What are all the things you do with a grader?

[Grader4me]

Hey you grader guys...What all do you do with your graders? As we all know a grader is a very versatile piece of equipment. So lets hear of what kind of jobs you have to do with your grader in your neck of the woods. We now have grader operators here from all over the world.. so lets talk...graders!!

Maybe even discuss some "tricky situations" that we all have been in at some point in our careers.

Also good for others here to learn if you get into detail about the task you are explaining. Good example is the "140M vs 770D Pictorial" thread.

Any point or discussion in this thread will be considered following the original topic as long as it has to do with graders. How about that? :)..am I allowed to do that??:eek::beatsme

[telescooper]

We take down banks, cut shoulders, grade pads, cut swales, winter operations. We don't use them for blacktop grading.
Telescooper

[95zIV]

Climb in it, look at all the controls, shake my head, climb back out, walk away and let someone else do it.:D

[digger242j]

Any point or discussion in this thread will be considered following the original topic as long as it has to do with graders. How about that? ..am I allowed to do that??

Only if you can do it with a grader... :cool2


:)

[Dirtman2007]

Climb in it, look at all the controls, shake my head, climb back out, walk away and let someone else do it.:D

:falldownlaugh

In the few hours I've been on one it was do grade and build a 14,000 sq ft horse arena (200 x 70ft). The grader was larger than I needed for this job, would not even turn around in that area without using the middle articulation piviot. But I work great and I was able to put a 6" crown down the center without any problems.

Also graded a few parking lots, put down and graded 1500 tons of crush and run in 2 days with a john deere 590? or 790? ( forgot the number but it was smaller than a 12g cat)

but that's about it for the motor grader usage.

[qball]

i spread cream cheese on my bagels. no, really,i do.

[49cat112]

So far all I've done to my '49 Cat is throw money at it :eek: :D

"I'll get it running Honey...really! I will!"

or

"No Senor....no you can't do me a favor and haul it off for free!" :mad::guns

[Squizzy246B]

What are all the things you do with a grader?

You have to ask yourself....do you really want to know what goes in those cabs..:umno .:crazy.:eek::eek:

:stirthepot :D

[Grader4me]

You have to ask yourself....do you really want to know what goes in those cabs..:umno .:crazy.:eek::eek:

:stirthepot :D



Any point or discussion in this thread will be considered following the original topic as long as it has to do with graders, which means no talk about girlish grader operators etc


Aww Squizz...geezz you're running the risk of getting :ban :eek: :D Scared?

[Deas Plant]

Hi, Grader4me.
Well, I have used one as a lunch taxi. Got me from where I was being paid to be to where my lunch was and back to where I was being paid to be. LOL. Back in the 'bad ole' days before 'workplace safety' overtook common sense, there would be several other blokes hanging off it too.

(Notice I never laid claim to any form of effort for which I might be monetarily rewarded.)

[Grader4me]

Hi, Grader4me.
Well, I have used one as a lunch taxi. Got me from where I was being paid to be to where my lunch was and back to where I was being paid to be. LOL. Back in the 'bad ole' days before 'workplace safety' overtook common sense, there would be several other blokes hanging off it too.

(Notice I never laid claim to any form of effort for which I might be monetarily rewarded.)

Laying all jokes aside..It hasn't been that long ago that I came on one of our job sites and low and behold there was the grader coming down the road with three people hanging on the sides. I damm near had a stroke.

[digger242j]

...and low and behold there was the grader coming down the road with three people hanging on the sides. I damm near had a stroke.

Thus proving the practice unsafe...

[Deas Plant]

Hi, Grader4me.
I think these two are possibly just a little more in line with what you had in mind.

On a job about 28 years ago, there were 2 graders, 2 elevating scrapers, a water cart, a drawn vibrating sheepsfoot roller (no other compaction equipment) - - - and no tractor to tow the roller. The decision was made to use the older of the 2 graders, an old Cummins-powered Goodwin, to tow the roller.

Can you imagine trying to back a drawn vibrating sheepsfoot roller the length of a 300 foot fill with a grader?

The solution was to weld a hitch on the front of the grader and hook the roller up to that. This meant that the 'roller operator' could readily see where he was 'backing' the roller and had the steering working for him as he pushed it backwards along the fill. He also had the benefit of having the roller directly follow the front of the grader as he reversed the grader back along the fill the other way. It worked like a dream, not that the 'roller operator' was very favourably impressed with his new duty - maybe it was a little beneath his dignity - but it was a lot easier to control than having the roller hooked on behind the grader.

I escaped that onerous task, thankfully. I had the newer grader, a Cat 12E 21F. I had some fun with that machine too. One of the elevating scrapers was a 120hp Perkins-powered Thiess T-Man, a little 6 cu. yd machine with a shaft drive to the elevator. One day, the other scraper had broken down and the T-Man was the whole load-haul-dump part of the operation. There wasn't a whole lot for the Cat 12 to do so I started blading material out of the cut and pushing it down onto the fill. I got on one side of the centerline pegs and WENT for it. The boss was running the little T-Man, loading on the other side of the centerline and hauling his loads down onto the same fill. It became very obvious after the first couple of hours that I was moving more dirt with the Cat 12 than the boss was the elevating scraper.

I personally thought that the boss should have been happy that I had shown some initiative in putting the grader to work productively - or at least as productively as a grader can be on bulk earthmoving over any distance - and that he was at least getting some dirt moved in the right direction.

NAH! He was annoyed that I had outdone his elevating scraper with the grader. Some people just got no appreciation or sense of humor. He said in an aggrieved tone, "But you were racing me." I replied, "You bet I was."

[nextdoor]

Your showing your age again Deas 12E21F as the newer machine!!!! All jokes aside they were a great old machine - I have a 12E17K -and no Im not OLD!!

[landrvrnut22]

Climb in it, look at all the controls, shake my head, climb back out, walk away and let someone else do it.:D

LOL, yep, that about sums it up. I have attempted to try grading a parking lot. It was a newer Champion 710? I gave it my best shot, but probably needed at least 10-20 hours of practice to get good.

Now put me on a dozer, and thats a whole different story.

