Big Dirt California Style

[fensoncont.]

Calcium Chloride in tires? Very interesting, can somone explain the logic behind this?

 

[Mass-X]

Weight.

 

[Steve Frazier]

Weight = traction. Also called loaded tires

 

[qball]

825

i ran some of lindahl brothers 825s in chicago on road jobs. good god can they push and hit hard.

 

[637slayer]

i always thought that having a gps on the sheeps foot would be a good idea, since it was always in the fill

 

[Dozerboy]

637
I knew what your where saying and like I said the hands I worked with would of gotten lost. I just about had to dump every load myself even then some would miss. The inspector/dirt cops will not pass a fill that has not been mixed with putting down small lifts you have lairs of wet and dry material that they will fail trust me I have tried.


MassX
I agree a RTD wouldn't work well in any other place that I have worked other then socal. I demoed a 825 on a job in socal and it was amazing how much better it worked then a RTD. Since I have never ran them side by side that is until I started to get into some bigger rock then my kidneys wanted my RTD back.


Personally I think a GPS on a a compactor would be a waste most of the time, but that really depend on the job. A lot of the residential jobs I've done each pad is a different elev. It would way to time consuming to try and finish pads like that. Now on a commercial or road project thats a different story.

 

[637slayer]

the only experience i have is with 10 or 11 scrapers dumping in one fill, and all the situations i described were how i think it should go, but very rarely did it go that way,not to bash scraperhands but it seems like one guy would stray from a dump pattern to fill in a hole and the chaos would start people dumping here and there,usually the tests would reflect the lack of cooperation between the scrapers. i can only imagine trying to get 15 or more scrapers on the same page, unless they worked together for more than one summer.

 

[Dozerboy]

10 or 11 heck I can't get 4 or 5 for our guys to stick with the pattern. We did have a sub come in with 631s and they did a good job, but the next day I was off the compactor. Another thing is you don't want to compact it until you have water down and it mixed, so that would add to the confusion even more. They would have to cross my windrow/s at some point in time too.

 

[637slayer]

we would have 10 or 11 on only a couple of our bigger jobs usually 5 or 6 but now i work in a mine and compaction and water trucks are things i dont see anymore. and if you want to see chaos you should see our fills total freeforalls, but we do have really nice equipment, so i just try to stake out my own area set up my roads and turn up the stereo.

 

[RonG]

Here is a link to some old Cats that I enjoy watching now and again.
The site is really a choo choo train site that I happened to run across while looking for trains for my ((Grandson)) and it is some sort of museum.I am posting it here because there is some scraper footage to be seen.Just scroll down and pick your poison.Ron G
http://www.rgvrrm.org/about/videos/index.htm

 

[alan627b]

Looks just like a typical day on one of our jobs, sawing your arm off to get a load, and wishing you had someone else who liked to push-pull around to work with!
That scaper still has it's California style muffler, all of ours use a modified D7G muffler with custom made brackets. They save about $700 per muffler, and makes it much easier to work on due to less heat under the hood and better access.
alan627b

 

[Neil D]

noisey 627's

alan,how about some photos of the D7 muffler set up?

Neil

 

[jdermott]

hey i'm a new member and fellow scraper operator from canada. i'm interested in working somewhere else and have over 18,000 hours on scrapers and over 30,000 hours of total equipment time. anybody know of anyone thats hiring?

 

[Countryboy]

Welcome to Heavy Equipment Forums jdermott! :drinkup

 

[637slayer]

hey i'm a new member and fellow scraper operator from canada. i'm interested in working somewhere else and have over 18,000 hours on scrapers and over 30,000 hours of total equipment time. anybody know of anyone thats hiring?

are you looking to get out of canada? i just seen sureways webpage and they are looking for scraperhands,look like a huge company with nice equipment, if some one wanted to be an employee number.

 

[BrianHay]

Were are you and were do you want to go jdermott? I can probably point you in the right direction.
I just had a look at kidco's website and if you want to be in Calgary they are hiring. ...along with everyone else in Western Canada. A good friend of mine is on 57 for them right now
http://www.kidcoconstruction.ca/

 

[Bellboy]

By the time that this thread has run its course, California should be synonymous with the word 'scraper' and visa versa.:cool2:cool2:cool2:cool2:cool2
And, scrapers will still be extinct in my neck of the woods...

 

[Jason F]

824’s versus 825’s. “Method Spec” compaction theories. “Let the scrapers and the water pulls take care of it.” I’ve seen a lot of mass grading contractors take different views on compaction when building big fills.

Personally, I don’t trust anything but a sheepsfoot or a vibratory compactor to compact a fill.

I have no respect for rubber tired dozers as compaction machines. RTD’s are made for cleaning up load-out floors in mines and pushing slobbers into the crusher that the haul trucks leave behind. I don’t believe in them on scraper projects. Some may argue that if you fill the tires with calcium chloride they work great. I disagree.

