Driveway and potholes

[malcolm]

I'm looking for creative ideas. We've got a long farm track (maybe 500m long) that's surfaced in a sand/gravel mix sourced from a local river bed. Every year the farmer spreads new gravel on top with his loadall, but the surface is flat so it potholes quickly. I converted a Renault into a pickup to speed up repairs, but it's really time consuming to shovel gravel into the holes, and repairs never lasts more than a few days.

I'd like to mechanise the process. Also I'd like to have some camber on the drive. I've thought of designing a front bucket with little teeth and fitting it to one of the Renaults for scraping. smoothing and persuading - angled down to one side so I could go up one side of the drive and back down on the other. The same fitted to an old tractor might save on new clutches.

Any ideas on how it could be done without spending too much money? Could get a few hundred from the neighbours so long as the device could also be used to cut their hedges, but apart from that I'd not like to spend more than £500.

 

[Hitch]

Let me get this straight... your planning on making an ol renault into a bulldozer come hedge trimmer...?

Auger and a hopper, mounted in the back, auger tube through the passenger side, ejecting where the passenger seat would be, i expect it already has a suitable hole in the floorpan

A small diesel engine perhaps, powering a hydraulic motor for the auger, the hedge trimmer, could you not mount an old petrol hedge trimmer cutter on an arm, like an anglepoise lamp, throttle cable extended into the cab of the Renault?

 

[harryb124]

Yeah i think your better off with an old tractor, (ive done an old david brown up) then you could mount a scaper on the back, and also the hedge cutter, kill 2 birds with one stone also you can get loader attachments for the back of tractors

Harry

 

[malcolm]

It would be more fun to use a Renault. But I'd not try to adapt it for hedge trimming. I'm wondering whether a dragging a rake like device might be enough to tear up and move the gravel towards the middle while being kinder to the clutch.

 

[harryb124]

Sounds like a plan providing its not like a ripper they have on the back of dozers

Harry

 

[malcolm]

I had to do a google image search for "dozer ripper". That's actually not a bad plan. That led on to grader which looks like what I'd want once the Renault has finished ripping (and maybe also pulled a few stumps). A tractor would be more sensible - missed one with a bucket that went for £100 last month.

Presumably that's how it would be done in real life - dislodge the surface with a ripper then move it around with a grader?

 

[harryb124]

Yeah i believe thats how they do it

Harry

 

[wyn]

How about something along these lines and maybe add some sort of ripping attachment in front of it.

A bit more on the in's and out's of diy road grading here.

 

[Archie]

If it's anything like our drive the compacted gravel underneath will be as hard as Hades. Unless it's got some serious weight to it I fear any scraper will just bounce along the top. I wonder if you could fit some sort of hardened 'muncher' (technical term ) to an old flail hedge cutter? One fitting for hedge cutting, another for breaking up gravel. They probably spin at very different speeds.

 

[malcolm]

I love the device in Wyn's links. Looks like it's not out of the question to use a motor car with device attached. The Americans will probably be using V8 powered motor cars weighing 3 tonnes, but it ought to be adaptable for French powered vehicles so long as speed or effectiveness aren't issues.

The track isn't too hard - a garden rake would do the job manually, but would take several days and a lot of blisters.

Looks like they have a double claw for ripping. Probably I should go for a single one. Then a (very big) water tank or a whole load of bricks for downwards pressure on the grader blade. Looks altogether possible. I thought it was a silly idea when I started the thread. I'll go out and experiment in the morning. Possibly I can make a simpler version as I'm not bothered about undulations, only potholes. In fact undulations would be an advantage if they stopped people driving too fast which to some extent is what makes the potholes.

 

[Archie]

There's a big pond/small lake one the farm that was dug 15 or so years ago. They used a grader like the one in Wwyn's first link but that was pulled by a D8!

 

[Robotstar5]

I reckon a Renault, a scrapheap and a few forum members and we could produce something like this?

 

[BMAK]

Malcolm, My relations have a lane prob about a mile long, my uncle made a grader attached to a 3 point linkage for a tractor the grader was an I beam set at an angle on the outside of the beam he had a box to weigh that end down and a lip on the outside edge to pull the stones in, it worked brilliantly he was able to cut down on the amount of pot holes he had to fill, i even had a go with it a couple of years ago and was easy to use just lined up the weighted edge of the beam with the edge of the lane and drove down the lane with a bit of downward pressure through the tractors linkage, then done the same back up this then produced a camber in the lane after a few runs, I have attempted a drawing in paint of it, not very good I know can't remember how the linkage was done, possibly just sacrificed off another implement and welded onto the beam the grey box is the weight box and the red line is the lip the first drawing is a side on few the right hand drawing is from the top. Any questions ask away, if you wanted a more detailed drawing i am sure i could knock one up in cad.