[Grader4me]

Hi, Grader4me.
I think these two are possibly just a little more in line with what you had in mind.

Yes thats kind of what I'm looking for. Some good stories are great. There is a good discussion in the other thread about grading. What are some of the other things you guy's do with a grader? How about ditching and what is your approach? Leveling gravel and how do you tackle that? What method works best for you? Everyone does things a bit differently, and it would be nice to hear a collection of differing thoughts so we can all learn.

I mentioned "tricky situations" what I mean is have you ever been in a situation that left you scratching your head and wonder what in the hell am I going to do now? Squizzy, please retain yourself...I know it's difficult..:Pointhead :)

[ovrszd]

When I ran my first grader it was an ole Cat 12. I had no idea how to run it but the township hired me anyway. The President of the board said "Go over East of your house on that first gravel road. Get the machine straight in the road and lower the blade until it touches the ground, put the grader in low gear and let out the clutch and in a few hours you'll be a grader operator". That's exactly what I did. By the end of the day I was in third gear. Nineteen years later I am still learning how to run a grader.

Unusual uses would be "Frame Straightener". One of my boys bought a Chevy Pickup a few years ago that had been hit in the rear end. It buckled the frame up in the middle, just behind the cab. We took the bed off, stacked blocks under the rear ends of the frame rails and under the center just ahead of the bend. Put the grader blade in "bank" position, drove beside the pickup and gently lowered the cutting edge of the blade across the frame rails just behind the cab. Gently pushed downward, lifted and eyeballed, lowered and gently pushed again this time a little harder, lifter and eyeballed and thought it looked good. Bolted the bed back on. My Brother In Law is still driving it and you gotta look very, very close to see that it has any bend. :drinkup

[MKTEF]

A couple of months ago we where out on a task that was rather tricky for a grader driver.
I learned a lot one evening.:D

Task was to make a area for container storage.(as cheap as possible):)
The area had been cleared for stumps and top soil, mostly...
We had one 25t loader, 3 dumptrucks and one grader.

We split in two groups where the loader and the dumpers where loading and driving away the stumps and the top soil.(apr 300 loads)
My grader aprentice was doing the leveling on one part of the area.
The other area prowed to be tricky, so i took over the grader.;)

Man that was real difficult....
The area had some sand that should be levelled nicely, with a fall to one end.
In one spot, i just graded against it, and on that spot i just ended boom stuck, wheels spinning and the grader digging down.:mad:
I aproched that spot numerus times from different angels and with different cuts.

After some time i went out and checked the soil closely, on that spot there was another type of soil, more clay, with some smal stumps in it.
Sorrounded with sand...
So i got a little tempered, and just stuck the blade end into the clay and made numerus parallell runs apr a feet deep over the area.
That removed the smal stumps and lifted the clay up and mixed it with the sorrunding sand.
Still had to be carefull when going over that spot, but didnt get stuck though.

Normaly i have done my grading on areas/roads where the soil type has been uniform...
But not this time.
Stumps...as said before...they get u in trouble....:confused:
I haven't been out for so many stumps before, and couldn't believe in my mind that they could cause so much problem, even for a rather big grader.
But when sorrounded with clay they seem to be a real pain..

I bet this is not uncommon by you, but here the normal soil is sand with rocks. Clay is common in some parts of the country, but u don't do grading in clay.;)

Problem spot is between the loader and the grader in 1.pic.

[GPSGrader]

I run a 12M grader 12/14 hrs a day, 6 days a week. I try not to let it stop moving somewhere on the job... one tricky task for me is grading 4ft flat bottom ditches with a 14ft blade. I'm still trying to perfect this maneuver.

Hey didn't I see someone post something about blocking a front tire(?) for the purpose of clipping a fill slope? Any info on this would be appreciated.

[Grader4me]

I run a 12M grader 12/14 hrs a day, 6 days a week. I try not to let it stop moving somewhere on the job... one tricky task for me is grading 4ft flat bottom ditches with a 14ft blade. I'm still trying to perfect this maneuver.

Hey didn't I see someone post something about blocking a front tire(?) for the purpose of clipping a fill slope? Any info on this would be appreciated.

You know, I've never made a flat bottom ditch..always wanted to try one though. We always went with the V ditches with the long fore slopes. I could imagine with a 14 foot blade it would most definitely be tricky. I would be interested in hearing your approach to this. Nitty gritty details :) Once we get this thread rolling along I will go into detail on how I construct a V ditch. It's all about sharing experiences so we can learn.


After some time i went out and checked the soil closely, on that spot there was another type of soil, more clay, with some Small stumps in it.
Surrounded with sand...
So i got a little tempered, and just stuck the blade end into the clay and made numerous parallel runs apr a feet deep over the area.
That removed the Small stumps and lifted the clay up and mixed it with the surrounding sand.
Still had to be carefully when going over that spot, but didn't get stuck though.

Normally i have done my grading on areas/roads where the soil type has been uniform...
But not this time.

Great story MKTEF! In my area there are many differing materials to work with. Rocks, ledge, mud, clay and actual gravel in some places. My favorite was the "frost boils" in the spring of the year. Grading along then down you go, sinking darn near out of site. I would have to pick a trail around these boils and leave a windrow to mark the path so cars wouldn't go into my sink hole. Fun stuff!

Here is one "tricky" situation that I experienced. Not sure if I told this one before or not. Senerio..winter time, roads just like a bottle. We had a plow/sand truck(brand new) that spun out on hill and landed in the ditch. My job was to scarify the hill as the trucks couldn't make it. I had the jewelry on all the tires so I thought it would be a piece of cake. So I started up the grade planing the ice and made it past the truck that was in the ditch. About 2 lengths of the grader past the truck I spun out and started to come down backwards. I was heading right towards the truck. I put more pressure on the right side of the moldboard and this kicked me away from the truck. I steered with the moldboard the rest of the way down the hill. After my heart started again I noticed what a good job the backside of the moldboard did scarifying the ice. So the only way I got up the hill was to go up as far as I could and back drag back down steering with the moldboard. I kept doing this getting a little further each time until I got the whole hill done.

