[bigtimeoperator]

I'm debating getting something to consolidate my many sloughs/potholes and I've narrowed it down to either the Pulldozer or V Wing ditcher. The main purpose of the machine will be to create water runs in my rolling terrain so water will move to one location in a field instead of 10-20 spots in a field. To me the pulldozer looks simple with few moving parts and can do a lot of other things besides making water runs. The 24ft looks very wide for moving around on roads though. Though the pulldozer has more capabilities around the farm, I fear that for making long water runs it will be moving more dirt than I want so it'll be a lot of pull-pile-pull-spread. The VWing ditcher definitely had more pins, moving parts, and a ton of grease points (at least 95% are located at two grease banks though). It looks like it would be a great machine for making the water runs I'm after but it seems kind of like a one trick pony. Even with the drop down sides they had on both ditchers at the Progress Show I think this machine might be great at ditching but not much else. Having never used either piece of equipment I'm just making a guess as to how they'll perform. I think majority of my work will be creating water runs but it would be nice to to be able to use machine for levelling hills, ridges, yard levelling, snow removal, stone pulling, etc. If Vwing did all this I think it would be an easy decision, I'm just not sure that it can.

24ft pulldozer is around $72-$75. 18ft is around $62-65. 21ft VWing with the fold downs on the wings is going to be around. $96. Add $30-35 for Leveling GPS. Not a cheap purchase by any means but think it will have long term payback. Might as well make the land we have more productive while eliminating overlap instead of buying new dirt.

Who has either if these machines and what are there good/bad points? Probably a lot more pulldozer a out there than V wings but hopefully we can hear from both sets of owners?

Here are some links for the VWing:

V-Wing Ditcher - Adding Value to Your Land

 

[farmerSK]

Buying a scraper is another option which can be used for a multiple of tasks

 

[bigtimeoperator]

I'm not interested in either scraper or tile. With scraper it's scrape a bit then dump then scrape a bit then dump. Leaves a terrible finish that needs to be dealt with and would take 10x longer to do the job. I think tile has its place, just not for what I'm looking to do. That's why I have it narrowed down to these machines.

 

[megrizzly]

This job your talking about isn't going to be a small task no matter the equipment and it will be a multi-year commitment. It would be far better to take a longer time and do it right. We've done lots of dirt work on our farm with all kinds of different equipment. I would definitely purchase a scraper and a small to medium dozer, such as a D4 or D5 with a 6-way blade, power shift, and LGP.

Instead of just making ditches, use a scraper to transport the dirt to fill in the low spots. Or move the dirt to ares to create burms to prevent water from overflowing into your field if applicable. A cat would be slower than a pull-dozer, but do a much better job for shaping ditches or levelling areas. It would also work better in softer conditions and be able to do other tasks such as move snow, clear bush or fence lines. There also entertaining to drive.

If you have access to elevation maps from your gps or a transit, you can save your 30,000. Some of the higher capacity ditches are better off to shape and grass them. Then you can still drive through with the sprayer, drill, combine, etc, just lift the drill.

 

[farmer 4 ever]

People always mix up tile and land leveling saying which one is the best. They have 2 different goals. Tile draining is for lowering your water table in the spring so the roots will grow deeper and then the crop will do better when it dries out later in the season. Landforming is to remove the excess water that soil cannot absorb after an heavy rain. Here, we get so big water event, we need both. I find your V-wing is just like a band-aid and not correcting anything. Just remove some of the excess water that ends up there.

A finishing scraper like the one they build around here: Machinerie L?pine inc.

Accompanied by a good survey of your field, will give you far better result. Longer job but will make a huge difference. I do surveys with Optisurface and then scrape my fields and the job takes from 3-4 years to pay off so it's a good investments. The more land we have leveled, the more stable our yield are from year to year.

 

[JDfame]

If you want a blade buy a blade. For what that thing costs you can probibly get a desent maintainer burn less fuel than a 4wd and be alote easier to run once you get the hang of it.

 

[skgrain]

The guys got this one wrong. A vwing is good for a particular job. Buy it later. But the pull dozer should be first earth mover you buy. Does everything. Can't break it. A d6 is my second choice but if you say more slough than bush easy decision. Pull dozer. You can get them for 35000 new but I am leaning toward the bad boy bridge view.

 

[offroadnt]

The problems with the wing is the same as the Wolverine, your taking dirt out of a low spot and putting it on a hill, your making a trench with steep banks and your limited for depth. I use a scraper, it works pretty good, I use it like a pull dozer most of the time just pulling dirt down off the hill into the low spot or along the valley I'm making into the low spots. It's about ten feet wide and I get creative with my runs so I travel empty as little as possible, sometimes I work on several hills and low spots in one loop. Beauty though is I can load twenty yards of dirt, gravel whatever and haul it to other spots, filling pens or building approaches and such, very handy machine. Making valleys you need to make them wide enough so equipment doesn't dig in or miss spots as you move through them.

