Box Scraper rear mold board bent

Greatbigseas

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L2501
Feb 2, 2024
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orangefleece38!
I didn’t think it possible but using the rear blade of my box scraper to push gravel down a slope I bent the rear mold board. The angle of the rear blade has noticeably steepened and when going ahead and grading with the box, that trailing blade holds the box proud of the ground and stops the forward blade from picking up material. No amount of top and tilt gets the forward blade digging into the surface and collecting material. I think the mold board will have to be heated and bent backward to restore the correct angle. Now to find a shop that can do this. Inviting member thoughts on this issue. IMG_6663.jpeg
 
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North Idaho Wolfman

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Normally on good Box blades the rear blade is not solid mounted and moves and folds up.
Is your rear blade set in a fixed in non movable fashion?
 
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Greatbigseas

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L2501
Feb 2, 2024
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orangefleece38!
Thanks for this. I’m pretty sure the mold boards are welded to the box and have fixed angles. The forward and rear blades are fixed to the boards with heavy bolts. The bolts allow the blades to be reversed if worn or replaced but they don’t control angle. I reversed the forward one to get a bit more metal edge sort of hoping it would reveal something like you suggest about setting angle.

This is a land pride scraper matched to the L2501 tractor. It’s not an overly powerful tractor but hefty enough to bend the mold boards sadly.

One option i guess is to remove the rear blade and run without it. That would cause the box to sit lower to the ground and help the forward blade collect material. It’s not a great solution as the trailing blade and its angle helps smooth the road surface.
 

North Idaho Wolfman

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L3450DT-GST, Woods FEL, B7100 HSD, FEL, 60" SB, 743 Bobcat with V2203, and more
Jun 9, 2013
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Sandpoint, ID
Thanks for this. I’m pretty sure the mold boards are welded to the box and have fixed angles. The forward and rear blades are fixed to the boards with heavy bolts. The bolts allow the blades to be reversed if worn or replaced but they don’t control angle. I reversed the forward one to get a bit more metal edge sort of hoping it would reveal something like you suggest about setting angle.

This is a land pride scraper matched to the L2501 tractor. It’s not an overly powerful tractor but hefty enough to bend the mold boards sadly.

One option i guess is to remove the rear blade and run without it. That would cause the box to sit lower to the ground and help the forward blade collect material. It’s not a great solution as the trailing blade and its angle helps smooth the road surface.
Give me the model and serial number of the box.
 

NCL4701

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Central Piedmont, NC
Kind of hard to tell from the one picture exactly how it’s constructed. It is pretty clear it doesn’t have a swinging rear gate. I have a BB1572, which is a basic no frills model that appears similarly constructed. With mine, to make it look like yours the welds holding the rear wall to the sides would have to fail. (See below.) I’m assuming that’s what happened to yours. If not: 1) a couple more pics would be helpful; 2) ignore the rest of this as inapplicable. IMG_9090.jpeg IMG_9091.jpeg
The cutting edges are hardened, but the structure they mount to almost certainly isn’t. With some creativity, should be able to bend it back and re-weld it.

My first thought, looking at mine, would be to remove one of the bolts from each end of the cutting edge, use the hole to place a shackle, and hook a chain in a V sling to a relatively immovable object such as a large tree. Just make sure everything in the rigging is heavy enough to handle the full drawbar pressure of your tractor. Then slowly and carefully pull the back wall and cutting edges back where they belong. I’m thinking with the cutting edges in place it should have enough stiffness you wouldn’t need a spreader bar in the chain sling (a big tree will spread it some anyway, and some moving blankets will protect the tree from chain scarring). But I’d also keep a close eye on it while pulling it to make sure it is staying straight. If it has a good bit of spring to it, stopping part way through with tension left on the rig and tapping it with a good size hammer to relieve the stress in the metal as you pull will likely help.

I suck at welding so if it were mine, I’d find someone else to weld it. But I would grind the old welds off, bend it back where it should be, and do what I could to prep it before taking it to a welder.

Based on the slope on the bottom of the sides toward the front, it looks like you (or someone) have put a LOT of hours on that boxblade. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it makes it not entirely surprising the welds could have been failing slowly for quite some time and finally let go even if what you were doing at the time it failed was routine.
 

Greatbigseas

New member

Equipment
L2501
Feb 2, 2024
6
0
1
orangefleece38!
Kind of hard to tell from the one picture exactly how it’s constructed. It is pretty clear it doesn’t have a swinging rear gate. I have a BB1572, which is a basic no frills model that appears similarly constructed. With mine, to make it look like yours the welds holding the rear wall to the sides would have to fail. (See below.) I’m assuming that’s what happened to yours. If not: 1) a couple more pics would be helpful; 2) ignore the rest of this as inapplicable. View attachment 175299 View attachment 175300
The cutting edges are hardened, but the structure they mount to almost certainly isn’t. With some creativity, should be able to bend it back and re-weld it.

My first thought, looking at mine, would be to remove one of the bolts from each end of the cutting edge, use the hole to place a shackle, and hook a chain in a V sling to a relatively immovable object such as a large tree. Just make sure everything in the rigging is heavy enough to handle the full drawbar pressure of your tractor. Then slowly and carefully pull the back wall and cutting edges back where they belong. I’m thinking with the cutting edges in place it should have enough stiffness you wouldn’t need a spreader bar in the chain sling (a big tree will spread it some anyway, and some moving blankets will protect the tree from chain scarring). But I’d also keep a close eye on it while pulling it to make sure it is staying straight. If it has a good bit of spring to it, stopping part way through with tension left on the rig and tapping it with a good size hammer to relieve the stress in the metal as you pull will likely help.

I suck at welding so if it were mine, I’d find someone else to weld it. But I would grind the old welds off, bend it back where it should be, and do what I could to prep it before taking it to a welder.

Based on the slope on the bottom of the sides toward the front, it looks like you (or someone) have put a LOT of hours on that boxblade. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it makes it not entirely surprising the welds could have been failing slowly for quite some time and finally let go even if what you were doing at the time it failed was routine.
I will roll it over and take a thorough look at the welds. I can see that the mold boards are distorted at the ends where they contact the frame of the box. Like you offer, the photo does suggest the weld failed. I have been doing a lot of grading these past months but not a lot of plowing per se, but somewhere I really torqued it though that’s for sure.
 

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