[Deas Plant]

Hi, Nextdoor.
I could care less about showing my age but I'd hafta work at it and I'm too lazy to do that.

'Sides, I've DONE one thing that very few others on this or most other forums have achieved yet. What's that, you ask. Simple. I've survived long enough to reach the age that I am now. Have you survived long enough yet to reach the age that I am now? If not, you still have the task ahead of you. What's more, I'm in pretty darn good health for a bloke half my age.


LOL.

Those old 21F's didn't make a bad bunk either with those wide seats. (Staying on thread topic.)

[RocksnRoses]

Have you survived long enough yet to reach the age that I am now?

Yep!:D

Rn'R.

[Deas Plant]

Hi, Rocksn'Roses.
Oh? And what makes you think you have? I see 43 years of work in your profile. What makes you think that is enough? LOL.

Hi, GPSGrader.
Flat-bottomed ditches are relatively easy assuming you can get one end of the machine or the other - or both - down on the bottom of the ditch. Angle the blade round until the toe is picking up just outside the wheel in the ditch and have the heel delivering the windrow just inside the line of the wheel in the ditch, so that the windrow itself is mostly up on the side of the ditch. Next pass, pick the windrow up and carry it up the bank.

It is also possible to set the blade to pick up inside the wheel in the ditch and deliver outside that same wheel if need be.

Where possible, I always work material up batters while travelling uphill 'cos the material moves across the blade faster that way and you get less spillage around the low end of the blade.

I have made a bit of a specialty of being able to set my blade to deliver the material under the machine where I can't physically SEE the heel of the blade. I have used this method in quite a few various situations and that skill has been very handy many times.

One of the situations where I would use it would be side-cutting a batter where the batter is too steep to put the machine right up on it sideways and there isn't sufficient room to run the of the machine flat with the inside wheels against the toe of the batter. I would put the machine half on the batter, half on the flat, side-shift the blade and set it so that the heel was delivering the trimmed material under the machine between the the rear wheels on the toe line of the batter. Having the moldboard rolled well forward helps with the cutting and pushes the material a little further clear of the toe of the batter, making it easier to pick up next pass.

I have also been known to set the machine up in the same half on-half off the batter position and pick the trimmed windrow up from inside the front wheel and deposit it just outside the rear wheel.

The ways in which you can use a grader, especially the later articulated graders, are mostly only limited by the operator's imagination. Study your job situation, work out where you need to cut material from and where you need to get it to, then work out how to set your machine up to achieve that result in th fewest possible number of passes.

I once had to cut around 150 feet of ditch, 2 feet deep with 4-1 batters down one side of a 12 foot wide right-of-way and get all the material from the ditch out of there using only a 21F Cat 12. Cut the ditch first and grade all the excavated material up onto the remaining 4 foot wide flat. The reverse the blade and grade it back onto the near batter of the ditch, reverse the blade again and garde it out onto the flat again, Repeat the above process until all the material is out of the ditch and clear of the right-of-way. It took time but I got it done and neatly too.

I might add that this was way before there were even many excavators around, let alone excavators with tilting heads or tilting buckets. (Showing my age again and again I don't care.)

Use what you have to the best of your ability to get the job done as well as you can, the hallmark of a true operator.

[RocksnRoses]

Hi, Rocksn'Roses.
Oh? And what makes you think you have? I see 43 years of work in your profile. What makes you think that is enough? LOL.

Just quoting from your web page Deas "I was born in Perth 55 years ago", dated April, 2007.

Rn'R.

[Deas Plant]

Hi, Rocksn'Roses.
That April, 2007, date is the date of the last update, not when the site was originally put up. Sorry 'bout that but I forgot to update my age so you're still guessing. LOL.

I WAS 55 when I originally put that site up but it's been a bit more than a year since that happened. LOL. :mad: :(:o:D

[GPSGrader]

Hello Deas Plant, I've read your posts for some time now and once again you prove not your age, but your knowledge of a motor grader and the practical ways of grading. Always appreciate your posts.
I agree with relatively easy in regards to a flat bottomed ditch. you're approach is basically the same as mine. See, I've been working in a geographical exception to normal dirt operations. Under ideal conditions and if behind a decent backhoe operator, not that bad. All slopes are 2:1 and ditches are, in places, quite deep. In addition, we have many soil types on the jobsite. However, not one passes a suitable material test. It can be very hard to cut but once excavated, never bonds together again. BAD dirt. Its a pure gray color and has sea shells' imprints, only found in the deep cut areas. (old ocean bottom) Bad for traction too. Strange stuff. Anyways, makes steep slopes a hassle sometimes.
I've been doubting my skills lately. Im the lead man on a $50mil. interstate hiway job and expected to know everything. So nobody's telling me much anymore I'm getting the questions. So I come here and read regularly to make sure I'm at least attempting to continue my grading education as much as possible. I'm only 7 years into grading and 4 on a grader. But I'll be damned if I don't do my part to preserve the art of motor grader operation. Its what sets the MG man apart from the rest. I'm sure some of you know what I mean. Have a good day.

[Deas Plant]

Hi, GPSGrader.
Thank you for your kind comments. I try. Some folks say I'm very trying. LOL.

That site of yours sounds like an interesting place to stay away from if you don't want to end up with all your hair pulled out at the end of each day. LOL.

Now you've got me searching through the 'archives' 'cos I can remember coming up against something similar long ago but can't at the moment remember where or when.

AH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gotchya!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia, about 1995. Fortunately, it wasn't the whole site. It was a layer that showed up in a few isolated places, seldom more than about 6" thick and more commonly only about 2" thick. Thankfully. It was a silty clay that actually had old shells in it and was very greasy. Like that stuff of yours, it was fairly solid until you disturbed it. Then it was like a mixture of plasticine and vaseline - can you imagine trying to mix those two?

We found that we could mix a little of it with a LOT of sand and some good clay if we rotary hoe-ed to mix it. We quickly abandoned the mixing attempts as being not worth the effort involved and declared a dump area for it in the bottom of an area that had to be filled a fair bit anyway to create a park. With about 5-6 feet of fill over it and no compaction test requirements in that area, it was no longer a problem.

Hope you get yours sorted out that easily.

