Back Up Rippers

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Hutch350B
420 crawler
420 crawler
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Mar 19, 2013 10:40 pm
Location: Lexington, Oklahoma

Back Up Rippers

Post by Hutch350B » Fri Apr 05, 2013 12:44 am

Anyone have any experience with back up rippers?

I have a 350B with a winch on back and was looking for an option for the front blade like a root grubber or something that I could use to break up the clay when digging a pond.

Anyway I ran across these back up rippers that mount to the back of your blade. They are hinged so that when you are going forward they fold back but when you back up they go back solid against a stop and allow the ripper to dig in. They look very efficient, push dirt going forward and then rip the ground on the back trip. They can be pinned up out of the way when you are not using them.

I read on another forum someone thought they would cause premature track wear and someone else thought it might be harmful because a dozer is designed to work going forward.

You guys seem very knowledgeable so I thought I would get your opinions.

Just seems like a perfect solution for me where I cant put them on the back. It would be fairly easy to make a triple set of these, no hydraulics or complicated lowering / raising mechanism to fabricate.

I have a set of brand new rippers for my box blade for my rubber wheeled tractor that I cant use because the tractor just spins when it hits the tight clay I have on my place LOL Maybe I will weld up a set of these and see how they work. I know the box blade rippers are not nearly as heavy as those normally used on a dozer but I think they would hold up if you didnt set them but 2-3 inches deep....which is all the bite that little 350B can handle anyway.

If its hard to visualize what I am talking about here is a link to a mfg set by Vail.

http://www.vailproducts.com/backup_rippers.htm
~Hutch
JD 350-B

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Hutch350B
420 crawler
420 crawler
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Mar 19, 2013 10:40 pm
Location: Lexington, Oklahoma

Post by Hutch350B » Fri Apr 05, 2013 1:06 am

~Hutch
JD 350-B

Farmerford
40C crawler
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Joined: Sat Oct 28, 2006 7:16 am
Location: Columbus, Georgia

Post by Farmerford » Fri Apr 05, 2013 4:26 am

Hutch:

I wanted the same thing for my Cat D3B and had the same worries you did. So I made something like your picture, with a twist. The ripper teeth face forward and a pin that holds the ripper shanks in place when you go forward; that way, the ripping takes place at the same time you are pushing dirt. The rippers extend about 4" below the cutting edge. Since they are behind the cutting edge there is no ripping ahead of the first pass, but on the second and later passes the ripping from the last pass has loosened the soil. Then when you are about 4" from the finish grade (as if I could really guess that well!) you raise the blade, pull the pin, and rotate the rippers up out of the way behind the blade.

The main complication I found was making sure the pin was strong enough to take the pressure of ripping. The rippers in your drawing are held in place by the back side of the blade, while mine are actually forced away from the back side of the blade when in use, so the pin that holds them should be substantial.
Farmerford
Columbus, Georgia

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Jack-the-Ripper
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Ripping

Post by Jack-the-Ripper » Mon Apr 08, 2013 10:01 am

I recently had a job "loosening" the "fill" soil, around a new house, that had been compacted by trucks during construction. My 450C with rippers was not available and I thought I could just use the 450B with its brush rake attached, which is actually just 4 or 5 little rippers welded to a swing arm on the push blade. I could not get enough weight and/or power to even begin the job, and had to revert to using my Case 580 Backhoe. (The teeth on the blade are farther from the tractor's center of gravity than rippers would be, thus less downward pressure is available I should think.) The backhoe, though seemingly tedious was more controllable, and ultimately more efficient, than lots of back and forth driving and mini scrapes using the dozer. Perhaps some testing is advised - I don't know if clay soil would be more amenable to blade ripping. Just some thoughts that I hope might be helpful.
JD450C (Jack the Ripper), JD450B (Jill the Wench), KomatsuPC120 (Ursa, The Big Dipper), Case580E (Ida Hoe), International 4400 Dump Truck

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