My opinion...

 

[thorpy]

In my opinion, everyone of the earthmovers have their place. We have a 24yard scraper, and a 22' homebuilt pulldozer. When making a ditch that has any depth, or moving dirt more than a couple hundred feet, the scraper is far superior. It digs in easy, loads up, and once it is full you can gear up and drive to the low spot and empty it fast. I find it very difficult to make a pull dozer dig a ditch of any size.

Once the ditch is roughed out, the pulldozer really shines. It works great to level out the sides, and to level where the scraper has been dumping. The pulldozer also works great for tuning up the ditch when it gets filled with sediment/foliage etc. Also use the pulldozer for short and shallow cuts no more than 12" deep.

i guess what I am saying, I wouldn't trade one for the other, they work best in a pair.

 

[mbfarmer]

There is a reason everyone uses a scraper. That v plow doesn't look like something I would want. Tile is the quickest and easiest but it certainly has it's limitations when it comes to potholes.

 

[SWMan]

In my opinion, everyone of the earthmovers have their place. We have a 24yard scraper, and a 22' homebuilt pulldozer. When making a ditch that has any depth, or moving dirt more than a couple hundred feet, the scraper is far superior. It digs in easy, loads up, and once it is full you can gear up and drive to the low spot and empty it fast. I find it very difficult to make a pull dozer dig a ditch of any size.

Once the ditch is roughed out, the pulldozer really shines. It works great to level out the sides, and to level where the scraper has been dumping. The pulldozer also works great for tuning up the ditch when it gets filled with sediment/foliage etc. Also use the pulldozer for short and shallow cuts no more than 12" deep.

i guess what I am saying, I wouldn't trade one for the other, they work best in a pair.

I would agree with this entirely. I have a 17 yard Ashland scraper, 24' Pulldozer and a rotary ditcher, each is unique and best for it's specific purpose. The scraper is the most versatile but does not even begin to compare to the job a pulldozer will do widening ditches and smoothing things out. I would guess the pulldozer moves 5 times the dirt of my scraper when widening ditches but I usually just do a loop and trickle it out in the field next to the ditch. My sloughs are already drained, I just need to make them easier to work through. Scraper gets used for setting the level on the ditch-bottom, it's good for that.

For the price of the V-wing you could have a slightly used scraper and pulldozer and be better off I would think.

 

[Duchek]

I'm debating getting something to consolidate my many sloughs/potholes and I've narrowed it down to either the Pulldozer or V Wing ditcher. The main purpose of the machine will be to create water runs in my rolling terrain so water will move to one location in a field instead of 10-20 spots in a field. To me the pulldozer looks simple with few moving parts and can do a lot of other things besides making water runs. The 24ft looks very wide for moving around on roads though. Though the pulldozer has more capabilities around the farm, I fear that for making long water runs it will be moving more dirt than I want so it'll be a lot of pull-pile-pull-spread. The VWing ditcher definitely had more pins, moving parts, and a ton of grease points (at least 95% are located at two grease banks though). It looks like it would be a great machine for making the water runs I'm after but it seems kind of like a one trick pony. Even with the drop down sides they had on both ditchers at the Progress Show I think this machine might be great at ditching but not much else. Having never used either piece of equipment I'm just making a guess as to how they'll perform. I think majority of my work will be creating water runs but it would be nice to to be able to use machine for levelling hills, ridges, yard levelling, snow removal, stone pulling, etc. If Vwing did all this I think it would be an easy decision, I'm just not sure that it can.

24ft pulldozer is around $72-$75. 18ft is around $62-65. 21ft VWing with the fold downs on the wings is going to be around. $96. Add $30-35 for Leveling GPS. Not a cheap purchase by any means but think it will have long term payback. Might as well make the land we have more productive while eliminating overlap instead of buying new dirt.

Who has either if these machines and what are there good/bad points? Probably a lot more pulldozer a out there than V wings but hopefully we can hear from both sets of owners?

Here are some links for the VWing:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1ERZ7dubRRM

V-Wing Ditcher - Adding Value to Your Land

First of all, how deep are your ditches going to be? Like was mentioned before, anything more then a foot or two and you will need a scraper. You mention you have rolling land so I wouldn't be surprised that you are going to land up with some ditches that might be 6 feet or deeper. Haven't seen anybody yet that sold their scraper after they had a pull dozer. They are great for ditching and finishing work but they will never replace a scraper.

