FEL trick

[Dozernut]

Woody1
I can't speak for the others, but I have already tried your suggestion. Every time I wanted to move something I would have to take off a back hoe, mower or some other implement. Besides a heavy trailer will cause your ball to swivel, unless you weld some support arms on the hitch bar to tie into the top arm. It would be so much simpler to drop the bucket off the FEL with the quick attach and put on a frame with a receiver hitch. I really don't want to drill holes or weld on the mower deck or back hoe. This system will be far easier and faster.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

What's funny is I've got ya'll chasing the reciever hitch idea and it's not what I've got for my JCB165HF.

I've got a quickattach set of forks for it. I didn't want to cut a hole in a fork to place a ball cause that looks bad and everyone does it. I also move around trailers from 1 7/8 thru 2 5/16 balls. So changing the balls would be a pain.

So I took a piece of two by six eleven gauge that fits right over a fork. I welded a piece of inch and a half round bar stock that sticks up about three inches at one end. That's the business end. At the other end I welded a piece of inch and a half quarter inch wall square tubing sticking up about six inches.

In this piece of square tubing fits a piece of bar stock half inch by one inch. I bent a piece of five eighths bar stock and welded to the half by one.

When I've got to move a trailer I drive the fork into the six inch tubing. I reach down, beauty of skid steer, and place the half by one piece into the inch and a half square tubing so that the five eighths bar is behind the vertical part of the fork. All I need it to do is to keep the six inch tubing from sliding off the fork.

When I remove the assembly I turn the half by one insert ninety degrees so it's out of the way and yet doesn't get lost.

My idea behind the receiver concept is for it to be the basis for a system. Sorta like the way it is on my truck. I have my vises, my notchers, my benders all on inserts. That way if I need to use them I pull them out and the whole [censored] truck is the support system to help me hold the tool.

The only thing that limits the concept is the imagination.

I mean, heck, if your hydraulics don't leak down on your cylinders you can make a basketball backboard attachment and use the FEL for team fun instead of just an individual's grin generator.

 

[pajoube]

Harv, as usual you have come up with another great idea. With all those twists and turns you mention, sure could use a picture.
PJ

 

[jdrotert]

Woody1,
I did exactly that. Here's my <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.tractorbynet.com/cgi-bin/compact/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=implement&Number=78267&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1>3PH receiver hitch</A>. But as Dozernut points out, you have to remove whatever attachment you have hooked up just to move a trailer. I have two trailers I need to move everytime I mow. Sure would be nice if I had a ball on the FEL somewhere.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

In my old puter I had a "word" program a bud taught me how to draw with. But the new one doesn't seem to have it.

My photo site is maxed out and a bud is whupping me up a web site design so I can have almost unlimited space on my own web site. So maybe in a month or so I can pop in a link to photos cause I already have the digital camera and most of the stuff I'm talking about I've just got to take a photo of and you can agree about how lucky I really am.

How many folks do you know get to fill out the question about occupation with "I make things."?

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Let's pretend you put a receiver piece like the one you have on your three point attachment on a bar that's attached to plates welded to the ends of your FEL. Then you take a piece of two inch bar stock or tubing and cut and weld it so it comes out of the receiver, angles down to the floor of your bucket and then out a couple of feet in front of the leading edge of the FEL bucket.

That way the visibility is great, you don't need umpteen pounds of strength to manhandle a trailer by it's tongue, and if you do it right there's no reason to get out of the tractor to connect or disconnect.

To support the insert for lateral loads you can either use chains that attach at each side, tension if you will. Or you can have bars sticking out catching the inside walls of your loader bucket, compression. Either or would work while the chains would be lighter and take up less space.

The advantage of having the insert sit on the floor of the loader bucket is it takes most of the twisting forces off of the back and top of the bucket where it's not designed to have twisting forces as an issue.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

I got to get back down to the shop. I took an early lunch, customers.........

But if someone will explain how to cut back my pictures so they'll fit in the restricted space available here I'd like to show you some neat little thingys ya'll might appreciate.

They're little things anyone can make that grab a post or pipe so you can lift same out with your FEL. They're simpler'n heck and work like you wished that son in law would.

 

[Ozarker]

How to reduce the size of your pictures depends entirely on which graphics program you use. But here are the basics.

Crop........ Most pictures have the subject, the important stuff, in or near the center surrounded by unimportant stull like ground, sky, floor, walls etc. Just use the Select tool in your program, frame the area you really want to show and hit Edit,Cut. Then hit Edit, Paste as new image and you create a smaller picture of what you really want to show people. Same that under a new name and check it's actual size.

Resize..... Most graphics programs have a Resize function that lets you make an image larger or smaller. Just reduce it by 10%, save it and check the size. If that reduced it enough, good. If not, reduce it another 10%. repeat until it is small enough to post. Don't forget to check the "Maintain Aspect Ratio" while resizing. That will keep the height to width ratio the same so that your end result doesn't look stretched out of shape.

 

[Ozarker]

Examples

Here are a couple of examples. When I was playing with that picture of the rear weight the other day, after I added my changes the picture was too large to post. I cropped it to show only what I needed to show and cut out all the unimportant stuff. I also reduced it to see how that would have looked.

This first attachment is what it looks like reduced.

 

[Ozarker]

Re: Examples

And here is the same picture cropped to show only what I wanted to show.

When I make the original changes the end result was a 191kb picture. This forum will only accept a 150kb or smaller picture. I reduced it 10% and that got me 157kb. Still too big. Second reduction, and what you saw in example 1, was 128kb but smaller details.

The cropped picture in example 2 is only 48kb and doesn't reduce the size of the details. So it shows the details and loads faster.