I want to add an hydraulic thumb to my tractor backhoe

[boostmg]

Hey guys so a guy did this on one of the facebook groups. He had a manual thumb on his tractor backhoe.

What he told me he did was the following:

• he replace the manual cylinder with an hydraulic ram (he used a 10" but he said 8" would be better)
• he used a log splitter control valve to control it
• he ran hyrdo lines from the valve to the new thumb cylinder, and then from the valve to the rear remotes

This seems "easy" enough for me to do, but i have some questions because I know nothing about hydraulics.

• can i purchase just any cylinder? does it have to meet certain specs?
• can i purchase any hose? does it have to meet certain specs?
• what options do i have for control valves? i keep hearing people mention foot controls but am not sure what product would allow me to do that.
• When installing ... do i need to bleed the lines? how does that work?

Any other tips or insight on this would be greatly appreciate ... seems like it would be very helpful.

 

[Rustyiron]

I think the typical problem is knowing where to "tap in" to the hydraulics. I'm not familiar with your tractor or backhoe for advice.
Any single wire hydraulic line should be plenty.
For your cylinder, you'll need to carefully measure the stroke that's necessary to "park" the thumb up against the dipper, and to engage the bucket when it's approximately parallel with the dipper or the bucket teeth near the c/l of the dipper.
Lastly you'll need to make a "lug" and be able to weld it to the dipper to fasten the stationary end of the cylinder to. A poorly designed lug log could be ripped off, damaging the dipper. It needs a solid 4"x8" footprint.
I can't imagine a 10" cylinder having enough motion, but again I'm not familiar with your bhoe.

 

[Smokeydog]

A well placed hand control near your other handles would be alright. I would like to add a hand control to the foot control for more precision. Use care in routing your lines.

 

[deezler]

Hmmm. I like this idea. Use a freely available rear remote through a basic log splitter valve. Simple.

Michigan Iron has foot-pedal kits engineered for Kioti backhoes, but at $1600 I'm gonna have to pass.

BACKHOE THUMBS | miemachinerydivision

www.miemachinery.com

I am also not a hydraulics expert but I can tell you this, the principal "spec" your cylinder and hoses has to meet is for operating pressure. Get stuff rated for 3000psi or better. I don't think you'll need to bleed the lines, the tractor will fill them up and dump air back at the sump. I *think*.

For anything easy and cheap, you'll probably end up with a hand lever valve that you can mount sorta near your existing backhoe controls. Not that big a deal to move one hand over when you need to work the thumb.