 

[Fena farms]

Just buy a grader that's what my neighbours got and really like it for drainage and everything else

 

[Snipe]

Bigtime I am in the the same boat I have a scraper but land won't dry enough to use it. What type of gps are you getting that costs 20+. I am thinking ditch pro they say it's compatible with my Outback system and all I need is a 40$ switch for my Case tractor. Ditch pro is $11,000.

 

[farmer 4 ever]

If you are looking for a gps that will be laser like precision you need rtk on a base station in a field and glonass unlock. Any other type won't be precise enough to manage heigth.

 

[bigtimeoperator]

That's a lot of votes for the scraper! I had a uke in to build a pad in my yard a few years back and got him to make a water run between some sloughs where he was working. What a mess! Can see how you would need a pulldozer/grader if using a scraper to make water run. I was under the impression either a pulldozer or VWing could dig more than 12" rather easily, but given I've never used either I guess I'm off on that idea. There will be spot I have to go well more than 12" if cutting through a small knoll. In SW sask we have potholes but no scrub/bush. The "ditches" I want are going to be wide and farmed through just like a natural water run/washout.

Snipe; I talked to the Trimble guys at the show last week and they said to get everything needed to run their GPS it would be $30-35. That includes FMX1000 monitor, RTK base station, software. I only have Pro 600-700 monitors for my CIH equipment. They said you needed RTK to get proper elevation. Rangepoint (RTX) wouldn't be good enough. VWing guys confirmed this.

The VWing has drop down sides that allow you to pull 20ish yards of dirt like a pulldozer. Thought that would be handy. The videos on that VWing got me pretty excited but I guess if it doesn't cut deep enough it wouldn't be much good. Would still be good to talk to somebody that has used one if for nothing more than to verify the opinion on them here.

 

[Duchek]

A pull dozer really compliments a scraper and really makes it quicker because you can do all your final cuts with it plus it really shines for levelling off the pot holes that you filled with the scraper.

My dad and the neighbors went out to Manitoba where they had a demo of a Vwing. They weren't that impressed. The field where the demo was located at pretty much had a natural slope to it and only required a few inches of dirt removal to get the water moving in the right direction. That is where a machine like that would shine though.

Your best bet would be a scraper first and either a bridgeview pull dozer or a home made one if you would like to save some money.

 

[joesixpack]

Land drainage and leveling has been one of the best investments we've made over the last few years especially being so wet. It was 50k for just the FMX+RTK and control back then and has paid for itself easily along with the impliments.

We really like the wolverine rotary for the field finish and ditch maintenance after. Still use a scraper when we need to fill holes. Rather than a pull dozer we'd like a wide high speed leveling bucket with good walking beams in the back that won't duck walk and you'll know what that means if you spent any time on a scraper. The key to it all is the GPS control, and the FMX is great with the dual channels then you can put in your horizontal line to control the steering on one channel and the vertical for the ditching impliments on the other hit the auto and watch it work while your browsing combine forum!

 

[peterbilt]

A friend of mine does custom ditching with a v-wing spends a lot of time in the Theodore, SK area every fall they keep getting him to come back and do more for the last couple falls, travels 300 km with it for them. He has run it 3 years I believe, could give you his name and number p.m me if your interested.

 

[Snipe]

That's a lot of votes for the scraper! I had a uke in to build a pad in my yard a few years back and got him to make a water run between some sloughs where he was working. What a mess! Can see how you would need a pulldozer/grader if using a scraper to make water run. I was under the impression either a pulldozer or VWing could dig more than 12" rather easily, but given I've never used either I guess I'm off on that idea. There will be spot I have to go well more than 12" if cutting through a small knoll. In SW sask we have potholes but no scrub/bush. The "ditches" I want are going to be wide and farmed through just like a natural water run/washout.

Snipe; I talked to the Trimble guys at the show last week and they said to get everything needed to run their GPS it would be $30-35. That includes FMX1000 monitor, RTK base station, software. I only have Pro 600-700 monitors for my CIH equipment. They said you needed RTK to get proper elevation. Rangepoint (RTX) wouldn't be good enough. VWing guys confirmed this.

The VWing has drop down sides that allow you to pull 20ish yards of dirt like a pulldozer. Thought that would be handy. The videos on that VWing got me pretty excited but I guess if it doesn't cut deep enough it wouldn't be much good. Would still be good to talk to somebody that has used one if for nothing more than to verify the opinion on them here.

Ok I already have RTK so I see we're the extra expense comes in.