Moving Landscaping Rocks with a ATV

so Sold my house in Town and will be moving out into the country in 20 day's and am taking my Landscaping rocks with me on the Move.

some Pics of the process.
roll Rock into bucket



Ramps Up into trailer,



dumping out Rock in trailer.



Since Friday Night I made 3 loads and it all went pretty smoothly the cable on my winch pulled out of the clamps 2x times and dropped the bucket in the yard that I had to fix but other than that made it through without no other problems.

enjoy sublime out.

It has come in handy on a few project's around the house. It's pretty much a glorafied powered wheel barrow/2wheel dolly cart but it is powered and I got it used for $125.
Bought the swisher ATV system Bucket and under mount for $300 and I didn't like the under ATV Mount part of the swisher system sold it for $175 so then I fabbed up the brackets on front my ATV. I also have a front blade that Can go on there as well. My thinking was I can drop the Bucket in about 20 seconds and have a 80% servicable trail Ready ATV or take another 5 minutes undo the 4 bolts holding the vertical support to the front of the ATV and have a full ready to trail ride quad and go back to work mode in the same. Putting the Swisher system on/off was a pain and lying down to work under the quad to hook it up plus there was no Ground clearance with that system though it kept the weight off of the ATV suppesion. I wanted the Ground Clearance of the ATV but fast on/off times.


though I also had around 100lbs of counter weights on the rear rack and with a few of them rocks I had to put the quad in 4wd to get it to move foward.

Its a long way from a skid steer that is for sure but for small projects it can due OK. Bucket only has the trip feature and the trip lever is a little on the wimpy side so usually I lower the bucket back down with the winch pull the trip lever and then raise the buck back up to dump it out. lower back down till it lock back up and raise back up away I go again. Last summer I was still on the swisher mount system and used it for moving some gravel sand mix around and did OK there as well dumping it out I was still lower to ground pull trip then raise to dumpout it is alot of work on the winch but its less on my back that is for sure.



My winch Cable pulled through the clamps 2x on this project other than that it was pretty smooth sailing and I moved appx 70 or so rock's.
I measured where the swisher mount system put the hinge point for the bucket at and just set my vertical set up in the same spot.

here's a pic of the same quad 3 months ago in winter combat mode.



the goal is to be able to lift the whole blower 1-2' and shave off the top off drifts for 3' then back up and lower down and due the bottom half of the drift. this last winter was just making sure the 4link and rack mount system could hold up to the riggers of the blower and it did just fine.

sublime out.

Adios Pantalones said:

If that lifts a few hunnert pounds, it would be handy as a pocket on a t shirt

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it'll lift more than a couple hundred as I tip the scale at 230 or so and I stood in the bucket and it held me just fine a few of the rocks I moved I'd get them picked up and head for the trailer and they bucket would slowly settle back to down due to the winch would be unwinding. Its a Warn A2000 winch and I have no Idea what the hold force of it is but I know with me standing in the bucket it would hold me all day long.

I thought about doing a Pulley on the bucket and then back to the quad to take some of the strain off But I have no Idea of the winch history so thought this would be a good test for it. Plus I have spare winch ready to bolt up if this one blew up. though that is used as well.

sublime out.

Backwoods Savage said:

I'm glad you posted about this. Thank you.

I was checking out that bucked and system last fall and am still sort of interested. For sure one thing would be to haul some sand from one spot to another. I did realize there would be a limit on the amount I could haul and I too was wondering about the ground clearance. I still may check it further. I could also use it to haul some manure as a neighbor has a horse and I get all the manure. I think that is positive but I'm not really sure. Maybe I should tell them I won't take any or their .... stuff, any more.
:roll:

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for small trip around with the bucket full you'd be OK but to go any distance I think you'd be putting alot of extra strain on the ATV. I know when loaded I creep around at 5-7 MPH.
bascial 1st gear on the ATV I was getting to second and then the cable pulled out of the clamps and the bucket dumped while I was moving and it dug in and pulled the front tires up off the ground before I got stopped and backed up so after that I kept the speed down when loaded.

depends on the load. A bucket full of wood would'nt worry me much at all but dirt/rocks/gravel is heavy.

still beats doing manual shovel and wheel barrow trick.

depends upon your trail at what speed you could move at as well.

any other question's let me know.

sublime out

Backwoods Savage said:

Thank you for the information sublime. I'll have to decide again whether to get something like this or not. Yes, I am concerned about the strain on the atv as they are not built to withstand too much strain on the front end. But like you state, it can still beat shovels and wheel barrows.

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What type of ATV would this be used on? The Honda foreman's are probaly in the top 3 all time for tough ATV's that can take a beating/abuse and keep on ticking, I'd list the Honda 300 as #1 then the Foreman as #2 unless you can name me a tougher quad that has been made.

There Are many ATVs out there bigger better and faster that those 2 but for get down and pull the stump out of the ground work those are pretty darn good.

just my thoughts.

sublime out.

Backwoods you have a Pic of your machine or a Model type?

does it have A arms for the front end?

www.highlifter.com is a great site to learn about your ATV weak points as that's a primary Mud Bog site but they hash through all the weak points of ATV's.

also for learning about ATV snow Plowing check out www.plowsite.com has a sub ATV section though that will have little traffic till around september it picks up again.

though Most ATV's are pretty stout these day's any way.

your right about the rough ride on the Hondas. some friends have a Polrais Sportsman and a Yahama Grizzly and trial riding them machines are nice trail riding machines and lots of power.

Honda's dont due anything great. but they last forever.

what type a plow due you have?

I would think if you can come up with a way to drop the blade use some heavy ratchet straps to hold the push tubes up tight to the bottom of the ATV and then hook the bucket system to the plow push tubes and make a hinge point there and then winch up/down for the bucket. my thoughts thinking out load on it. You alread have a Plow mount pushing point and the push tubes just drop the blade for summer season and add the bucket or get a 2nd set of push tubes and put the bucket on them.

sublime out.

Backwoods,

Nice looking unit and plow set up you have.

If you due go with the bucket Idea I would lean toward fabbing it up to work off your Plow Push tube system.

depends upon the terrian you'd be going over but you could even put some dolly wheels under your Push tubes and let them handle the weight and load of the bucket and then the ATV is only pushing the load via the plow push tubes.
if you due the dolly under the Push tube route I'd look at bracing the side to side sway of the bucket via an something like what is in the following Pic,

this is my old ATV Blower mount up and the chains reduced the side to side swaying and gave me a some loading on the front of the ATV.

if you fab this up to your grizz then you and put some of the weight on the front of the ATV but not make it due a complete nose dive as most of the bucket weight will be carried by the dolly wheels. though they will sink in if your in soft ground and such.





just my thoughts.

heck is easy to arm chair quater back other peoples projects.

NATE379 said:

So... how many garage door openers did you have to rip down to get enough of that crappy "holey" angle iron to put together that C.F.??

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I know this is an Old thread but the long term goal is to make this 4 point system out of real square tubing and due it up right but the holey stuff is easy to work with and fairly cheap. at least I thought so.

Heck for this winter I haven't even drug the blower out of the shed and hooked it up we haven't had the snow falls as in winter's past.

though for spring cleaning I'll have to at least fire the old girl up and let it run a little bit.