[MKTEF]

This sounds like the same stuff i am hassling in theese days.:confused:
Here its a gry stuff with stones in.
I've got from 50-90% stone in my stuff.

Its hard as rock when it's laying there untouched.
My Pc210 is able to scrape off 1/3 foot for each try.
If its raining, this stuff is just floating, even if it has 75% rock in it.
I try to make a fill/road with it, but it just floats away.
And its not draining water, just holds on water...:mad:

The only solution to get som hold in it is to dry it, but it takes a long time to dry out. Dryes a couple of inches on two weeks...:mad:

I'm working to build a new road, so i found a solution...
Drive it trough the main crusher, so the dirt comes out on the dirtconveyor and the rock get chrushed and can be used as a road base.
Dirt is getting plastered on the side..:)

[RocksnRoses]

Hi, Rocksn'Roses.
I forgot to update my age so you're still guessing. LOL.

G,day Deas,
No I'm not guessing Deas, age to me is a state of mind. I just sometimes would like to be twenty again with the knowledge I have now. When I saw your post, I couldn't resist replying.

That wasn't you that cut the communications cable on the Gold Coast was it? Do you know anything about it at all, it seems it caused a lot of problems.

Back to the topic: Grader usage

We do all the normal grader things and we do trench in a lot of poly pipe on farms. I guess some of you do too, but this involves digging a trench 200 - 300mm deep with the corner of the blade angled right in behind the front wheel and the other end lifted right up. I always run the drive wheels in the trench to roll the bottom and this leaves a firm flat base for the pipe. The farmer then lays the pipe, and I am talking 32mm water pipe here, in the trench and then we backfill it. If it is in stony country someone will walk along the trench and pick out the bigger rocks to stop them rolling on to the pipe while we are backfilling.

Last year I spent some time on an old 12E on a station in the Northern Territory. My job was to open up about 30km of access tracks for bore trucks to come in and drill as well as opening up about 60km of track between two stations. In a lot of places I had to clear turpentine bush which is sort of a bit like blackberry bush and also soap bush which is spindly an grows 8' - 10' high. There was no front blade so I just had too put the blade down and drive through it and cut it off and when the blade was full swing out to one side and empty it then go back and grade a track. The biggest problem with this was that a lot of the turpentine had been burnt and this makes the sticks very hard. It was nothing to have one or two punctures a day and the tyres on the grader were studded with little sticks in them. The station would leave spare wheels for me along the track but even then I had to do the old Cat grader trick and take one front wheel off to get me back to the ute one day.

Rn'R.

[Deas Plant]

Hi, Rn'R.
Nope. It wasn't me that cut that cable and I'm glad it wasn't. I think that one could run into some bulk bucks. I doubt that bloke had a LOTTA fun yeterday.

I sure had more fun this morning than he would have yesterday. I got to pull apart a largish pile of tree mulch that had caught fire yesterday and been - mostly - extinguished. The people who had stacked it had stacked it up to about 11 - 12 feet high and then never turned it - at all. I was using an air-cab 943 loader and there were a LOT of times that I couldn't see the bucket for the clouds of steam coming out of that mulch. No wonder it caught fire.

I've been rather fortunate in my grader operating. I don't think I have had more than about 3 or 4 genuine punctures in all the grader operating that I've done. I did have a rash of flats on one job with a 17K Cat 12. It turned out that they had fitted tubes into tubless rims. That would have been O.K. if they had also fitted rust bands, but they didn't. The tubeless rims had a rough ridge right around the middle of each rim and these were chewing holes in the inside of the tubes.

After about the third flat in four days, the tire fitter decided to investigate why they were all on the inside of the tube instead of the outside or in the walls. He found the ridge on the rim and ground it off. No more flats on that one. It took about two week to get them all ground off as they went flat.

I've done that wedged/chained-up front wheel trick a whole once. All the rest of my punctures/flats have all been on the drive. One of them was while I was roading an 8T Cat 12 from Bullabulling, just West of Coolgardie, back to Perth, 329 miles. It happened about 40 miles East of Southern Cross. There was NOT a lot of passing traffic around there in those days - 1967. It was fun getting the rim with the flat back on the scarifier lift arm.

[Grader4me]

Hi, Rn'R.
I've done that wedged/chained-up front wheel trick a whole once.

Been there as well. Ever had a flat on the front and after taking the wheel bolts out the darn rim was "welded" on and just wouldn't come off? I've placed a block of wood between the frame and the rim and used the lean wheel to break the rim away. Just go easy and it works great.

[Grader4me]

Okay, lets try to revive this thread a bit. I'm sure some of the new operators can learn from us if we take the time to explain how we do certain tasks with a grader. The first thing I'm going to talk about is how I construct a V ditch.

keep in mind that everyone has differing methods in doing things, so as I said this is my way as it works for me. To me the purpose of this forum is to learn and that's the main reason I started this thread. I'm not trying to make anyone believe that I'm the best grader operator in the world, because I'm not. I'm still learning..

Okay I will give you this senerio..Road is grubbed off on each side and we are going to use the material from the ditch (good material) and place it on the road. Keep in mind that this is a rural road but with some traffic.

Position your blade so it's at a sharp angle and the toe is just even with the outside of the front right tire (moving the material from the right side first) and make sure that your blade is tilted all the way back, as tilting it forward your material won't roll off the blade. Your first pass is always a "marking pass" as to define your ditch line. I just lift the heel quite high and with the toe into the ditch I make my line. Material rolls in between the tandems.

Next pass I set my blade up the same way with the toe even with the outside of the front tire. The tire follows the ditch line and your blade follows the tire. If you had your blade sticking out beyond the tire it would be hard to control your grader as it would pull you toward the bank, giving you a crooked ditch line. I drift my material on this cut to the outside of my left tandem so that the window is beyond the tires. Have to be careful here as many learning to ditch will have the material coming under the tires causing the grader to rock all over the place creating basically a mess.

