Bobcat advice - moving clay

SledWrecker · Apr 19, 2015

Evening,

I have a bobcat 642b I picked up a few months back during winter. Here where I live in the Midwest the ground is clay. Right now were are dealing with the winter thaw and everything is mud soup. One thing I have noticed trying to drive around on warmer days is with my regular 66" dirt bucket I can't dig into the ground at all. Will putting teeth on my bucket work or am I really more or less in the need for a dozer or loader?

I have 20 acres and intended to use the bobcat to build a small atv track with modest bumps and small jumps (not a motocross track or to that scale..) I also wanted to clear some land for an outbuilding and make some nice trails for walking. With how the current bucket cuts the earth I don't think really any of this is possible with my machine.

Any thoughts or advice would be great, thanks.

Rustyratchet · Apr 19, 2015

Teeth with help a lot. I have an 853 and live on hard red clay. I bought it with a smooth bucket but got nowhere, added on some teeth and got full buckets from then on. Shanks and teeth cost me 250.00 from bobcat, I'm sure I could have gotten them cheaper but was in a hurry.

JNB · Apr 19, 2015

Teeth will help a lot and you can find them priced pretty low. I purchased a new set of Bobcat pin on teeth and shanks for about $150 from a seller on ebay.

willie59 · Apr 19, 2015

I'm a mechanic, not a digger, but like others stated teeth will help. However, with that machine you're still going to have to be patient and work at it because a 642 Bobcat just ain't got a lot of arse for hard digging. It can be done, but you gotta work at it with that machine.

KSSS · Apr 19, 2015

You may find that you will be much further a head to rent a machine that you can get something done with. That 642B is one step above a shovel, no offense intended, but that is not the machine you want, given what you have in mind.

stovein · Apr 20, 2015

If you get a tooth bar for the bucket it will work as well as it is going to and cost is about the same as mounting teeth on it. Then you still can have the smooth edge when you want it. Other option I have seen here is the rezloh edge, cost is a little more but those who have it do like it.

Bumpsteer · Apr 20, 2015

SledWrecker said:
Right now were are dealing with the winter thaw and everything is mud soup. One thing I have noticed trying to drive around on warmer days is with my regular 66" dirt bucket I can't dig into the ground at all.
QUOTE]

If the clay is slippery & snotty, there isn't any bucket that will help. You need to wait until things dry out some....yes, teeth or a toothbar will help when the ground firms up.

Once the clay dries out and gets really hard, forget it also, been there, done that. Prepping the site for my shop it was so damn hard the 643 wouldn't even begin to dig in, ended to getting a friend with an 850 Case dozer, he had a hard time also.

I had a 642 years ago, capable machine for it's size, one just needs to learn to work within it's limits.

Ed

Greenstreet · Apr 20, 2015

Just got a "straight arm backhoe" attachment and some steel over the tire tracks. Works as well as the tracked machine I rented for the last project. I've got more HP with my Skat Track, but I could have used this on my Toyota skid with similar HP to yours.

Big thing for me is the ability to bench cut into a hill before getting to work with wide bucket. Also using the ripper to soften the ground, locate and pick out rocks. It's great for tearing out roots around stumps without making a big hole to fall into. Don't know how I expected to do what I need to do without it!

SledWrecker · Apr 20, 2015

Thanks for all the replies they have been very insightful!

I took a close look at my bucket and it has holes drilled for a rock bar and.. it has holes that have bolts through them for adding teeth. My next question is how do I determine which teeth to get? I'm not sure if it's a bobcat bucket as the bucket is yellow but the bobcat is traditional white / orange. I plan to measure it but any advice on figuring out how to get the correct teeth?

I'm going to try the teeth before I give up on the bobcat dream. I have wanted one for so long I'm hoping that getting the teeth will be what I need to make it do at least half of what I want until I can afford a newer, bigger, more powerful unit. I really would like to find an old dozer on craigslist but man.. You might get it cheap but they are so expensive to fix.. and the older they are the harder it is to get parts for.

I will try to take some pictures of the bucket tomorrow when it's light out and post them on here.

Bumpsteer · Apr 21, 2015

The correct teeth will have the shank on top of the cutting edge, leaving the bottom of the bucket flat.

Ed

stovein · Apr 22, 2015

Check out the tooth bars before adding teeth, it can be taken off and on in minutes as there are only 2 bolts. Big thing for me was that when trading machines I just adapted the bar to the new bucket and the price was about the same as individual teeth.

3X8 · Apr 22, 2015

I live in clay too and put a tooth bucket on a LX565, huge difference. One problem you'll probably run into is not enough traction if the clay is at all damp but OTT tracks will cure that lol

tmc_31 · Apr 24, 2015

stovein said:
If you get a tooth bar for the bucket it will work as well as it is going to and cost is about the same as mounting teeth on it. Then you still can have the smooth edge when you want it. Other option I have seen here is the rezloh edge, cost is a little more but those who have it do like it.

I have a Rezloh edge for the dirt bucket on my NH L190. I also had one on my LX565. I normally just leave them on the bucket most of the time. It makes a lot of difference when digging in hard ground.

Tim

Todd v. · Apr 25, 2015

I made a toothed bucket out of a smooth one and the difference is big. Tooth bars are okay I guess if you are only pushing but I like to backdrag with the teeth pointed down to sorta scarify the ground as I'm backing up and it make it easier to dig in. But like others have said the teeth will make a big difference and having some weight in the bucket helps also.

crewchief888 · Apr 26, 2015

3X8 said:
One problem you'll probably run into is not enough traction if the clay is at all damp but OTT tracks will cure that lol

OTT tracks on a 642?

garanteed you'll break chains and/or sprockets.

gotta remember, the 40 series bobcats were out of production by the late 80's.
and the fact that the 640 series had 6 lug wheels, smaller axles and smaller chains than the 740 series did.
i had the same customer over a period of 18 months break all 4 sprockets, running on std tires, on a smooth/slick concrete floor inside a wharehouse....

:drinkup

3X8 · Apr 26, 2015

Ok! lol

Bobcat advice - moving clay

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