LS backhoe questions. please post pics of subframe mount.

[Threepoint]

Great thread, Hutch. I see that you started it in Nov. last year! Your skills, and patience, are impressive! :thumbsup:

So you're in Central Virginia, eh? Do you moonlight doing custom fabrication? Just kidding (sort of). I suppose your wife might draw the line at that. :laughing:

 

[hutchman]

Great thread, Hutch. I see that you started it in Nov. last year! Your skills, and patience, are impressive! :thumbsup:

So you're in Central Virginia, eh? Do you moonlight doing custom fabrication? Just kidding (sort of). I suppose your wife might draw the line at that. :laughing:

Shes not happy with me and I'm sure our neighbors aren't either. I've been doing this in my back yard. We're selling our house and going to live in apartment while new house and pole barn are built. I told her I don't have much of an option ... I can't really do this kind of work in parking lot of an apartment complex

This is my first project like this. Taking longer than I thought!

 

[Threepoint]

Shes ñot happy with me and I'm sure our neighbors aren't either. I've been doing this in my back yard. We're selling our house and going to live in apartment while new house and pole barn are build. I told her I don't have much of an option ... I can't really do this kind of work in parking lot of an apartment complex

This is my first project like this. Taking longer than I thought!

Now that you've set such a high bar with this thread, we'll be expecting step-by-step progress reports, with pics, of the house and barn construction as well.

 

[dfkrug]

Re: Factory Backhoe height?

Could someone with the factory R3039 backhoe comment on the height off the ground
at the two points I marked in red?

Like most Woods factory subframes, that unit you show mounts the hoe really far out back. Departure angle
will be quite an issue there.

Just for reference, my custom subframes (incl the one on my CK30) shoot for about 12" for your first red
line. I still scrape ground at the lowest point on one of the dips I have to traverse regularly. As for
your second red line, you can ignore that since you just extend the dipper when needed.

 

[hutchman]

Re: Factory Backhoe height?

Like most Woods factory subframes, that unit you show mounts the hoe really far out back. Departure angle
will be quite an issue there.

Just for reference, my custom subframes (incl the one on my CK30) shoot for about 12" for your first red
line. I still scrape ground at the lowest point on one of the dips I have to traverse regularly. As for
your second red line, you can ignore that since you just extend the dipper when needed.

I struggled with how to make the thing not extend very far. I could raise it high enough that the seat would clear the fuel tank and push it until it's seat and the tractor are almost back to back but then the ROPS is wacking me in the head. Looks like the common recommendation is a 40" bubble around the backhoe seat for that reason. So I spent a bunch of time positioning the backhoe behind the tractor and getting on it and seeing how much room I had and making sure I didn't wack my head on the ROPS to come up with a compromise.

I "think" once I get the pins welded into position, I'll have about 14"-15" around that first mark under the boom.

Since this thing is sold as a 3 point backhoe, it has two clevis style brackets way down low to be connected to the tractor lift arms. I have half a mind to cut those off as I won't need them but I think I will leave them for now. If they don't get in the way or cause clearance problems I'll leave them because if I ever sell it it could be used as a 3pt. backhoe. If I do cut them off I guess I could just save them so I could weld them back on later if I ever needed to.

 

[hutchman]

Re: Factory Backhoe height?

I struggled with how to make the thing not extend very far. I could raise it high enough that the seat would clear the fuel tank and push it until it's seat and the tractor are almost back to back but then the ROPS is wacking me in the head. Looks like the common recommendation is a 40" bubble around the backhoe seat for that reason. So I spent a bunch of time positioning the backhoe behind the tractor and getting on it and seeing how much room I had and making sure I didn't wack my head on the ROPS to come up with a compromise.

I "think" once I get the pins welded into position, I'll have about 14"-15" around that first mark under the boom.

Since this thing is sold as a 3 point backhoe, it has two clevis style brackets way down low to be connected to the tractor lift arms. I have half a mind to cut those off as I won't need them but I think I will leave them for now. If they don't get in the way or cause clearance problems I'll leave them because if I ever sell it it could be used as a 3pt. backhoe. If I do cut them off I guess I could just save them so I could weld them back on later if I ever needed to.