Next pass same deal with the toe and cut my ditch deeper. Now I have a good windrow to move up onto the road. Next pass I square my blade up a bit and slide it over (keeping the machine in the same ditch line) and move the windrow closer to the road and creating a longer fore slope. Next I position the grader up on the road and move the windrow towards the center. If you have a large windrow to move it's best to stay on the left of it, extend your blade and take half of it. Then straddle and take the other half. Reason is that if you try to take it all some will spill off the toe and go back into your ditch.

I would keep repeating these procedures and build up right side of the road (just to center) until I had my ditch made. Traffic could still go as one lane is still clear. Repeat this on the opposite side. On the back slope I would angle my blade and place the material into the ditch line then move it onto the road. We always would strive for a good long foreslope and short back slope.

Hope all this makes sense. There this has to be the longest (two fingered) typing that I've ever done.

[Dr. Ernie]

On the subjuct of flat bottom ditches. I have not tryed this with a motor grader, but it works real well with a scraper, (MT865 and 2 Noble pans) cut the bottom to grade then just cut the slopes in, you basicily spill the dirt back into the ditch to achieve the correct slopes. I have cut miles of ditch this way, and in a very nice and neat, it is also FAST. (I was cutting as much ditch as a Cat325 and a D-5C working together). I Belive that with a grader this would be very easy to do.

[Northart]

Motor Grader's do :

1. Finish or rough grading
2. Segregate material
3. Blend or mix material
4. Scarify material
5. Compact repairs, by wheel rolling
6. Snow and Ice removal
7. Brush cutting , with attachment
8. Road shoulder restoration with sod buster
9. Ditch & Slope building with Slopeboard
10. Also used as taxicab on job, when no radios LOL

Just some things that come to mind. :)

[RocksnRoses]

Motor Grader's do :

1. Finish or rough grading
2. Segregate material
3. Blend or mix material
4. Scarify material
5. Compact repairs, by wheel rolling
6. Snow and Ice removal
7. Brush cutting , with attachment
8. Road shoulder restoration with sod buster
9. Ditch & Slope building with Slopeboard
10. Also used as taxicab on job, when no radios LOL

Just some things that come to mind. :)

11. Clear scrub
12. Pull stuck vehicles and equipment out of bogs
13. Clean out loader buckets with the end of the blade
14. Trenching and backfilling when laying poly pipe

Rn'R.

[Grader4me]

Motor Grader's do :

1. Finish or rough grading
2. Segregate material
3. Blend or mix material
4. Scarify material
5. Compact repairs, by wheel rolling
6. Snow and Ice removal
7. Brush cutting , with attachment
8. Road shoulder restoration with sod buster
9. Ditch & Slope building with Slopeboard
10. Also used as taxicab on job, when no radios LOL

Just some things that come to mind. :)

Good to see you back Northart :)

[Wolf]

Good to see you back Northart :)

just curious, but what is the big attraction to running a grader, versus running a track hoe or track loader? tell me, i am wondering about it.

[Deas Plant]

Hi, Wolf.
I could say it's a grader operator thing and I'd be right but I'll try to explain it in terms that a non-grader operator might be able to understand.

Graders are very versatile and complex machines and are often called on to do work ranging from extremely accurate to very rough, all in the same day. Probably more so than any other machine, with a grader, if you ever stop learning, you're dead from the neck up. And your learning doesn't only cover machine handling and techniques. It also covers working with a very wide range of materials, many of which require fairly precise watering and compacting to achieve the desired results.

Almost every grader job is, or can be, a challenge. Even if you've done the same job 100 times before, there is always the challenge to do it quicker and better and you have the tool to do it, IF you understand that tool. Graders, more than any other type of earthmoving machine, require that you be able to 'THINK' the machine without having to stop to do it. If you don't have a grader mind-set, it is unlikely that you will ever be a REALLY good grader operator. A VERY large part of grader operation is being able to visualise the finished product and work towards it, knowing your pegs - or these days, your GPS, etc. - being able to plan your work, get the steps in the right order, organising the support machines working with you, i.e., water cart(s), roller(s), scrapers, trucks, etc., and controlling the whole process, FROM the grader seat. Hooray for CB radios.

Graders are not for everybody. They are basically finishing machines, probably more of an instrument than a machine in that they have far more ways that they can be set to do a particular job than any other earthmoving machine that I can think of at the moment. This is one of the BIG attractions for me, the infinite variations and choosing the BEST one for a particular job, from lifting out a 4" wide strip of asphalt that has been sawn for a trench to cutting a flat-bottomed V drain between a road shoulder and the toe of a cut batter to spreading and trimming rubberised asphalt in a car park to cutting a 12" wide flat bench 5 feet up a 1.5-in-1 cut batter which forms one side of a V-drain to laying back a 12 foot high batter that you can't get on top of and have only about 12 feet of space along the toe of the batter in which to play.

It takes a LOT of patience and a LOT of understanding of your machine to be a really good grader operator, along with a good eye for levels and grades. IF you have all of those things and you like to be able look at a finished job and say, "I did that," there is a faint chance that you might make a good grader operator.

Personally, I'm NOT one of the REALLY good ones because I haven't spent enough time on them. How-wevver, I have shown myself to be better than quite a few who DID claim to be really good. I'm certainly not in Randy Kreig's class and I doubt I'm in Northart's class but I get by - and I really do enjoy my time on a grader.

Hope this helps.

Northart and RnR, I'm disappointed in you. You missed a few: (LOL.)

15. fire fighting.
16. pipe laying - actually placing pipes in the trench.
17. placing lintels for storm-water pits.
18. foreman's runabout-limousine.
19. clearing heli-pads in long grass or light scrub.
20. pushloading scrapers - I've loaded Cat 619's with a 21F Cat 12 and Cat 660's with an O&K G350, 42 tons and 400 hp.
21. confuse the beejayzuz out of people who don't understand them.
22. ride herd on scraper operators and truck steering wheel attendants - haul road maintenance and fill-cut control.
23. break out material for elevating scrapers.
24 fix other people's/machine's mistakes.

Any others? Let's hear 'em.

[nextdoor]

Gday all, a couple more.... construction of contour banks in agriculture, I will admit to chasing sheep with one (didnt have anything else!!).. Cheers

[RocksnRoses]

RnR, I'm disappointed in you. You missed a few: (LOL.)

