Grading with a 40 crawler

Good morning,

I have a John Deere 40 crawler with a standard dozer blade.

I want to crown a 20 foot wide gravel road that is basically flat from shoulder to shoulder. I'm thinking I'll have to reverse scrape from the shoulder to the center of the road for a ways (15' to 20') before I can start pushing parallel to the direction of the road to create the crown. Is this the best approach or am I'm missing a simple trick?

Thanks,
George

With that type of straight blade, no tilt or angle, I think you have answered your own question. Consider back dragging a hard or compacted wear course(your existing road surface) with the cutting edge reversed (back dragging)is likely just going to scratch the surface. Any way you can scarify or rip the existing to loosen it up a bit ?

The old timers had to do this same thing, somehow get material in the middle, loose material and make a small berm. There are some methods to doing this, its described, illustrated in old books I have somewhere. Some would do like you suggest, but in reverse with the cutting edge and or blade pushing. Thats a light tractor and a short track frame, it won't be all that easy, but if you can cut into it and push up a berm, you can then easily grade a crown into that small section of road.

If you cannot run over the shoulders onto the sides to push, you could try to run on timbers parallel to the road, raising one track up and lowering one blade end bit or corner to cut, but that will make grooves, and it will take lots of passes because its just the corner of the blade. These were common methods used until tilt and angle was incorporated into dozer kits for tractors like these.

Any more modern dozer with a 6 way blade would likely make short work of this, or even a small excavator, backhoe to re-shape, loosen material, then it would be easy once you have loose material in the center.

Bolt a blade to the bottom of the existing blade to create an angle. Putting the right edge 2 to 3 inches lower than the left edge. This new edge becomes the tool to reverse scrape the berm into the middle as follows: use a chevron path starting with the right edge of the blade 2 feet into the ditch, and backing at a 15 degree angle toward the center. Stop when the left edge of the blade is maybe 3 feet past the center of the road. adjust the depth of drag to be as level as reasonable, the tracks should allow only a little scalping and piling. return to the edge going forward, blade up and moving 3 or 4 feet short of the first pass, and 1/3 blade width. Repeat this to the far end of the drive/road. Turn 180 and do this all the way back to the beginning from the opposite end. Remove the supplementary blade, and smooth things out. Jim

Thanks.

Pushing from beyond the shoulder isn't an option: drop-off, ditch and trees/brush.

Perhaps the way to start would be to push from about 5' - 7' in towards the shoulder, and then pull the loosened gravel back to create the necessary tilt for pushing parallel to the road.

You can do it quite easily with your 40. Start at the ditches on both sides of the drive and drop the outside track in the ditch and work the dirt to the center of drive and work your way up the drive. Then level the the center off by grading the length of drive, and then back blade, to groom it smooth back to ditches. If you have a lot of weeds and trash, it will be more of a challenge.
Loren

Interesting approach...

Make very small passes from edge of road turning each time towards the center. left side of blade will not move as far as the right side. get dirt in center then work it. We do just the other way building a road on the side of a hill. Tracks loosen the dirt.

Drop the blade on one side of the road and skim a little material off working a windrow on both sides of the blade as you make a pass down the road, then turn around and put one track on the windrow, so it will tilt the machine in the direction you want and make another pass, repeat.

You should have a standard 3 point hitch on that tractor so get a heave back blade and tilt it to start the job.