Homemade ATV Cultipacker

ChadHable

Yearling... With promise
My father-in-law and I made a 4' pull behind ATV Cultipacker. During my research I found a posting on the Michigan Sportsman page. Material cost was under $200. We probably have about 20 total hours into the project.

We used a double walled 10" culvert. It only comes in 20' rolls. Below are the pictures of the 4' cultipacker. Since we have extra culvert left over we are going to attempt a 10' one to pull behind the grain drill. We figure total material cost for that one will be around $400.

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The frame is made from one 20' stick of 2"X2" 1/4" thick angle iron. The bearings and steel were the most expensive pieces.

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The shaft is a 5' piece of 1.25" round stock. We cut it down and added rebar to it. The rebar was added so the concrete had something else to adhere to. Due to the way the round stock was cut, we had to do some grinding to get our bearing to fit over the shaft.

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This packer used 5-60lbs bags of concrete. We were a hair short so we stuffed a few rocks in at the end to make sure the whole culvert was filled. We found the 4' height was perfect to stand up and fill using 2 gallon plastic buckets. We also put the culvert in a split due to a slight curve it had. Maybe we didn't need to do it but with few old 2x6s and some ratchet straps we were able to straighten it up. The end caps are 3/4 plywood that I made laying around the house.

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My father-in-law got excited and attached the frame and started pulling it behind his lawn mower. I have yet to use it but will be doing so this weekend. We found that due to the weight 350ish lbs, we're going to need to store it standing up so the slots don't get flattened over time.IMG_1164.JPGIMG_1165.JPGIMG_1166.JPGIMG_1167.JPGIMG_1168.JPG

While i'm still waiting to check it out, i'm extremely happy with the looks and how the soil looks after running over it.
 
Looks good!
 
That looks great!
 
Please keep us updated on how this works out longer term. My neighbor made one from steel culvert but was very crude nothing like how nice yours appears. His axle was off center and it didn't rotate very smoothly. Concrete ended up breaking out in chunks as the ends weren't closed.
 
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