Steady Deas, at best I would only class myself as a bush operator grading fencelines, yards and roads for cockies, but there is something about operating a grader that I find quite enjoyable.


Gday all, a couple more.... construction of contour banks in agriculture, I will admit to chasing sheep with one (didnt have anything else!!).. Cheers

I have known wheel loaders to be used to chase sheep as well, on the odd occasion.

Rn'R.

[Grader4me]

just curious, but what is the big attraction to running a grader, versus running a track hoe or track loader? tell me, i am wondering about it.

Good question Wolf. I guess I can't add to much more as Deas summed it up pretty well. I always preferred graders over other types of equipment because there is just so many different things that you can do with one. It's like you don't get tired of just doing one task all the time. I love ditching with a TLB, but after a few weeks it gets tiresome as everything is so repetitive.

Having said all of that, everyone is different. Some love excavators some dozer's, so on. So the attraction depends on the person and what he/she likes.


I have known wheel loaders to be used to chase sheep as well, on the odd occasion

I've rounded up cattle with a grader. Also took it to Timmy's for java. God..ya gotta love a grader...

[LowBoy]

Hey Mr. Grader4me,

I had the honor of playing with a brandy new 14M today with joysticks. Do you prefer them, or the time tested steering wheel better?

[Grader4me]

Hey Mr. Grader4me,

I had the honor of playing with a brandy new 14M today with joysticks. Do you prefer them, or the time tested steering wheel better?

Never had the pleasure of trying one. What did you think of it?

[LowBoy]

It took some getting used to for sure. I've laoded a good portion of them on and off of lowbeds going from factory to dealer, dealer to customers in the very recent past, but that's no comparison to actually carrying a grade.

Once I got acclimated, I was quite content. It was sort of like running a Cat skidsteer...left stick is forward, reverse, steer, and angle if I recall, and the right one was all the other blade functions. I only spent 3-4 hours maintaining our haulroad, and the material is basically sand, like talc, when dry like it is now finally.

I can't hold a candle to you and your colleagues here and am not worthy to break into your topic, but I was curious if you ever ran one with joysticks.

I'll stick with the digging and pushing.***

[Grader4me]

You just break in anytime you want. Must have been quite an experience to operate one of those puppies. Stuff like this is what I love to hear. It would great if the guy's would give a blow by blow description on how they do certian tasks with a grader. For example...maintaining a haul road as you said.
A lot of people reading and learning might be interested on exactly how you do that. You know ..like how many pass you have to make. How wide is the road. Is it hard to keep up due to the truck traffic. Do you cut it all the way across then feather it back across. If we take the time to explain some of the ways that we do certain things, then everyone can learn.

Hope I'm not freaking you out here Lowboy :eek::D

[LowBoy]

You just break in anytime you want. Must have been quite an experience to operate one of those puppies. Stuff like this is what I love to hear. It would great if the guy's would give a blow by blow description on how they do certian tasks with a grader. For example...maintaining a haul road as you said.
A lot of people reading and learning might be interested on exactly how you do that. You know ..like how many pass you have to make. How wide is the road. Is it hard to keep up due to the truck traffic. Do you cut it all the way across then feather it back across. If we take the time to explain some of the ways that we do certain things, then everyone can learn.

Hope I'm not freaking you out here Lowboy :eek::D



Actually you are Grader...you just gave me a wicked case of stagefright now...:eek:

I must say though, I'm fortunate, and feel very serious about this, to have the privilage of being around a lot of brand new machinery the past few years. I have a brand new Deere 644J loader on this job which I think is a beautiful piece, equipped with a quick coupler and have 8 foot forks with it.
It's got a/c, stereo, and a lot of bells and whistles I have yet to read the manual and find out what all they are. I'm troubled that every yahoo with a hardhat gets in and out of it all day, I sweep the floormat each time I leave it, but it never happens again till I do it again. Every time I get back in it, it's back sitting in 3rd gear on the reverser lever.

I was in a brand new Hitachi 450 excavator Saturday for 9 hrs., and enjoyed that immensely. The 350D Deere haultrucks are nice too, if you can stand doing that all day. But, when it's 86 degrees outside and humid, and those kids are flying up and down the haulroad with them with the windows iced up, I almost become envyous. If the windows weren't iced up in my excavator, I might become distraught over such a thing...***

To elaborate on my experience today, the task is simple. Keep the road smooth for the trucks so they can hammer down and make production. With all the rain we've been getting lately, all the grading and maintaining in the world would not hold this substandard material together. Now that it's been dry for a week, grading talcum powder that's 2-4 feet deep is a real pleasure. Not a stone in it to be found for the 1.75 mile stretch.
I simply started on the right side, bringing material to my left, turned around, brought that windrow to my right now, and repeated the process continuously. Not very fancy as cutting a V ditch or a vertical snow shelf, but I was having a good time doing something totally different from the norm.

[Grader4me]

I knew that I was probably putting you on the spot a bit. Thanks for taking the time to share your experience.


Not very fancy as cutting a V ditch or a vertical snow shelf, but I was having a good time doing something totally different from the norm.

All of that comes with time my friend. When your having a good time operating something entirely different? That tells me you was comfortable and would learn quickly. Believe me, there is a big difference between having a good time and being so nervous that you are physically ill... One word of caution though...graders are addicting...;)

[LowBoy]

I was thinking the same thing. It may possibly be the thing I'd like to do when I grow up.:naughty

[Northart]

Hello Grader4men,

Thanks for the nice words, been gone all summer working on an Airport project, just got home the other day.

Hello Deas Plant,

As usual, your synopsis is accurate. Yes, I did forget to mention, tasks others have come up with.

Stripping topsoil is another. Being Lead man on the dirt spread. Towing stuck equipment ,service trucks and Foremans pickup. Etc, just demonstrates the variety of tasks performed.

Hello Wulf,

Grader work to me is enjoyable. Being able to look back and see what you have accomplished is rewarding. :)Takes lot of concentration and thought as to doing the work.

Todays work is becoming more and more complex, given the expense, scarcity of materials. The engineering somedays looks like , they just dare you to try and build it ! Anyway, it is challenging to say the least.

