Dennis, thanks for all the insight. As far as hill, trail, and wetness conditions well as you can figure they are quite variable. If your ever in the NE Ohio area stop in and check it out. Hard to describe how steep the hill is and its not very apparent in pictures either. I'll attach a pic, but hard to tell. The truck is parked in the field about as far as it can go, abotu 10 more yards and it starts going down and the woods I aften get wood out of is at the bottom, part of it shown in the background of the pic. There are plenty of hills to steep, and other spots I can get in and out without climbing any hills. Its over 200 acres and probably half wooded. Wetness, well right now in the woods is muddy mess, on the level my 1000 with the 25" Gators was sinking in 3-4" in some of the mud holes and pulling through just great. The main hillside is a field and not to muddy but even in mid summer the grass makes the drive slick. Actually right now is about the easiest time to pull up the hill.
The gators have done well (mine are 25x10x12) and are available in lots of height width combos up to 28" tall and widths commonly 10 or 12. Or I can go with ags, but more limited in sizes. The size I picked was just an easy way to gain a little bit of hieght and width and still use my existing rims from my 23x8.5x12 tires. If I was going to go duals I was thinking about skinnier.
Yeah I need weight on the trailers hitch, one reason using an old boat trailer appealed to me if I go the DIY route, looking at mine the axles is very near the back and would be easy to shift it all the way if I wanted too.
4WD atv would be better, but besides that I like cubs I also dont want to invest a ton into this, as I burn wood to save money. If I come across a good deal on one I would get it, but thats for a different conversation. Ideally though instead of 4wd atv I'd have one of the 4wd articulated cubs but I dont have that much fab skills!
I would not be pulling out 4' wide trees with it thats for sure. Most of the larger trees I cut are up to 20", most in the 14-16" range. The woods was logged in the 80's I think it was so no huge old grwoth except some of the old fence rows and the occasional monster. But there are lots of standing dead black locust and windfallen cherry often smaller than those and anything dead and or down I take first.
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By Dennis Frisk (Dfrisk) on Friday, April 15, 2011 - 01:06 pm:
TRISTAN - On a dedicated logging tractor I think taller and wider lugged tires would be great, just not duals. I don't think you want to go over 26-27 inches tall, and 10-12 inches wide. Something like the ATV tires your running now would be fine. Not sure I'd even bother putting taller tires on the frt. And if you could get steering brakes on the drive wheels some way that would be better still.
A rolling load in a cart will be easier to pull than a dragging load, but any store-bought dump cart will have the axle centered so going uphill would pull weight off the hitch. You need something that puts weight ON the hitch. I know Northern sells ATV carts, but they're not much more than normal carts with balloon tires. You need a cart with the wheels almost all the way to the back of the box.
If I had a better idea of how steep the hills were, how wide the trails, and how wet or slick the ground I could give better answers.
When it comes to "skidding logs" My Buddy had to fire up his 125 HP farm tractor a year or so ago to pick up the frt end of a four foot diameter OAK tree trunk that was about 25 ft long that he dropped onto a hillside. He had to chain the tree to the 3-point lift arms so he could raise it so he could pull it.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>
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