mini hoe question

[washita]

diggin a trench for the neighbor with the mini hoe when he asked a interesting question on why the boom stick did not move side to side? my reply was additional hydraulics to run it, his suggestion was a pivot joint that would be self centering by weight of boom stick and bucket but would pivot left or right x amount of degrees when bucket would be higher than the pivot point, now I am wondering if this would be practical or a incident waitin to happen

 

[MossRoad]

diggin a trench for the neighbor with the mini hoe when he asked a interesting question on why the boom stick did not move side to side? my reply was additional hydraulics to run it, his suggestion was a pivot joint that would be self centering by weight of boom stick and bucket but would pivot left or right x amount of degrees when bucket would be higher than the pivot point, now I am wondering if this would be practical or a incident waitin to happen

How are you going to control which side it flops to?
How will you keep it from flopping when you don't want it to?

 

[washita]

a pivot point similar to a snow plow with a pin to limit degrees of swing, or king pin style as seen on solid front axles (buses-dump trucks) 5 to 10 degree of swing with stops just enough to clear the trench without moving the machine, use a pin to lock boom in straight position if movement not desired, maybe a pivot joint would not handle the stress, probably just wasting my time thinkin- I tend to over analize

 

[Rivco]

I think you would run the risk of racking or twisting your lift arms if you fabricated a pivot bracket for your mini hoe and mounted it to the quick attach adapter plate. There have been times that I have carried an unbalanced load in my loader bucket and it does put stress on one lift arm or the other. I never had any problems finding a spot to dump dirt while using my mini hoe...I just turned the steering wheel to dump and turned back to continue digging.

 

[KentT]

There have been times that I have carried an unbalanced load in my loader bucket and it does put stress on one lift arm or the other.

I've tweaked the lift arms on my 425 doing something similar. Piece of a pine tree trunk about 12' long BUT I didn't know one end was still attached to the stump...

 

[hogi]

The mini-hoe is one of my favorite attachments. I think the simplicity of design is its greatest asset. I don't see any advantage in added hydraulics or a swinging set up as you describe. The one gripe I have is the auxiliary handle position, I'm planning to mod that as others have already done-- moving it to the other side. Using the steering to move the boom seems to work great, and it's easy to do quickly, especially with a steering wheel knob.

 

[BobRip]

The mini-hoe is one of my favorite attachments. I think the simplicity of design is its greatest asset. I don't see any advantage in added hydraulics or a swinging set up as you describe. The one gripe I have is the auxiliary handle position, I'm planning to mod that as others have already done-- moving it to the other side. Using the steering to move the boom seems to work great, and it's easy to do quickly, especially with a steering wheel knob.

I wonder if it would help to dig a straighter trench? With the swing arm that is.

 

[catsco]

I've used the mini-hoe (PT-425) a LOT and find that it is a little harder to stay straight than with a conventional backhoe w/swing capability.

It's easy, though, to "draw" a line where the trench is supposed to be by backing up with the bucket on the ground with a little downforce to see where you want to dig.

A painted line on the ground gets obliterated pretty quickly when emptying the bucket because you're constantly driving over the line.

It's also pretty hard to dig a good trench on a cross slope as there's no way to level the tractor as with a conventional backhoe.

That said, I've saved a lot of $$$$ by using the PT to dig the trench for our power line, the hole for our septic tank, a few hundred feet of sewer line, and the leach field for the system. Would have been nice to be able to dig just a little deeper, but for our site all the piping received fill over the original trench to get to the desired depth.

 

[SpringHollow]

The Lackender minihoe gives me ~6' of depth. I have dug hundreds of feet of trench, etc. Very useful and saves me a lot of money and i do not have to try and coordinate getting someone here when i need them.

Ken