Bush Hog Road Grader RG72 Ripping itself to shreds

[mcmxi]

So I used my Bush Hog RG72 to straighten up my drive and the thing seems to be pulling itself apart. Any thoughts on the best approach to repair other than buy a better road grader?


View attachment 94216

I purchased the road grader in the spring and it might have 8 hours of work on it. The scarifier close up is the worst but the others are all showing signs of metal fatigue. The tractor is a L3901 so I dont feel like the implement is mismatched with the tractor. Service rep from Bushhog said they would not cover it under warranty.

Thanks for any constructive advice.

Pat

That's kind of annoying to put it mildly. I have a box blade and land leveler (land plane) from Everything Attachments and I like the way they design their products. They have a much stronger system for how they mount scarifiers and you could possibly do something similar, or simply reinforce the cross member after addressing the damaged areas. It wouldn't be much of a challenge to repair that implement and make it a lot better than it is. That would be your cheapest option I think. If you lived near me I'd happily do that for you for the cost of materials only. I like that sort of project.

You have to design this stuff with the expectation that one scarifier will be subjected to a significant load i.e. it's not distributed over all the scarifiers. Looks to me like that Bush Hog is poorly designed and built.

Here's the land leveler I bought from EA along with the box blade. Notice how strong their design is, and the fact that they use heavy walled tubing and good steel.

 

[fried1765]

Curious?
Do you have the front of the Land plane hitting the ground before the rear?
Or are you running it level all across the sides?

I understand the curiosity, but....
The point here, is that an implement drawn by a 37HP tractor might fetch up on a rock, or whatever, but the properly matched implement should not be destroyed in the process.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

curious, I downloaded the PDFs for the roadgrader....
In the ops manual, no direction or information on about actually using the implement, aside from going 'slow' and use 'float'......
According to the parts PDF, the shanks are 3/4" wide, . The bar is 5/16" thick wall. each shank's contact area with the beam is then 3/4" x 5/16", so less than .25 square inches x 2 (top and btm. I leave it to the math wizards to compute how much force has to be transferred from one shank hitting a big rock through such a small area.
The 'tear out' is to be expected when you hit the 'unmovable object' aka a rock. My D-14 has a 'linkage' yo automatically put tractor into neutral when this occours. What's interesting is that a large area of the powder coat pealed off.

 

[Vigo]

Might be an illusion but looks to me like the part of the torn material that would actually be contacting the ripper was not 'square' to it, and instead was a thin edge.. might need to see what is 'left behind' in the area directly behind the ripper to see if the rest of that material stayed there. Because having a thin edge is a good way to start a crack, and once it starts then propagating it is much easier.

But, me being me, what i would do in either case is just heat bang and weld it back in, then do a 1x1x0.25 angle across the entire bottom corner of that 4x4, with it seam-welded and the shape finessed a little at the ripper hole so that the ripper contacts it as evenly as possible. The rippers i've seen are rounded on the back and ideally, if you were gonna spend time on it, the shape of the metal that holds it would roughly match to distribute forces nicely. It would be 1 72" piece of angle, a welder, and a fair amount of work with a carbide in a die grinder, unless you get real fancy with a small angle grinder inside of a ~1x4" opening..

But im not against the other idea of 'fix it' just back to sellable, and sell it. I dont know enough to comment on metallurgy but i know with absolute certainty that if going slow enough this will never happen again regardless of what brand we're talking about. Maybe im lucky in that my tractor can only pull with rippers down in low range, but i really have no desire to do it much faster anyway.

 

[pblalock]

Sorry I've been away folks. I wanted to update the thread with the outcome of the issue.

When I ran the road grader, I usually tried to have the scarifiers about 1" below the grade and make a few passes on the road. It is an old country road and yes it does have some rocks (usually about 3-4") but nothing like a 10" or larger rock. There will be people who think I drive like I am at a tractor pull but that is just not the case. My tractor rarely gets out of low gear and never while using the RG. I'm just too conservative to drive like a mad man on the driveway, besides there are kids and dogs all along this road.

