Driveway Groomer

[GaryM]

Entropy, it's not only a good idea, It's the law!

[GaryM]

Well, the Driveway Groomer arrived the other day and I assembled it this morning. Instructions were pretty good and I appear to be missing four 5/16 x 1 1/4" bolts. I'll pick them up when I get the pavers. This afternoon I hope.

Parts fit well. All laser cut and powder finished. Bright orange. Wonder if I could get green to match my tractor? [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

I ordered the Riser Plate kit that allows the unit to drag more material. I'll try it without that first and see how it goes. The toothed blades can be attached toothed or smooth side down. This allows the cutting action to be adjusted somewhat. I'm going to start with the teeth on the front and smooth on the rear.

Here's a photo of the completed unit, minus pavers, in my driveway.

[GaryM]

The pavers sit inside the channels. There's room for at least three on each side with no stacking.

Here's a close up of the front corner and teeth.

[GaryM]

And the rear corner with the teeth pointing up.

[rpeter]

Update the post when you have had a chance to use it. Does sound very interseting.

About the paint job. Maybe you should just buy an orange tractor. That color would go great with my B7800. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]

[GaryM]

It's having a hard time biting into the hard packed surface of the subdivision road. This stuff is like concrete! [img]/forums/images/icons/mad.gif[/img]

I'd assembled it with the rear set of teeth pointing up, for smoothing, rather than down for cutting. I need to reverse that and see how it works. I might also need to lengthen the chains. The front end of the groomer seems to lift some as it's dragged forward. Making the chains longer should reduce the lifing effect.

It worked great on my drive which is not hard packed like the road is.

More later.

[egon]

More weight, Gary, more weight Gary. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

On the groommer ehh. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Bring it up, we have lots of groomer weights!

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[GaryM]

Hey man! Those pavers were $1.22 each. And that's in US Dollars, not Canadian. Not sure I could afford anymore of them.

As I mentioned, making the chains longer will lower the angle resulting in less upward force on the front end of the groomer. It's raining now, so if it's not doing so tomorrow and not too cold, I might give it another try. It did work fine on my drive which has no fines in the mix so doesn't pack to a hard surface. I didn't want to be tracking all the stone dust into the house.

[egon]

Gary, you take your boots off on the back stoop before entering the house.

[img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] I will supply the pavers up here. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[stoweski]

Hi Folks,

New here. Found the site through Tractorbynet.com. Just browsing and noticed this post. I have a driveway groomer. Bought it about 1-1/2 years ago and have used it several times. Had it hooked to my truck before I bought a tractor. After playing around with it for a while I finally figured out how to properly groom my driveway. It does a very nice job and definitely saves $$ on gravel. I also have used it for clearing brush in my yard (used to be woods, cleared a few trees).
Anyway, I've recommended these to several people so far so all I can say is if you have been thinking about getting one then stop thinking and order it! It's definitely handy.

Think snow!
Keith