Winter gig

[JD450A]

How do you find working in the "slow lane" then bert, It hacks me off constantly...... Been surveying this week new sites to do (got a couple that should be, er intresting) Hopefully will have a new contract end of the month and keep going. if not I shall be jumping on the minidigger.

[245dlc]

It can be Ian especially if you don't have a ripper to loosen it up ahead of time. The work I'm doing now is kinda slow going compared to stuff I did in the past as Manitoba Hydro is government owned company. lol But if I was in heavy frozen silt that had been really wet before it froze or sand or gravel then it's just like digging in shale or sandstone. These teeth were put on over Christmas break and so far have held out really well and work great in this material that I'm digging. Another big advantage of working for these guys is it's up to me to judge if I need the ripper or not and for me I much prefer to pre-rip as it can make my trenching or digging production that much higher instead of scratching and trying to muscle through the frost with the bucket and putting all that strain on the machine. Ripping certainly isn't easy on the machine and sometimes even with a ripper on it takes forever to get a hole through the frost, in years past I've had to rip seven feet before I got soft earth again. Usually you only get conditions like that if you have to dig through a parking lot or a road where foot and vehicle traffic 'pounds' the frost down deeper, however if you get an area covered in lots of snow or even bush you'll have nice soft easy to dig ground.

[ianoz]

So , Is the frozen ground hard on teeth ?. In the wrong sort of material ,i can wear a set out in a day here . But normally get a couple of weeks out of them .

[245dlc]

Yeah we call them tiger teeth as well I'm not sure of the manufacturer of these ones in particular but sometimes we call them frost teeth as well. I never wear gloves when I operate just when I'm doing maintenance stuff I wear insulated leather ones.

[ianoz]

Hi Bert , I noticed you were not wearing Gloves .Just about all the stuff i see from America ,operators seem to all wear gloves .
The teeth on the Bucket .We call them Tiger teeth ,named the same over there ?

[Stock]

So great news for the likes of me .................but not for moggy lovers.................http://www.independent.ie/and-finall...d-2973141.html

[Stock]

Well said Bert,I can operate both 180 or 360 but I prefer the 360, as for the 180 hate the jake x pattern sooner the cross pattern of the MF/terex /Komatsu.................

[245dlc]

Oh Rory I'll always be an excavator man, there is far more work for them here nowadays than there is for loader/backhoes. I don't know why we only seem to have centerpivot machines it's always been that way. I was talking to Gord there the other day and he's been operating for 40 years and he said they've always been centerpivot machines here but it would be nice if we had sideshift. I saw a sideshift machine once in Edmonton that was owned by the sewer and water division it was called a John Deere 315G but they discontinued that model a couple years ago. I think all the excavators I've been on in the last four or five years have had the control pattern changer and all the loader backhoes that have joystick controls have it too. The main part that I wasn't use to with that 580 was the straight boom and how fast the swing is.

[JD450A]

In Berts Vid Muz when he swings his seat round to drive off you can see the right hand joystick+arm on it is a Green Button which is your backhoe isolation switch (for roading or when people are hooking up chains) under that is a orange switch which is your ISO - SAE switch.

I was told a while back it's because the centerpivots are more stable (wider legs) but then why not have legs like the 450A where you can pull them out and pin them.

(Going from 360' - JCB is a Pig, Need a good month on the 3cx now)

[ianoz]

Most Machines these days , are changeable with a flick of a switch from ISO to SAE ..
Our Hitachi EX200-3 we had had a patern changer with a heap of different paterns on it .
It is interesting that the original JCB pattern is X pattern , Yet the excavators are ISO or SAE .

[Muz]

Most Machines these days , are changeable with a flick of a switch from ISO to SAE ..

clearly I must get out more

[Muz]

Well For some one that 's not been on a Backhoe for quite a while ,you did not do too bad .

Yeah ! not half ... its a bit of a swine to go from one to the other as the controls are the wrong way round .. I had the same experience going from a 360 onto a JCB 3CX ... you can get the JCB configured to be the same as the 360's now though, but you have to tell them at the factory which way you want it .. like why dont they have a couple of valves, under the back end you could just flip ?

Just about All the Backhoes In North America {that includes Canada } Are Centre mount , Yet every American Brand of Backhoe thats here in Australia is Sideshift . Unexplained Mystery of the world Rory .

Ive never understood that either ?

[ianoz]

Just about All the Backhoes In North America {that includes Canada } Are Centre mount , Yet every American Brand of Backhoe thats here in Australia is Sideshift . Unexplained Mystery of the world Rory .

[JD450A]

No no Bert, It's forwards. Wheeldiggers Are the Future :P...

Those command controls are really nasty unless you find the sweet spot for them. I tended to have them as far back towards the seat as I could and pulled them in fairly tight to my legs. The Pushbutton Stick is a waste of time tbh and I tended just to send it out and use a long dipper then shorten it when the dumper arrived.

Now for a stupid question, Why the center pivots?

[ianoz]

Well For some one that 's not been on a Backhoe for quite a while ,you did not do too bad .