Hard to say but horsepower and weight is always helpful up to the point the machine gets too big to work in the desiginated area.
I would definitely choose a 650 without a ripper over a 450 with a ripper for the same money any day of the week. Even a 550 in hopes the pushing would be favorable over unfavorable.
450 is a pretty small machine. On my 3 acre pond a D7 or even a D6R would have been a better choice had I been a contractor doing the work. But we used what we had and even our little D6N will get a lot of work done if you keep after it.
Heck if you see some of the public works projects done with some of the old machines they used (or even horses and slips before that) you can do a lot with a small machine if you stay after it.
If you have the choice of getting a smaller machine for a lower cost per hour or a larger machine at a higher cost per hour, the larger machine will almost always be the better choice up to the size of machine that will fit in your hole. A late model D7 class machine will build a quarter acre pond in a heartbeat.
(although there is no need for you to even check on that size machine for your job). A JD 450 you will be at it a few days, depending on how thourough you do the job of compaction and how much dirt you have to move.
My D6N XL is about the perfect size machine for a quarter acre pond although it will build smaller or bigger. I would not be afraid of sitting on a D7 on a quarter acre pond although the rental prices of those are probably through the roof because even the moving of the machine gets expensive unless it is for agricultural use. And they probably would not let anyone but a professional operator run it. A D6R is a lot bigger machine than a D6N. An old D7 is about the size of my D6N. The newer diff steer or hydrostat machines are a lot faster cycling and steer better under load than the older clutch steer machines.
Edit: for comparison I think my D6N XL would be somewhere near comparable in weight and horsepower to a JD 700K although the 700K is hydrostat and newer. It is definitely bigger than a 650K.
Last edited by snrub; 12/21/18 09:34 AM.
