Ken, I noticed you added hard surfacing to the drum.
How well does it hold a layer of soil on the drum?
Did you pick up any vibrations from the drum being out of balance?
I've got a Bobcat Soil Conditioner. It works well in the Clay/Silt mix we have here, but the soil has to be almost dry. If the moisture level gets too high, the clay sticks to the drum and the drum wants to stall.
In certain moisture conditions the soil sticks to the drum, tires and the loader tracks and everywhere. I find if the clay is sticking to the drum, it is sticking everywhere and its time to go home.
Nothing else breaks those hard clay clumps up like a these attachments, but it has to be on the dry side. I also have a Bobcat land plane but it don't see much use.
When the rake was new, the paint wore of the drum in those area between the teeth, so I decided that would be a higher wear area on the drum and hard surfaced the drum to protect it. It likely reduce the effective cut of the tooth and added a little friction to the drum, but I use it to grade driveways too and was concered about wearing the drum thin and cracking it.
When if find the drum stalling it is getting into to tough (virgin clay, etc) and it is time to get out the tiller, or rake the ground with a tooth bucket to loosen it up. I almost always till here first betwen the clays, rock and God knows what else that buried, I rather find it with the tiller.
If I'm just touching up a small rough area, not removing all the sod and reworking the whole lawn, I'll just use the rake to grind off the high spots, but for a complete job I start with the tiller, the ground is just too tough and you have to go so slow with the rake.
It did not change the balance noticably, the rpm is too low imo
Does your Harley rake have the teeth welded in a straight line down the length of the drum?
Eskine spirals theirs so not all the teeth are in the dirt at the same time and as one row is coming out the other is just getting started. I wonder how much smoother this makes the drum run.
Also Harley uses a chain reduction drive where Erskine is direct.
Harley has a smaller drum diameter too.
Finally Erskine uses a 4 link between the rake and the QA plate, which lets the loader bounce up a down between the bumps but seems to keep the drum height fairly consistant, its amazing how well it flattens thing out.
Would be nice to run them side by side to see if there is any difference in performance.
Ken
