Introduction and question on CTL/Fecon Bull Hog/Fire Mitigation

[AnvilRW]

Nice job.
Great looking piece of property. !!

Thank you.  It's a ton of work but we love it.

[AnvilRW]

Just curious, are the track frames rigid or can they oscillate at all?  Any form of suspension or all the rolls rigid to the track frame?

Is it bouncy offroad?  I always need to have a bobcat in my life but a 742 is a pretty wild ride in natural terrain. The short wheelbase makes it buck front to back real bad over any little blip.

Yes, it's fully rigid.  They make them with a suspension undercarriage and if I had it to do over again, I might go that route.  It would certainly have traction advantages and probably a more comfortable ride, but I've heard there is a maintenance downside to them.  My Bobcat rep warned me against it for mulching at the time I bought mine (2015).   As it is, the ride isn't too bad since the seat has suspension, but it can still shake your kidney stones loose.

[AnvilRW]

Another great weekend.  Murdered hundreds and hundreds of gambel oak clearing fencelines and fell several Ponderosa that had red tops on them.  The forest service wants us to cull the trees whole and remove them from the vicinity of other trees before limbing them out and bucking and then mulching the limbs.  Of course they're all in places difficult to get too.  Felling them didn't take more than an hour.  Getting them back upslope took the rest of the day.  900' of static rope, several pulleys, and the Willys on the pull line made it somewhat easier but each tree was several trips up & down by myself.  Probably lost 10lbs this weekend alone.  If you look in the distance in the second photo, you can see another one that's got to go though it's completely dead already (presumably no beetles left in it).