The outcome: My local Kubota dealer came and picked up the RG72 and took it back to their shop. They talked to Bushhog account manager and regional manager and both said they would not warranty the RG72.

My local dealer offered to repair it for free because they didn't think it should have happened and they know my property and what I do with the road grader. I asked them how much it would take to trade it in for a Land Pride and I was very happy with their response. Now I have a Land Pride grader. It is obviously heavier than the Bush hog. I have not weighed it but I can tell by the way the tractor behaves.

Personally, I'll never purchase another Bush Hog implement. If you have one, I'm not saying you made a bad purchase, I'm just stating what I am going to avoid going forward. While this experience has certainly jaded me away from the Bush Hog product line I have certainly learned a lesson about picking your dealer. My local dealer is Louisburg Tractor in NC and they have provided above and beyond my expectations of customer service. I can't say enough good things about the whole team there.

I appreciate the many responses on approaches to fix the implement and I'm grateful for your collective knowledge! Fortunately, my local dealer made it all better and I didn't have to get my welder (and grinder!) to do the repair myself.

Thanks again everybody,

Patrick

 

[pblalock]

That's kind of annoying to put it mildly. I have a box blade and land leveler (land plane) from Everything Attachments and I like the way they design their products. They have a much stronger system for how they mount scarifiers and you could possibly do something similar, or simply reinforce the cross member after addressing the damaged areas. It wouldn't be much of a challenge to repair that implement and make it a lot better than it is. That would be your cheapest option I think. If you lived near me I'd happily do that for you for the cost of materials only. I like that sort of project.

You have to design this stuff with the expectation that one scarifier will be subjected to a significant load i.e. it's not distributed over all the scarifiers. Looks to me like that Bush Hog is poorly designed and built.

Here's the land leveler I bought from EA along with the box blade. Notice how strong their design is, and the fact that they use heavy walled tubing and good steel.

View attachment 94283

View attachment 94284

That looks like an excellent design!

 

[D2Cat]

Be aware most manufactures of equipment have various levels of weight, quality and price to be competitive in the market.

Because you had a unit fail does not mean all products that company produces will fail. No need to black ball a company. I know Bush Hog make various grades of rotary cutters designed for different HP's and cutting features. As expected price goes up as amount of steel and fabrication grows, the same with all implements.

 

[pblalock]

Be aware most manufactures of equipment have various levels of weight, quality and price to be competitive in the market.

Because you had a unit fail does not mean all products that company produces will fail. No need to black ball a company. I know Bush Hog make various grades of rotary cutters designed for different HP's and cutting features. As expected price goes up as amount of steel and fabrication grows, the same with all implements.

My issue was their response to this incident. It was an opportunity for them to make me a customer forever. To offer something... anything in response to what happened. They were not interested in testing the metal or talking to me about it, it was just "looks like operator error".

It is their customer service lack of response that will keep me away.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

Well I'm happy you're happy ! Sounds like your dealer came through and KNOWS the meaning of 'customer service'. BH dropped the ball big time, for far less than a days 'coffee' money they've not only lost you as a customer, the 'word is out' ...BH ain't 'customer friendly'. At the very least ,they should have had a tech come out to your place SEE the implement and the ACTUAL conditions it's being used in. Today,for dozens of reasons, it's even MORE important for companies to HELP their customers out and make things 'right'. I've been on both sides of the counter so I don't understand BH not even TRYING to help you.

 

[Heehaw]

Well I'm happy you're happy ! Sounds like your dealer came through and KNOWS the meaning of 'customer service'. BH dropped the ball big time, for far less than a days 'coffee' money they've not only lost you as a customer, the 'word is out' ...BH ain't 'customer friendly'. At the very least ,they should have had a tech come out to your place SEE the implement and the ACTUAL conditions it's being used in. Today,for dozens of reasons, it's even MORE important for companies to HELP their customers out and make things 'right'. I've been on both sides of the counter so I don't understand BH not even TRYING to help you.

“Today,for dozens of reasons, it's even MORE important for companies to HELP their customers out and make things 'right'.”

Sadly it seems today, for whatever reasons, there are still plenty of companies that seem to care less about their customers.