Dirt road grading
 

I did a search, and I found a couple old posts on this, but they were so old none of the links or pictures worked. I've got a 2182 and our private road is about 800' long, single lane and mostly dirt with some gravel mixed in. I've seen box graders you pull behind but not sure the 2182 will pull it. Or I've seen some homemade type ones with some spikes to dig in, and some channel iron on the back to smooth it out. Mainly need to fill in some potholes, get stuff back into the center of the road so water can channel out instead of just sitting there. I do have a front mounted plow, but not sure it could dig into anything, never tried it. I have a 3 point hitch to mount something on. Any suggestions? I don't want to buy or have something made if the cub can't pull it.

You can do some grading with a Cub if you have good gravel. If it's packed dirt and rock that hasn't been graded in forever, you're wasting your time. I promise, your tractor will pull a rear blade. Issue is, the blade won't be heavy enough to really do any good. I'd go play with it and the front blade to see if it will even attempt to move the rock. If the front blade won't, a rear one will be just as bad. You just need a bigger tractor. Got any neighbors with a real tractor? Go borrow it. :biggrin2:

There's pretty much no gravel left, it's mostly dirt. We had it graded last year and it worked great, but it was about $500 to rent the equipment, and I don't know what equipment they used. There's about 12 houses on the road, and it's seasonal residents, with 3 full time residents. So people contribute $100 a year to keep it plowed in winter, but that's about all the money will go for. Nobody wants to pay to keep the road up when they mostly only use it for 3 months a year. Grading would help a bunch, but last year it ended up costing about $800 to have someone come in, rent the equipment, and grade the road, and everybody complained about the cost. Of course, the old people were the first to complain saying it should have only cost about $200. (yeah, $200 in 1900 when they pulled a grader with horses) I figured if I could somehow grade it with the cub, I'd do it.

How bad is the road, can you post pics? We have a very heavy 7 foot Rhino scrape blade heavy enough for a 100HP farm tractor. It is great for touching up, but if things are really bad, it just glides over bumps if the ground is really hard. If your ground has a tendency to get really hard in the summer time, you may be better off doing the grading after a couple inches of rain. Guess it really depends on how bad the road is. FWIW, I've been keeping my eye out for about a 4ft yard rake to use behind my 982 just for smoothing out the gravels.
This is what we use if the farm road gets really bad, key is not to let it get bad to start with.

As stated, your results will vary a lot with soil conditions. Here is a box blade I purchased and it has adjustable scarifiers. I pull it with my 2072 and it did a good job on my hard packed gravel driveway which had no maintenance for over 10 years. It took about 20 passes with the teeth down to break it all up, then several more with just the blade to work it level. We had a few days of rain just prior to me doing this project so the soil was moist.
I purchased this one off of Ebay and it was less than $300 shipped to my door.

That's exactly what I was thinking about, and wasn't sure if a 2182 would pull it. Sure you'd take a few passes with the teeth barely touching after some rain, and slowly dig it up little by little, and you probably can't pull the whole thing full of gravel if you dig up too much, so you raise it up with the hitch. I'll have to check out ebay. Sorry, my mind is lapsing, what engine and what's the different between a 2072 and a 2182? (except of course mine has a bigger number so it must be better..lol)

You sure on that $300 price? I'm not finding anything under the $700-$800 price.

The price has went up a little, but yes.

http://m.ebay.com/itm/Impact-Impleme....c100408.m2460


Difference between a 2072 and a 2182 is 1hp. But the 20 has a twin cylinder Kohler Mag 20, and the 21 has a 12hp Kubota 3cyl gas.

Thank you sir, and I'm sure you meant the 2182 has 21hp and not 12hp. I was looking up box blade and didn't come up with much, but box scraper gave quite a few more options.

Yes, looks like I typed it wrong. :beerchug: