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Posted by David Sherman on Friday, July 18, 2008 at 11:18:49 :
In Reply to: Re: Its good to know I am not alone in my other madness posted by Randy Baker on Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 15:34:19 :
Maybe, but my late friend did a lot of road repair and snow plowing with the D2. A D4 is about as big as I'd want, because I don't want to tear up my land any more than I have to, but it really isn't strong enough and heavy enough to build roads across steep hillsides, especially when you have to work in an uphill direction. The D4 weighs about 10,000 lbs and is using most of its horsepower to move itself when climbing a hill. That's why there are still so many left -- unlike newer machines of similar size, it doesn't have enough power to break itself if you try to push a rock or stump that won't move. The standard road-building cat in the logging country in the old days was the D9. There are still a lot of them around here in semi-retirement. I was told Potlatch sold a big bunch years ago and that's where lots of these came from. I don't want roads as wide as a D9 makes, though. I knew a guy who had nothing but a straight-blade cable-rigged D9 to maintain his road with. There was no rock on his place, the dirt was deep palouse loess, and every time he "graded" the road or plowed the snow it just became a deeper and deeper ditch that turned to mud whenever it was wet. He'd have been better off with a much lighter machine.