Grader work is Better than putting dirt in a truck box and see it go away. LOL :) To me that's boring .

[Deas Plant]

Hi, Northart.
Remember, you started this.

I have also used an 8T Cat 12 as a shopping trolley. I was on the tail end of roading it 329 miles from the last job back to the depot in Perth, Western Australia, in 1969. With a flat tyre and a broken main fuel pipe, the journey had taken from midday, Friday, to 11.00 am, Sunday, to get to within an hour from home. There was a good cheap fruit and vegetable market in a village that I passed through about that time and I was sharing a house with 4 other blokes at the time. It wasn't a real strain to figure that buying some cheap vegetables there would save money at home so I wheeled my 12-ton shopping trolley into the car park. A bag of 'spuds' and a bag of mixed vegetables later, one on either side of the footplate, along with my suitcase and other personals, I wheeled my 12-ton shopping trolley back out into the traffic and continued on my merry way, followed by a lot of strange looks from the other shoppers and passers-by.

As mentioned in an earlier thread, I have also used a grader to put concerned looks on the faces of various young ladies in cars who just happened to be parked alongside the front wheels of whatever grader I was running at the time at traffic lights - by slowly leaning the front wheels towards their car.

The older pony motor start graders worked fairly well as the town alarm clock too. On the journey mentioned above, I stayed overnight in the sleepy little town of Kellerberrin on the Saturday night, having parked the grader over the road from the local hotel alongside a 6-foot high tin fence. The next morning, Sunday, I fired the pony motor up at 6.00 am. It echoed very nicely from the tin fence until I had the diesel running and turned the gas off to the pony. It was still running the last of the gas out as I drove off down the main street, gather weird looks from passers-by.

Nice type, aren't I?

[GPSGrader]

Thats a hell of a road trip on a MG! I'll bet you would have been thankful for a couple more gears.

I have a question for anyone who wants to answer...
Interstate highway widening is the job. Long slow turns, slow elevation changes..
Say you're grading base, rock, GAB,etc. and are going through an area of transitioning cross slope. i.e. on the way out of a super-elevated turn.
Does anyone have any tips or tricks for timing your adjustments for a smooth transition. NO stakes GPS or anything. Feel only. I have my own, just curious how others might do it.

[Deas Plant]

Hi, GPSGrader.
I have done a few transitions without the aid of pegs, GPS, laser or any other aids. I have done them with graders, dozers, track and 4wd loaders and even a LeTourneau LP cable scraper behind a Cat D7E, although I did have pegs for the transitions with the scraper. Pegs or no pegs, it's a fiddly project with a drawn scraper, involving a LOT of short cuts with a LOT of backing, twisting and turning in between each little bit of cut. It's a lot easier with a self-propelled scraper.

In cases where there are no levels or GPS, etc., I use the old Mark One Eyeball level checker and my ample butt to get me on target. It is easier with a grader or a dozer with blade tilt than with anything else but it can be done without tilt, as in a loader or even an older cable blade dozer.

Probably about 1/2 the transitions I have done have had no levels, many of them being either property access roads or construction haul roads.

[Grader4me]

Thats a hell of a road trip on a MG! I'll bet you would have been thankful for a couple more gears.

I have a question for anyone who wants to answer...
Interstate highway widening is the job. Long slow turns, slow elevation changes..
Say you're grading base, rock, GAB,etc. and are going through an area of transitioning cross slope. i.e. on the way out of a super-elevated turn.
Does anyone have any tips or tricks for timing your adjustments for a smooth transition. NO stakes GPS or anything. Feel only. I have my own, just curious how others might do it.

Bringing a super elevation back to a crown is probably one of the hardest things to do with a grader (by eye). Not so hard with the aid of grade stakes. You have to know the exact point to start/end your elevation and begin to start your crown again. This has to be done gradually (both sides) as if not done right you can create to abrupt of a transistion.
I usually walk the road and get a good visual from each side of the turn. When I get back in the grader I know exactly where the turn starts and finishes. I start coming out of my crown gradually (back a couple hundred feet) and when I'm at the start of the turn my elevation has begun. As I go around the turn I'm at percent required (depends on road/speed etc)

Same thing after I'm at the point of the end of the turn. Gradually level off and get into my crown again.

I find a slope meter works great for this type of work. But over the years it was just done by the seat of my pants and the old eyeball.

[Northart]

Hello GPS Grader,

DOT on Interstate Hwy's have spec's. So not sure what kind of job this is, that you can just eyeball it in, without having hubs for grade control. Or the use of Automatics on the blade for cross slope control.

You've got to have BOC, (Beginning of Curve) and EOC ,(End of Curve) stakes to give location at least. There is other lingo for this also.

The tighter the curve radius, the shorter the transition.

The length of the transition ,could be 1/3 before the BOC and 2/3 after, and 2/3 before the EOC and 1/3 after the EOC.

Even surveyors never get it right. They make mistakes that is apparent when it is paved.

For example a -2% going into a +5% super.

-2,-1,0,+1,+2,+3,+4,+5,+4,+3,+2,+1,0,-1,-2 this on a 65 mph curve will give you a bump, felt in the middle of the curve.

The 5% comes to sudden peak, no flat 5%. Essentialy 2 transitions just meeting. Anyway I always wondered how that came about.

Anyway a good grader operator can make a nice smooth transition by eyeball :)with no kinks, in it, that will throw a driver, into anxiety,by the suddeness of change. No sharp dips or bumps.

[Northart]

Ha, forgot to mention the term "Broken Back" . That's old time grader lingo.:) Refer's to a short transition. Looks like a sharp dip, or sag, like a broken back on a horse or cow.

I better mention "Hinge Point" also. That is the shoulder.

[Deas Plant]

Hi, GPSGrader.
Extra gears???????????????????????????

There is a certain relaxing pleasure in pottering down the road at 20 M.P.H., getting in everybody else's way, whistling or singing a happy tune and taking in the scenery as you wander along at your leisurely pace.

For another slant on this approach, you might like to check out this link:

http://www.wallisandmatilda.com.au/clancy-of-the-overflow.shtml

especially the 3rd and 4th verses. I DO so love the DownUnder bush.

