Backhoe Input Please! "Constructive" Positives and Negatives

I agree.

I once had a guy with a 60 HP tractor ask me how I could pull wood out of the woods with my little 25 HP Kubota, and the answer is simple, technique not size. Now there are obviously some tradeoff's, but overall, my winch has 100% traction; I just need to position it in the right spot, and even then it can go around turns and sneak between trees, stumps and rocks. For extra pulling, a winch line can be doubled up. Incidentally, I winch at an idle. I have plenty of line speed and power, so why crank up my tractor? I do not break stuff that way.

Efficiently moving wood has a lot to do with having good roads. Not every log trail is like this, just the main ones, but having always had bulldozers, the main ones here are free of stumps, side hills, and cradle-knolls. A smooth road means you do not break traction and can get to the wood lot. 50 years later, I am still using the bulldozed roads my grandfather put in. They grow up with saplings, but the road is still smooth. A person with a few acres and without a bulldozer could do the same thing, just rent a bulldozer for a weekend and then push out some logging roads. It does not take that many. My winch has 150 feet of cable so my roads can be 300 feet apart and I can still be on a prepared skid trail. Other times I will go with light twitches from stump to these bulldozed roads, then make up a good twitch and head out.

Doing that is cheaper then buying a bigger tractor and then beating and pounding on it trying to get wood out by chain and drawbar over stumps, brush piles and rocks.

I think it is better for a person to buy a smaller tractor and then take the money saved and buy a winch, then buy a bigger tractor and no winch. In logging, a winch is half the tractor.​

 

Is your winch tractor hydraulics or pto driven?

 

And who do you know who does not!

 

Actually a few, but let's just say they're not members here.

 

PTO on the tractor, PTO on the bulldozer, and hydraulic on the skidder...

 

One thing that is interesting is...if the wood is a fairly short twitch, and the going is fairly decent; I will make more money per cord with my tractor then with the skidder. That is because the tractor can produce about 6 cords of treelength wood per day, but burn only 7 gallons of diesel fuel doing it. The Skidder can produce 10 cords, but burns 40 gallons per day doing it.

In other words, the amount of fuel consumed, does not match the increase in production.

That being said, I cannot twitch wood with my tractor down over steep embankments, over long distances, or wade through bogs like I can with the skidder. And it requires a lot less skill and finesse. If I lodge up a tree with a skidder...or eight of them, I have the power and traction to pull them down, limb them out, then zip away with them. With my farm tractor, I have to be more careful in felling, and when things go wrong, think my way out of them as I lack raw power and traction to work my way out of a bad spot.

The bulldozer was somewhere in between. It could produce about 6 cords per day, but burned 10 gallons of fuel to do it, but had more traction and power so made things a little easier.

 

If you already had a smaller tractor with a winch, why would you then need to buy a bigger tractor with no winch? Is the bigger tractor with no winch better for other projects? I would think that the cost of putting a winch on a bigger tractor (and only owning one tractor) would be cheaper than owning and maintaining a second tractor even if it is smaller.

 

I think what he is saying is that he would chose to buy a smaller tractor with a winch over a larger tractor without a winch. Meaning if your budget only allowed one or the other.

I certainly agree that a tractor without implements doesn’t do much for you. We bought slightly used and are buying implements as we need/can afford them. The second part seems to be our limiting factor these days

 

implements can add up to many times the price of the tractor. just like my machine tools - machines are cheap compared to the tooling which in some cases is comsumable.

 

For me at least, it really sucks to use my smaller tractor to pull a single bottom plow to plow up say...10 acres of ground. In that situation, cutting 28 inches in a pass, there are a lot of passes around a field, so a bigger tractor would really be nice pulling a 3 or 4 bottom plow! But as much of a pain as it is, I just put up with the lack of production for a few days and bust sod with a single bottom plow and just spend a little extra money on diesel fuel. That is a whole lot cheaper than buying a bigger tractor and attachments!!

The bulldozer works good, because it uses high tractive effort for its smallish size to accomplish work through gear reduction, but it can be tough to find non-hydraulic lift, and non-3 point hitch lifted implements for it. The best I found, is to use smallish sized implements back to back so that more can be done in a single pass, for instance two harrows hooked in tandem, that way there is no need to go around the field a few more times.

My Kubota took me 3 days and 20 gallons of fuel to till this 10 acre field, the blue tractor took 20 minutes and 7 gallons of fuel!

 

What I've considered because I've had friends do it is buy an older machine for lot prep, then sell it and buy the "toy" you want for light duty.

A soils and perk test will tell you about the granite State lot as well. You might be better suited buying a drill and dynamite!!!!

Jd and mf from the same era are good work horses. I have experience with them, and are on par with a l45 , better in some ways worse than others. But they have good capability.



Persinally imo For your budget it's a good financial descion. You could keep saving for the "dream/toy" and buy it in cash.


1970 JOHN DEERE 300

 

I don't know Dave, those seats can get mighty expensive.


I can say this though, if that was made available to me in the 2K price range, I would have bought it, and not the Kubota.

That being said, I'm sure it'll need some work done on it, either sooner or later.

 

The farmers around here just stack a few new layers of folded seed corn bags on them "vintage" seats...works gooder
I wouldn't worry too much about that rear tire either (as long as you won't be driving on the road or at higher speeds) you might be surprised how long that will last yet...I've seen cracked tractor tires that you could see the tube through the cracks...if the tube starts to herniate out, then its time for a new tire
Looks like a pretty good deal to me as long as everything works and it seems to have no major issues. That's a good tractor to buy, use, and then resell for what you have in it!

 

Heh, the guy brought it from New Hampshire, and now you wanna take it to New Hampshire. Ironic


Heck, ask the guy if he's interested in making the return trip if you buy it.

 

Spend some time on this site...
http://forums.yesterdaystractors.com/viewtopic.php?t=1275169

I suspect it would be cheap power, and would treat you well. Aggressive tire chains can make up somewhat for 2wd. That’s probably a canopy rather than ROPS?