koselig
Active Member
As an inexperienced landowner/operator in a remote location, would an experienced operator please help me understand how to flatten / level / smooth our driveway, which I can only describe as "humpy"?
I have a Kubota SVL75-2 compact track loader and a 1958 Ford 961 Powermaster tractor (which I love, but I am considering selling it to simplify our setup). As for attachments, I have the usual 74" smooth bucket and just acquired a Jenkins Soil Conditioner (power rake), with the intent of using it on our roads as well as to level/grade orchard space and prep lawn/clover planting.
The driveway is 2-minus gravel, and it has become humpy over the years just from my efforts to resurface and fill low points over the years. It has a few different grades, a turn, and a number of culverts for drainage. Due to my inexperience, I probably made the humps worse by dumping material, back dragging, and floating the bucket in attempts to get a smooth road. I don't have an intuitive sense to keep the bucket angle inline with the natural road grade, so I'm usually either riding the humps, or digging in too far.
So I end up feeling pretty good about my work each time I work on the driveway, until we drive on it for the first time and feel like we're on a humpy slide at the park, up, down, up, down...
Is experience (doing this hundreds more times) the only thing that will clear the humps? Am I just fighting with using the wrong tool, and should be using the back blade on the tractor, meaning I shouldn't sell it? Or will only a grader with its long wheelbase clear the humps?
Thanks for any advice!
Patrick
I have a Kubota SVL75-2 compact track loader and a 1958 Ford 961 Powermaster tractor (which I love, but I am considering selling it to simplify our setup). As for attachments, I have the usual 74" smooth bucket and just acquired a Jenkins Soil Conditioner (power rake), with the intent of using it on our roads as well as to level/grade orchard space and prep lawn/clover planting.
The driveway is 2-minus gravel, and it has become humpy over the years just from my efforts to resurface and fill low points over the years. It has a few different grades, a turn, and a number of culverts for drainage. Due to my inexperience, I probably made the humps worse by dumping material, back dragging, and floating the bucket in attempts to get a smooth road. I don't have an intuitive sense to keep the bucket angle inline with the natural road grade, so I'm usually either riding the humps, or digging in too far.
So I end up feeling pretty good about my work each time I work on the driveway, until we drive on it for the first time and feel like we're on a humpy slide at the park, up, down, up, down...
Is experience (doing this hundreds more times) the only thing that will clear the humps? Am I just fighting with using the wrong tool, and should be using the back blade on the tractor, meaning I shouldn't sell it? Or will only a grader with its long wheelbase clear the humps?
Thanks for any advice!
Patrick