... having said all that ... I "think" it will be about the same overhang as the factory backhoe.

 

[dfkrug]

Re: Factory Backhoe height?

Looks like the common recommendation is a 40" bubble around the backhoe
seat for that reason.

Some tractors have very short ROPS; some don't. Case in point: my old JD 955s had very short ROPS,
so JD actually sells a taller ROPS if you want to use a hoe.

BTW, none of my other tractors had this problem. I even shortened my Kioti ROPS by 8".

 

[hutchman]

Backhoe sides

Update of progress ... focused on backhoe sides.

Was able to mount the sides I cut out to the backhoe:


View from rear:


This allowed me to then back up the tractor and position the backhoe where I wanted it to be then mark where the pin holes needed to be cut out. I ran out of material and had to add a small part on top to be able to reinforce the top pin. Here's a view of things just tack welded in place:


Another view of pins from the rear:


And I was able to make the brackets to reinforce the other end of the pins. Didn't get a chance to tack them on but here is a shot before they got cleaned up (just brushed off the slag):

 

[hutchman]

Pin brackets on

Test fit of sides to make sure they fit in cradle OK before I started welding on the pin brackets (my stuff got rained on so now I have some surface rust ):


Next, did the root weld on the pin brackets:


Stuck the sides back on again for another test fit:

 

[hutchman]

Major Fab Complete! Praise the Lord!

Well, today I finished making the final mounts. I could not figure out a way to make a mount that went over the top of the axle and connected to the front to back supports that run up to the FEL cross member. The R3039 is just too compact to do it the way it is done on the TC-45 and others. So I made a mount that attaches to the top of where the ROPS mount to the top of the axle and will connect to the top of my 4 point cradle with a 10.9 grade bolt.

Here it is after completing the root welds:


Now I need to take the subframe off the tractor and do the final welding then clean it up and paint it. It's taken me 3 months but I think I'm close to finally trying it out.

Oh, I also made another mount that I didn't get a picture of yet ... it connects the two cradle upright mounts together and helps prevent them from being pulled in towards each other. I'll post a pic of that next time I get a chance.

 

[hutchman]

Update. It's almost finished ... weather turned to crap last fall and I couldn't paint (this spring hasn't been much better ... once temps comes up it rains all the time). Then I tore my bicep tendon off the bone at the elbow (while changing wheel bearing in one of my daughter's cars) and had to have surgery for that so I've been out of commission for quite a while lifting heavy things.

I think the Doc.'s will allow me to do some "real" work soon so hopefully I can get a few more holes drilled, get the metal prepped and painted and actually start using it. Hope to be posting pics of it again soon.

 

[PatrickS2222]

Damm Sorry to hear about your injury, but great that you're on the road to recovery :thumbsup:
Most motor vehicles are mongrel things to fix - I've worked on them all my life, but it's always a welcome change to get onto something different. A machine of some type - anything from a chainsaw to a bulldozer - is always much more interesting and gives me more satisfaction to see it work again.
You've got a lot of real good work done & we're all waiting to see it finished.
In the meantime ... don't push your arm too much too early - it needs time and rest in order to recover - let it first. :drink:

 

[hutchman]

Been sitting on this one for a while ... sorry.

These are pics of the mounts I made to sit on top of the axle on either side. Sits on top of ROPS mount. Intent is to hold the upper portion of the upright cradle mounts to keep them from being pushed into the transmission housing or pulled downwards toward the backhoe.

This is just after they were root welded. Didn't take pictures of the final thing after they were cleaned up and painted:



*edit - Oops, I just realized I already posted that pic. Guess that's what happens when you take a year to get something done.

 

[hutchman]

This subframe mount was too heavy for me to move around without help and nobody is around now to help and my wife's in no shape to help ... so I sacrificed a HF horizontal/vertical dolly:



This allowed me to easily move it around by myself and start cleaning up the rust that accumulated over the winter. It was covered with a tarp but the moisture still did it's thing:



There are four more pieces to the mount but I didn't take much time to photograph those as they are posted previously as I was making them.