 

[MrFluffy]

Haven't you got a neighbour with a jcb or equivalent with a clamshell bucket?
Might take whoever two hours or so to fill and grade it, using the front of the bucket blade to force new gravel in and the back edge of the blade with the clamshell tipped forward to grade it smooth. It'll make light work of this job...

If you make something yourself, the pins and linkages on the front arms have to be uber solid and rigid and it has to have plenty of weight up front or the blade will just bobble up and down with the variances, to grade it has to slice through the highspots and have plenty of weight on it. My neighbor has a little yanmar 1.5tonne and the front dozer blade on it isn't up to much for grading as it doesn't have the weight to pin it down properly compared to using the bucket blade on my jcb 3ciii.

Nothing but metalized tarmac laid over a proper base will withstand heavy farm traffic for long though, my other house has a lane away from it in one direction, and four/five times a year the commune tractor comes along,repairs it with hardcore and mashes it in and grades it, then the farmer produces a huge 4x4 land tractor the next day and its back to square one within a few weeks. And because he has big bouncy tyres, it suits him to have it like its had bombs raining on it as it keeps "normal" traffic off "his" road.

Key to this working is bulk, power, and rigidity. Will struggle without somethign hefty I think...

 

[rtcosic]

I love the device in Wyn's links....

Looks altogether possible.

The type shown here does seem eminently doable for your budget as you don’t need to make it ‘road-worthy’ to travel from job to job. I assume you have various bits of quatrelle suspension lying around and the usual stock of ‘might be useful one-day’ rusty steel stock. Trailer jockey wheels like these aren’t too expensive to use for the height adjustment function and the wheels are bound to come in useful for some other project. Most expensive item might be the ballast water tank!
I assume you are maintaining a single track road, so the blade can be just over half the width of the track. Set it at a slope to the trailer wheels and do each half of the track in opposite directions and you’ve got your camber.

One wonders if there isn’t a small business opportunity here to make a pukka heavy duty one and grade local farmer’s tracks?

Narrow track version to clean out ditches?

Might need to buy a more appropriate tow vehicle though

Look forward to seeing your proof of concept version soon

 

[malcolm]

I'm a bit baffled by your drawing BMAK. I'm thinking of attaching something directly to the back of the Renault and putting some weight in the boot.

Our farmer and landlord has a JCB Loadall, but he isn't keen to come up very often to do any repairs. Besides, he can only seem to manage flat surfacing which is no use. There's a lot of traffic on our drive, mostly flatbeds owned by someone other than the driver and therefore driven at high speed. The roadway is quickly splashed from the holes.

I'm tempted to have a go with the Renault - it can take a lot of weight (though more than half a tonne tends to knock the fog lamp off from under the bumper). If it can rest on draggy things it should easily take a tonne.

Odd thing is it's a bridleway as well as a driveway so anything that drives up there is supposed to be road legal.

Edit - rtcosic: Same site as Wyn linked there - it was very useful, and l've been looking through the pdf about home grading. I shall of course post full details about my findings on here.

 

[snowcat]

4 in 1, and grading rake maybe the preferred method, seriously tho, a 6ton machine with a blade on self wreck hire is unlikely to cost you more than £100 a day..... you can grade alot of material with that.....

much of the problems with roadways is not the surface being washed away but the road actually sinks and washes the mad through it, taram is layed to help prevent this, tho not much help on an existing track.....

Personally having spent all my working life around kit designed to move such material, I think your gonna struggle to make anything beefy enough to stand up to the job for more than 5 minutes............

 

[Bobtail4x4]

I used an old large gate once on our lane, towing it behind the tractor, ( a car would do if it had the traction)

a few blocks of concrete as weights and it dragged up the loose scalpings and laid them in any potholes,

a follow up with a roller and its all ok for a few months.

 

[BMAK]

Malcolm yeah i thought you would be, i not exactly profficient with paint, basically its a 3-point linkage join to an I Beam laying on its side then a big weight on one end, it has def stood the text of time so far.

 

[HarryD]

Malcolm,

As an aside, use of river sand and gravel as road bed is not the best. The pieces are soomth and round. As a result they will not interlock with each other when you try to compact them (think about trying to compact ball bearings) to make a stable road bed. You need to crush the gravel to give it some rough faces. You also want to minmize the sand as too much tends to "lubricate" the movement of the gravel.