Comparing the U25S to U35-4, some strange things

Jeez, it is like 50 grease points or something. Each time I would double check I would find another one. Tricky hidden ones like the one in the middle of the other two on the bucket pivot.

She is all greased up now and ready to dig.

Wow, the float feature on the dozer blade of the U35-4 seals the deal. We used it to fully level about 150 feet of road we roughed out using the hoe (pulled out some small trees and took down some 2 foot hills to make a level road). A week or more of work with a shovel done in 3 hours of machine time.

I need to get a big timber to use with the bucket/thumb for final smoothing but the float feature actually does a reasonable job by itself.

So much power from such a small machine (25hp).

Today we are going to start tackling the half of a mile of gravel road on our property that has 2 inch diameter saplings growing in it. The road is good but has obviously not been used in about 5 to 6 years.

ItBmine said:

Nice excavator and truck Jfet. How do you get the camper on and off? Does it have legs?

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When we welded up the steel frame for the camper we put in three tubes welded on each corner. We then made a 3 prong bracket attached to a truck jack which slides into the tubes at each corner. We store the 4 jacks under the truck in one of the 4 foot long aluminum boxes.

Today we used the U35-4 to pull weeds.

Well, small trees actually, that were growing in the gravel road on our property.

The trees that were larger than about 1 inch I am now able to quickly and deftly grab with the bucket and pinch with the thumb, which meshes against the 24 inch bucket between the 2nd, middle, and 4th tooth. The trees that are about 3/4" are a problem. They slip out of the grip of the bucket and thumb. Some of them I can just hand pull, but others are really root bound in the larger rock of the gravel driveway. I can cut them off with shears but I don't like leaving a sharp point in the drive for the heavy Isuzu/camper to drive over. This means I have to dig around the base and cut them off below ground level.

The U35-4 is awesome on the 1" and larger trees though. A 3 inch tree, which is too big for my snips, is effortless and quick to yank straight up with the hoe. I have it down to about 10 to 20 seconds per tree. It is the little buggers that are bugging me.

What I need is a flat plate on the bucket and matching plate on the thumb, so I could pinch and pull even the smallest saplings.

Obviously I could just dig up each one but the gravel driveway is really in great shape other than the trees growing in it. It makes much less of a mess pulling the tree out of the ground straight up.

Dozing with the blade doesn't work. The saplings just bend down and spring back up. A flail mower would probably work, but with no enclosed cab I would get pelted by rocks? Also there is no near rental place for that attachment.

I guess I will just use the excavator to pull up the larger trees and do the dig around and snip on the small ones. Going to take awhile to clear this last 1/3 mile...

If I had my machine shop still where we built the RV, I would make the pincer plate idea.

Flienlow said:

Can you please post a picture of the Filter wrench that came with your hoe? I would like to email to the former owner of mine to see if she has it. Would really appreciate it.

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Sure, here it is:

What is the technique for spinning the excavator tracks 90 or 180 in medium rocky road (2" to 3" rocks) without using the track motors much? Twisting in place using the tracks makes a mess and gets rocks lodged and crushed into the drive sprockets which can't be good for them. I know there is a technique to lift the machine with the boom/arm/bucket and then spin? but I can't find a good video of it being done on a mini. Do you also use the dozer blade or keep it up in the air?

Flienlow said:

So... This is where my little girl falls short. (I dont have any foot pedals which makes it tough) The only way I know to do this is to
1. Put boom down and lift ex up off most of the tracks.
2. depending on direction, you then use foot pedals 1 going forward, the other going back, and then simultaneously turn the turret in opposite direction. This point the tracks where you want them.

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Thanks! That makes a lot of sense now. I will try it tomorrow.

Bulldog said:

On the smaller trees take the back of your bucket and push them over enough that it's in between 2 teeth. Swing to either side just enough that the tooth can wrap around the tree and curl the bucket. I know my explaining sux but you can pull very small trees up like this and save yourself lots of time. I can grip small saplings no bigger than my finger without any problem.

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I did try this technique after you suggested it and while it did seem to work initially, I started to have failure in the tree (it would snap as I bent them over).

I have now moved to raking the gravel/rock road with the bucket when there are a lot of under 1/2" saplings which seems to loosen them enough that I can jump out and pull them up by hand. Anything over 1/2 inch is easy to pull with the bucket/thumb now that I have practice.

What do you guys think about pulling a small trailer behind the U35? Something that would hold maybe 3/4 yard of dirt (which would be about 8 to 10 scoops of the 24" bucket).

Obviously the point where the mini lacks is moving dirt from one area to another when grading out an area for our pole barn. I want to take down a small hill and move the dirt to a wallow about 80 feet away. This is beyond the swing range of the boom even with several moves.

Would it hurt anything in the drive train for the U35 to pull about 2000 pounds of trailer and dirt across fairly level ground? The U25 has more drawbar pull (which is the strange thing I started this thread about) but the U35 has over 6000 pounds. I figure it only needs about 1000 to 2000 of that to move itself on level ground.

2 wheel trailer or 4 wheel trailer? With a 4 wheel trailer you could make a yoke you grab with the bucket/thumb and tug it along. Actually using that setup you could pull a lot more than 2000 pounds along a path...slowly.