 

[hutchman]

The small parts were fairly easy to hang up and paint. I decided to use the old mostly rotted swing I built for the kids a looong time ago. Nobody uses it anymore and the wife has been after me to get rid of it so I thought I'd get some use out of it before I cart it off (it's one of those tree fort things so don't tell the wife but I think I'm going to drag it to the farm and use it as a chicken coop!)

It was fun trying to figure out how to hoist the subframe up in the air by myself. At first I was going to use a come-along I had but I discovered I couldn't change directions with it using a snatch block because it was setup for double line pull only. I didn't have enough height/headroom to use the come-along inline. So I went mad using 20% super coupons at HF and got a 1,000 pound hand winch and two snatch blocks. This allowed me to very easily lift the thing and start painting it:





Here it is with it's final paint job on my high speed low drag HF super cart:

 

[hutchman]

The mating. Yes, it gets R rated!

Here I put the subframe on one of my creepers to slide it under the tractor. Takes two floor jacks to raise into position - one in front where it attached to FEL cross mount I modified and one in the rear:



It's been a looong time since I did heavy duty ARC welding so with using 6011 for root and 7018 for final and using lots of AMPS, I guess I got the metal hot enough for it to move around on me and I failed to jig it so it wouldn't warp etc.. So quickly noticed that I made the bolt holes too tight (tacked everything together on the tractor to make sure everything lined up but then I took the whole thing off and did the final (heavy) welding) and couldn't get bolts started ... I had to get the hydraulic ram kit out and move some stuff around to get the bolt holes to line up. I ended up scuffing up my paint job so I have quite a few spots to touch up because of this:

View attachment 481079

And now the money shot you've all been waiting for:



... The Ansung backhoe lives!

I had one of my top axle/ROPS mounts for the backhoe off due to the holes not being quite right so I thought it would be fun to pull on an old rotten stump and watch the mount to see if I correctly anticipated the forces that would act on the subframe mount. I was also hoping to bend one of the cradle mounts out just a tad. Well, I put the cylinders into relief pulling on the stump and the cradle mount never flexed or moved at all even though one of my mounts was left off! I was very surprised!

So I plan to egg out the holes a bit with a die grinder to get the final mount on. The backhoe sits only a few inches closer to the tractor than if I would have bought the 3pt. hitch mount and used that. I had to base the mounting position largely on the seat location ... I wanted it as close to the tractor as possible to eliminate overhang but I didn't want to be banging my head on the ROPS everytime I went to get up!

This project is entirely the fault of dfkrug for convincing me to attempt this with his excellent thread on "making your own backhoe subframe mount".

Next time I'm around the tractor I'll try to show more pics of the backhoe sitting in the cradles. It's pretty easy to attach and take off since I don't have to stand on my head and try to look up under the tractor to align things. With everything in the back it's very apparent how things need to move to line everything up and then just back the tractor up a few inches and let the backhoe down into the cradle then pin it so it can't lift back off.

The design was stolen from studying a co-workers Bradco backhoe on his TC45, a Woods subframe mount for a TC30 and incorporating some features from the factory LS mount that is now unobtainum (which is why I did this in the first place) and my own flare sprinkled in for fun.

 

[George2615]

The pics in your last post #76 are not available for viewing. Comes up as an invalid attachment. Please try to repost.

 

[hutchman]

The pics in your last post #76 are not available for viewing. Comes up as an invalid attachment. Please try to repost.

Hmm, not quite sure what that was all about but I obviously screwed something up. Can you see them now? I could see them before so not sure if it's fixed now or not.

 

[dfkrug]

This project is entirely the fault of dfkrug for convincing me to attempt this with his excellent thread on "making
your own backhoe subframe mount".

That looks really good, Brian. Hopefully you have no regrets after taking on this project. The rewards make
it more than worth the efforts, IMO. I am glad you got something out of my subframe post.

Now, dig some holes and post the pix.

 

[George2615]

Yes, they are viewable now. Very nice job. Glad you've healed well enough to get this job completed.