitted to the ripper on the D5N so we can pull the drill loggers vehicles in to the bore holes. Don't let any one try to tell you that tree pushers don't need to be built as heavy as mine - talking from experience here. The stronger they are the less grief you will have later. firetrack
Hillboy, they do a good job but I am working in slosh all the time and have experienced a hugh amount of wear in the pins and connecting links. For some reason we destroyed two tyres initially but it weems to have settled down now. We've done about 200hrs with them and will have to replace all the pins and most of the connecting within the next 50 hrs or so. We have the promagnum steel track with rubber pads. We're in a sandy/silt slosh all the time so it is like grinding paste on them. We experience excessive wear on the D5N chains as well. Happy with the performance and comfort of the Deere 328D skid steer - ballsy machine. I purchased a angle tilt blade with it as well and don't like it(probably because I'm usless with it I suppose) Firetrack
thanks firetrack i was begining to think you forgot about me ii thought you had used square tube but now i see you made yours tubing i have some tube at the house but i think it 6x6x3/8 which should be strong enough if i brace it correctly. i ll post pics when i start building it.
A couple of kiwi 1960s photos cheers malcolm
Now that's a tree pusher!
Well, tie me kangaroo down, sport. They say in Australia mammals developed differently than anywhere else. Apparently that holds true also for clearing dozers. Jesus, what a monstrosity that thing is.
Bluetop Man, Get it right!! That thing is from New Zealand. Firetrack
Yair . . . it would have been a bit of a drawback not to have a blade though . . . that pusher is after the style of the one on the seven I mentioned up thread. That Cat. had an angle blade and you can see why they would have fitted a wheel to take some of the weight off the idlers. Cheers.
Ah, yes. New Zealand. Entirely different sort of bloke there. Do they really call it Down Up? My bloody mistake, mate. But then, I don't know a platypus duck from a mallard...
its because if your not from robbinsville nc you dont know how to run a kg or as we call it a cutter blade
cabed in d8r all taking down trees and stumps this is the home of kg blades
we try to get at least 20acres aweek
well we use a D7 G with a KG blade and then we rake with 2 82-30 terex dozers or sometimes we clear with the 82-30 B and rake with the FA Terex 82-30 or we use the ol C-6 with the cable blade to rake and we also use a TD9 H with a finish rake on it ....we just have sweeps and rops on all our tractors no mesh or extravogant extra stuff on our machines and this is how we have done it for over 35 years close to 40 now i'm the 3rd generation so i will probly do it the same .... we have many for retrun buisness and when we are done they can farm or build on what was done with out roots and all the garbage sticking up ....and yes here in Indiana the ground does get hard and we have taken out big trees pin oak trees are the worst
Yair . . . fellers, any chance of a picture of a KG blade? Cheers.
wow good topic!
http://www.romeplow.com/KG and VEE Blades.htm The whole blade is sharpened to shear smaller trees and the left hand corner is a stump splitter.
yea that looks identical to the blade on the D7 g except the stinger or splitter is a lil short but other than that its the same
The rome K/G blades are awesome for clearing.I had a road job last week,customer had an atv trail through the woods and decided they wanted a driveway.We droppped the simi-u of the 16-B and installed the K/G blade to clear 50 foot wide right-of-way for the road.I sharpen it 3 or 4 times a day with an air grinder I keep on the dozer.Also works good for piling & stacking timber.I can see times where a "tree pusher" in the middle of the dozer blade would be very handy on some clearing jobs.
I'm fascinated to know that tree pushers aren't a universal piece of equipment. I've a tree pusher on an AD7 (70hp Fiat) and I'd be lost without it. Only time it's a hassle is if you're working in a tight situation with vertical scenery. Then the increase in effective length can be annoying, but it's a pretty rare situation. I've a single ripper on one side in order to do a quick circle around larger trees and then over they go. Only trick is to be a bit slippery with reverse when it goes over because the root ball coming up under the machine can result in an embarrassing situation! Pushing with the blade only can't push anything big enough to cause this problem.
That looks an interesting tool to have and I imagine the top bar pretensions the tree to assist with the cutting blade getting into and under the root ball. It wouldn't work in the hardwoods where I operate but I can definately see the benefits in the right country. firetrack
Absolutely right, the eucalypts in Australia are very well anchored and the pusher is essential, for fire fighting it is a life saver to get dozers' and operators' out of trouble. This is one I made in about eight days for my 1150D, it contacts at about 10' 3" and can roll most trees in a single push, as you say still need to avoid a blade catch on the roots or else! Detaching the tree pusher is a one man job, it is designed to balance just forward of the the mounting which is the shared pin for the angle cylinders (on any CASE). There is a pair of knock out blocks at the back of each clevis which is held by a HT bolt (5/8"), these are removed to allow the pusher to slide forward slightly with a bar, once it is there just raise the rear by hand and it falls forward against a tree for example at ground level. Elevate the pusher on the blade and fit two props with clamps around the 4" body of the pusher, rear of centre balance, lower to ground and back out. Fitting is the reverse, except that the operator positions the pins to have outer clearance for the clevis on the tree pusher and walks into it so that it is square over each side and it gently balances onto the angle cylinder guards and slides back into position for the the knock out blocks and bolts. The final tip to protect a pusher this long is to always lower the blade at contact with a tree, because as they fall it will bend the beak and lift the rear of the dozer, once that happens the tree pusher doesn't work as well and will flex or skip up trees instead of biting in, plus it looks horrid. This pusher has done about six hundred hours recently and is still straight, but light enough for the machine category not to cause imbalance or idler wear.
Hello to all from the south west of Western Australia. I hope nobody is offended by a newby bumping this old topic up I thought I would share a few photos of a tree pusher (or tree arm as they're known in this part of the world) The dozer in the photos is a Fiat 14B (circa 1970 -75 I'd say). It's 22 tons and 170 HP. It belongs to a friend and neighbour who ran 2 or 3 of these machines in a contracting business back in the 60's, 70's and 80's when land clearing was all the go around here. He's mainly retired now but I managed to twist his arm to crank his machine up to clear a mile of fenceline for me a couple of weeks ago. The tree arm itself is 21'6" from the pushing tip to the back of the mounting bracket down near the drive sprocket. The main arms are 6"wide x 8" deep - made from 2 channel beams 8 x 3 welded together by the look of it. It is raised and lowered by a cable running through a steel member that is part of the tree canopy/ cab roof to a ram at the back above the rippers. It is at it's full height in the overcast photo. This is the 3rd Fiat 14 the tree arm has been on. The 1st was a '64 Fiat 14 direct drive, then a "70 14B torque converter model and now this one - a slightly later torque converter model. There would have been literally hundreds of this similar size machine ( D6 - D8 ) of all makes - in the 50's,60's and 70's in this corner of Western Australia equipped with tree arms and stick rakes to clear the land and a blade to dig dams/ponds for livestock water. The trees were euchalypts (jarrah and redgum) in the 60 - 80 feet high range and a machine this size would handle most trees. Further south in the Karri tree country where the Karri's grow 100 - 200 feet this machine wouldn't be big enough, an D8 or 9 size machine would be the go. This area would have been next to impossible to clear without dozers and chainsaws (God bless the inventors at Caterpillar and Stihl!). It was only settled relatively recently - the farm we are on (680 acres) was taken up in 1926, the original owners were only equipped with axes and a large dose of enthusiasm. When our family bought it in 1963 there was only 100acres roughly cleared (lot of stumps and dead standing trees). A dozer was employed (mainly the contractor pictured) every burning season to munch his way through the bush and by 1970 all the trees were gone. Also the dam building was important too as there are no running brooks/creeks in the summer for livestock water. Regards from Bridgetown, Western Australia
Welcome to HEF dm1000, Certainly an interesting concept... I'am sure I've never seen or heard of such a thing. We have a 14C with a pusher a bit smaller than that, and at times I've wondered if it would perform any better if it could reach just a tad higher. I would be keen to see what ground pressure it produces when fully raised. With the pusher on the blade, the tractor is prevented from rising in the front, sort of cramping the whole machine in to the ground, sometimes with enough force to stall the converter.
Great images. I'm originally from WA and I remember dozers like this. Note the small blade width, relative to the machine.
