I am assuming that what you are looking for here is a constructive reply so I will try and give you one. You mentioned that you had tree trunks that were approximately 8" around and you would cut them into manageable lengths of 6-8 feet so my assumption is that you want a grapple for your
BX23 because you will have quite a large quantity of these pieces. I also have a
BX23 and had some similar questions to yours because I wanted to use the tractor for shuttling building materials around as I was working on my house - so I looked into putting a forklift attachment on the FEL. I heard all the standard replies that the
BX23 would never work for that blah blah blah. I did my research and found that ATI (
www.preseeder.com ) makes a forklift attachment for the BX tractors but the cost gets prohibitive - about $1000.00. So I started looking into making one myself. The basic problem with the
BX23 is that you do have limited lift capacity on the FEL and if you start adding too much extra stuff onto the FEL - like a grapple with it's hydraulic cylinders you will quickly use up the lift capability. I looked at the Kubota manual and they list a lift limit of 460 pounds (I think this is correct) - but I saw numerous posts about how people used their BX's to lift rocks that I knew were over that weight. So I did an experiment using weightlifting weights to see how much my
BX23 FEL would lift and found that I could lift 670 pounds from ground level up to about half height ( about 3 feet ) on the FEL - it would not lift that weight any higher. So from that my assumption is that the 460 lift rating is a lift rating to FULL FEL height. The ATI catalog also lists buckets and the lightest FEL bucket they have listed weighs in at about 135 pounds. FEL lift capability is rated at the pivot pins so realistically speaking your FEL (with no bucket) has a lift rating to half height of somewhere around 800 pounds. This 800 pounds is what you have to work with for whatever attachment plus the load you carry - if your grapple arms and cylinders add say 250 pounds to the FEL bucket then you would end up with a lift capability to half height of around 400 pounds. This might still be enough to move the logs you want to move. When I ran my load test the
BX23 had the backhoe on the back and I have my rear tires loaded and I actually had the tractor pointed down a slight incline - I tried jerking the bucket around with the weight in it and the tractor didn't feel the least bit upset at all so on reasonably level ground at least this load is easily handled by the
BX23. My suggestion for the best solution would be to put a toothbar on the FEL bucket and see if that is maybe enough to help you move the logs around. I used the bucket on mine to move some logs similar to the ones you said you had to move and it worked fine - I was able to get my toothbar under the logs and flip them into the bucket and carry them with no problem. I think if I was going to try doing what you are thinking of I would try and get a toothbar made for the bucket that had maybe 3-4 teeth that stuck out from the bucket a ways - say 6-8 inches or more and had a slight curve upward, you would then hook these under the logs and curl them back into the bucket , some bucket hooks on the top of the bucket would let you strap the logs down for the ride so they don't fall out as you carry them. This would be the cheap way out. Next step up might be a light duty grapple on the top of the bucket . If the purpose of the grapple arms are just to keep the logs in the bucket as you carry them I believe you could build something heavy duty enough to be reliable but still light enough to retain most of your FEL capacity. You are going to have to add extra hydraulics for this - you will need something to control the grapple cylinder. I personally think it is doable but you will have to do some engineering yourself and ask yourself what exactly am I trying to accomplish with this as there might be easier cheaper solutions to your problem - like a custom toothbar or something similar.