And here is Clancy's reply:

http://www.wallisandmatilda.com.au/clancys-reply.shtml

(Pssst. I had never heard of this reply until tonight when I found it by accident. LOL.)

[Sharky]

Any of you in A.K., Do you know a Daniel Sasche? He is our blade guy. Been in AK for years, if not his whole life. He has a brother Wayne who is a paver. They are both working for us now and do nice work. Great guys and good to work with.

Daniel is busy on an out of town job, and the other new "Blade guy" got fired yesterday(For good reason). Looks like we will be looking for a finish hand now for a few weeks of work. All 302 and a sister outfit of QAP. Not saying a job is guaranteed, but if a finish hand is interested, the outfit needs one, and I have the contact.

[Truckin4life]

I dry out our "haul road" quite often also dry out the mud holes that form in the yard, mostly when im bored and the plant isn't busy.

Drying out the wet sections of the haul road is neccesary so i dont get mud tracked into my stockpiles and onto the pads, so its pushed into the stock pile...

I start buy cutting the wet mud off the top and i usually let the slop flow into the ditch. Depending on how bad the muddy area is that can be enough to let the sun bake it and dry it for the next days haul. If not i start at one end dig the toe into the road with the heel quite a bit off the ground. I then take off and adjust how much i cut acording to how wet or dry the material is that is coming out. I find this works much better than using the ripper and rolling a windrow back and forth.
I continue this across the entire wet patch leaving a few inches to a foot between each cut in the road. I then leave the windrows to "air dry" and bake in the sun for a little while. Once they are dry i go back and blade the road back out, filling in all the cuts i created in the first place, if its still not dry enough. I then go through and use the full moldboard with to cut the road into a big windrow and roll it back and forth across the road until it dries up properly. Then lay it back out with a proper crown so the water will drain.

After several days the slop i put in the ditch will begin to dry out and i can pull that out of the ditch and redo the whole operation so that i dont wind up with a low spot in the road. Low spots hold water, and water is the enemy here...

few months back we went through and laid down a caliche road, now i can only blade the mud off to one side, as the caliche once packed is almost as hard as concrete... Takes several times with the rippers to get it broke up enough to do anything with, even then its still a pain to work with out a water truck.
Once the windrows dry out i will feather them back out across the road, filling any ruts that may have formed and filling the low spots in. Let the water truck put a light shot of water on it and the loaded mixer trucks leaving the plant do the compating...


I also use a blade to clean up around the plant in places the loader cant reach.

I can pin the blade a hole or 2 to the right and use the side shift to reach clear under the belts. Saves the labor MANY hours of shoveling and using the concrete come alongs to make it look nice. I can do it in 10 min, would take them 2 full days to do the same job and i leave it looking better with the blade.
Do the same around the bins at the plant. Where stuff gets spilt out can reach in with the side shift on the blade and pull out what ever material is piled up. Leaves it looking neat and very proffessional too.

Odd use for a blade... Had a pulley trying to walk out of a bearing. Turn out the fasteners were not properly tightened... Had a blade parked near by just idling, jumped in it parked parellel with the belt, set the moldboard even with the tail pulley and used the side shift to push it back in.

Was done and had it tightened up before my laborer had the porta power out.

Have used a blade as an emergency back up to stock pile. loader went down had truck hauling in and no other equipment available, so start at one end and windrow the rock up to the pile. If you have time you can try and stack it some... It worked long enough to keep the trucks space to dump until the loader was fixed. Not exactly a fun job by anymeans. But a motor grader (blade) is really a VERY versitale machine.
It is only limited by the person operating it.
I am by no means a finish operator and i dont claim to be.
I jump on blades whenever i can, as i enjoy the chit outta running them.
I come through and read posts here trying to learn anything i can about these machines, and when ever i found something new to try i would wait until there was a rough blade available (I know to never touch a finish mans blade, unless absolutely necessary) So when the rough blade's are freed up i try what ever i learn on here. But sadly the job here is ending and there are no blades left around for me to use. I guess i need to put my name in to be a rough operator for the dirt crew.

[godoggies3]

In the early '80's I would quite regularly to two 72"Davleco Sheepsfoot rollers (front and back) off a Cat 12E 21F compacting clay/sandstone fill on bridge abuttments for the local Roads Dept.
They were quite easy to push but dogs to reverse.
One job foreman wanted me to blade at the same time! Told him I needed another operator to sit on my lap (a pretty one) and the hire rate would be double. Needless to say I lucked out on both fronts.
I don't have the 21F now but I do know it's still going strong as ever at 45 years old!
Love the forum,
Cheers
Wayne

[bigrus]

Sometimes I use the flatblade (mainblade) to pull the windrow while I'm using the sloper (batter blade) to save a pass. Both blades together, not that hard ;)
A big No No is driving into the sun, pulling a batter (ontop of a 30' high bank) when the dust swirling forward around your cab, an almost certain 'excursion' over the side :eek: Guarranteed to tighten your ring gear (an old Wabco joke)

[mitch504]

1. cut pine trees out of frame:o
2. change all hydraulic hoses:(
3. braze original brass hose ends to pipe couplings to make fittings that are no longer manufactured:eek:
4. braze up many, many, rust holes in hyd. pipes:Pointhead
5. drain, flush, refill all fluid compartments
6. repack cylinders
7. make bushings for "rowing motor" type circle turn:confused:
8. work blade back and forth with trackhoe:beatsme
9. make temporary fuel tank but forget to hookup return line to new tank:mad:
10. run grader into ditch in front of shop and realize when non-functional tank overflows why 4-71 is using 50 gallons an hour in shop:idea
11. grease 116 fittings:)
12. change about 100 of them:(

hopefully day after tomorrow use grader to productively move material for the first time after owning it for 2.5 years
wish me luck;
Mitch

[The Tackman]

This is a great thread. Tomorrow is my first day on a grader. I am a Paving Foreman but it is slow right now and with my understanding of the electronics we use they think I will be able to pick up the GPS and the Cat "M" machine.

[CatGrader]

What do we do on graders ? ahhhhh grade. :D