Rear Blades - Is Blade Tilt Important?

Tractor_Chunks · Dec 1, 2019

I'd settled on buying a Land Pride RB1560 for my BX23S. Now I've noticed the RB16 blades also have tilt capability (in addition to angle and offset). I don't yet know the price difference here but I'm thinking the tilt ability could be useful for something like grading soil after it's been tilled/loosened. My original reason for looking into rear blades was snow removal.

Is tilt very useful, and what are all the applications?

Dave_eng · Dec 1, 2019

Tilt can be used to crown a road to create more drainage.

Also to create shallow ditch.

Dave

chim · Dec 1, 2019

I've used rear blades for snow removal and they can be very useful for that. Didn't have much luck using them for grading anything other than spreading some crushed stone. I bought a used box blade for some work and sold it when I was finished with it. It is a much more useful attachment for any grading. For snow removal I'd stick with the blade because of the capability to angle it to either side and spin it 360 degrees.

Some have used back blades for grading and cutting ditches, but I'd have to believe that to be useful for such work the blade would need to be very heavy.

bcp · Dec 1, 2019

I use mine a lot for minor road maintenance. The blade is reversed and the tilt pin removed. The blade then follows the twists and turns without gouging with the blade corner when the road tilts one way or another.

I haven't found it very useful otherwise because the steps are too large. I use the tilt/level adjustment on the 3pt hitch for the minor tilts.

Bruce

GreensvilleJay · Dec 2, 2019

think of it this way...

snowplows do NOT have tilt. I've yet to see ONE highway plow with tilt, a pickup truck with tilt or a JEEP with tilt. Mind you, I've only been active in snowplowing 52 years.....

farmers use their rear blades for crowning their looong gravel driveways and making swales (shallw ditches) as well as leveling off 'lumpy' fields. They, being 'frugal', also use the same blade for snow removal..

Most rear blades will have 'pitch' control. That's the angle of attack the cutting bar or edge where it meets the ground. That needs to be 'just right' to nicely remove material while not digging in ( too aggresive) or too shallow( stuff goes over back of blade). Generally, it's a set once - forget feature.
Jay

mikester · Dec 2, 2019

chimpywrench said:
Is tilt very useful, and what are all the applications?

Tilt back to cut/remove. Tilt forward to drag/fill.

Adjust as per your application.

GreensvilleJay · Dec 2, 2019

hmm 'tilt'... can mean two different things...

1) tilting the blade , left or right.... grading roads or swales

2) tilting the blade, fwd or back( attack angle)...cut/fill

leveraddict · Dec 2, 2019

I just got done cleaning 8" of wet heavy snow. Dam I love my back blade! I just have a cheap county line but it does all I need! No pavement here all gravel. I actually push the blade backwards when I plow on gravel. It works great! When I think back to before I had the the tractor and all I had was a walk behind snow blower. That snow blower would have been useless today!

Stmar · Dec 2, 2019

I have occasionally used mine for ditching or cleaning a ditch. Mine rotates so that I can plow snow with the blade reversed so as not to gouge the driveway. Reason I mention this is that I find it easier to rotate the blade by taking the tilt pin out.

Tractor_Chunks · Dec 3, 2019

GreensvilleJay said:
hmm 'tilt'... can mean two different things...

1) tilting the blade , left or right.... grading roads or swales

2) tilting the blade, fwd or back( attack angle)...cut/fill

I'm referring to #1. Isn't #2 just assumed for any implement, given the 3 point hitch?

Kubota/Land Pride, as well as John Deere, refer to #1 as "tilt"

Angling the blade for pushing snow to the side of the road is "angle".

GreensvilleJay · Dec 3, 2019

re: #2
On my A-C rear blade, I can adjust the 'angle of attack' of the blade independently of the frame that it's connected to. Adjusting the toplink changes the frame and blade as a unit. The two adjustments do not the exact same thing from a 'geometry point',and at tractor speeds, it's not a big deal.

With real snowplow blades, the blade 'tilt' or forward angle is usually fixed to allow the snow to curl over. If 'dialed in ' correctly, snow curls off the blade very easily,doesn't go over into rad,etc. The springs are there to bend or 'trip' the blade forward to prevent damage when you hit low lying soild objects.

KTOY · Dec 3, 2019

I would consider number two being blade pitch controlled by the top link. My 7ft. blade has adjustable tilt but I find the options way to course because of the size of the pin required. I fine adjust tilt with one side***8217;s lifting arm***8217;s turnbuckle. I will have to try letting it ***8220;float***8221; without the pin next year when grading my 1700 ft. driveway with many crowned areas for water control.

Sorry for all of the extra stuff (text) that shows up. I hope it can still be understood.

Tim Horton · Dec 3, 2019

Pretty much like said... My 5 cents of experience has been "tilt" would be useful on a very rare use basis.

Not enough use to be worth the extra money for that feature 99.99% of the time..

philip53 · Dec 3, 2019

Guess it depends on expected (and unexpected) usage. I have had tractors for some 30 years and never had much use for side or top tilt, but it was a pain to manually adjust the oem screw adjustments.

Recently we had a really bad tornado/windstorm that devastated our woods. Knowing that I would be using the box blade for a few years to come to clean up the mess, I bit the bullet and installed a hydraulic top & tilt set-up. Best decision I ever made. I can now precisely place where I want the corner of the blade to dig out a small tree, push or pull dirt to fill in stump holes or just move around dirt. Also used to create drainage swales, road crowning, trash piles, etc. Like I said, one of the best decisions I ever made. Only adding a grapple to the FEL was a comparably great decision.

To the original OP, in my case it was extremely important.

Tractor_Chunks · Dec 3, 2019

Just to lay out the cost difference, my dealer quoted $700 for the RB1560 blade, and $900 for the RB1660, so the ability to tilt comes with a $200 price increase. Either blade is built heavier than would generally be used on a BX, which I hope means I can't break them. I do wonder if having the tilt ability adds another point of slop/wear/failure on an item that might take a beating.

For the price difference, the one project where the tilt really becomes useful, pretty much pays for the $200 jump. However, I've no idea what that project might be.

mikester · Dec 5, 2019

chimpywrench said:
Just to lay out the cost difference, my dealer quoted $700 for the RB1560 blade, and $900 for the RB1660, so the ability to tilt comes with a $200 price increase. Either blade is built heavier than would generally be used on a BX, which I hope means I can't break them. I do wonder if having the tilt ability adds another point of slop/wear/failure on an item that might take a beating.

For the price difference, the one project where the tilt really becomes useful, pretty much pays for the $200 jump. However, I've no idea what that project might be.

Id personally spend the money on a hydraulic top-n-tilt kit vs a tilt add-on for the blade. Generally speaking a heavier blade is desirable for cutting dirt, less of an issue on smaller tractors like a BX.

kris77 · Dec 7, 2019

I have a woods RB40 I think it's called. 48" back blade with side to side tilt. I usually just remove the tilt pin and let the blade conform to the soil i'm working on. Keeps it from cutting too much. I love leaving the pin out so it can basically "float" along my driveway and do it's job. Just my .02 cents. Could I get by without it. Absolutely. Is it nice to have. Yep. Bought the blade used for $150 off CL. Farmer up the road has a tilt blade on his much bigger tractor. He offsets it, tilts it, and clears ditches with it. In cases like that, a tilt is awesome. On my small BX, it's nice to have, but not something I couldn't live without. Hope all that makes sense.

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Rear Blades - Is Blade Tilt Important?

Tractor_Chunks

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Dave_eng

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chim

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bcp

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GreensvilleJay

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mikester

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Stmar

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