To clarify with some of the Californians; 95% of the material I’ve seen in California is so evenly graded in it’s composition that thin lifts underneath rubber tires will work. But that’s a very isolated situation; I’ve not seen many other places like California.

Any material that an RTD can sufficiently compact, a sheepsfoot can do as well, if not better in most cases.

There are far too many horror stories of contractors who built big fills, only to have them settle 3-5 years later due to improper compaction techniques. I don’t want to tarnish my reputation like that.

Wolper Construction is one contractor that branched into the mass grading sector a few years ago, did some residential work involving some big fills, and then got kicked/walked off the project (depends on who’s side of the story you hear). A different contractor came in and finished.

Five years after completion, some people backyards slipped away from their $1 million+ house and slid down slopes, houses settling and basements cracking, roads falling apart and numerous utilities problems. A little core drilling and some material sampling later showed a lot of problems in the bottoms of the fills: all because of the corners cut in the compaction department (and some very poor choices regarding fill material). Last I heard the lawsuit filed against them for the problems in their fills was $10 million.

This is only one of many horror stories I’ve heard about compaction failures, often due to improper equipment utilized during construction.

A lot of times, it is the general contractors/developer’s fault for not policing the contractor. But I still don’t think it’s excusable for any contractor to cut a corner like that just because there was no dirt cop out there checking compaction.

Many residential projects will have no inspectors monitoring the big cuts/fills. No nuclear moisture/density tests taken until you’re into the AB grades in the streets. Too many contractors cut corners and take advantage of this to cut the cost of a compaction machine working full time. Or at most, put an RTD on the fill because it’s a cheap machine.

As you get into projects like transportation/railroad you start seeing an inspector monitoring the fills and testing randomly. Specifications that have to be met and adhered to, etc. Overall, a lot better level of quality control. In most transportation projects, DOT’s won’t approve RTD’s as compaction machines. They used to, but its becoming rarer and rarer every year. They greatly prefer to see a sheepsfoot or some type of vibratory compactor building their roads.

I’ve done some refinery site development projects where the 657’s were required to lay down 8” lifts (measured by a GPS), compacted with a sheepsfoot compactor, and pass 95%+ compaction throughout the entire fill, up to 20’ in some cases. Not hard to achieve with an 825, but I’d love to see an 824 do it.

I’ve also seen some projects where 94% and lower would fail you, and 100% would fail you. Try achieving that with an RTD. A lot of times you don’t need a vibratory compactor as in many materials a sheepsfoot will accomplish that.

Articulating soil compactors/sheepsfoot’s are a lot more expensive to purchase and maintain than RTD’s, but I think it’s a justified expense that a lot of contractors cut the corner on. I’d rather make up for the extra expense of a sheepsfoot somewhere else on the project, versus reducing the cost, using an RTD, and risking a compaction failure.

The other big change being seen is the utilization of GPS on compactors. Nothing beats a skilled operator in an 825H with a GPS. I’ve seen some very good operators in 815’s, 825’s and 835’s that can finish large pads to +/- .1’ with no assistance from a grader or paddlewheel if the machine is equipped with a GPS.

Having the sheepsfoot on the fill finish the grade to spec beats the hell out of having a blade and paddlewheel follow the scrapers and balance all the pads to finish grade.

I always laugh when I see companies putting GPS systems on 824’s or 834’s. Those machines are not very good at maintaining grades compared to a sheepsfoot and can’t push nearly as much material.

I’ve seen several good sheepsfoot hands that can get their machines onto fill slopes and maintain slope grades quite well. Anything less than a 3:1 is pretty manageable for a sheepsfoot to maintain as long as the fill is relatively small/narrow (roads, railroad grades). Excellent operators can get onto 2:1 slopes and keep them graded to within spec.

Larger pad fills will require a dozer on those slopes to maintain the grade of the fill slope while the compactor focuses on the lift compaction.

I’ve been on some shot rock jobs where the fill dozers working the slopes can’t make the slope look decent until the sheepsfoot walks the entire slope to break up any larger rocks, pack them into the slope so that the dozer has some fines to work with to take the slope to finish grade.

Overall, I think any company that does mass grading projects, is far better suited to have a good sheepsfoot compactor (preferably with GPS) to build all fills, regardless of type of material. They’re more versatile, and in the long run are a lower cost alternative to those damned RTD’s.

Alot of companies here in So Cal use the 824's with either BG's or the Sheepsfoot behind them. Never really seen one running around without it. With the way inspectors here do compaction tests most of them have sheepsfoot attachments on them. Inspectors in So Cal are brutal sometimes when it comes to compaction. Ive had some fail me for being .5% under while others have told me compaction was right and that the moisture was off just a bit but he saw how much water we were putting down and said by the time you guys are done its going to be over.

 

[627E master]

Hey guys, just signed up, I love the scraper pics!! It's good to be here!!!!

 

[bollinger1985]

Great images Pal. Much appreciated