Eugen wrote: ↑Mon Aug 30, 2021 10:53 pm
...why make it detachable when you're this serious about a loader?
Great question.
It did take a lot of extra thinking and work to go the detachable route. But I only have room for a single tractor, and its primary job will always be "lawnmower."
So I didn't want to make my lawnmower permanently heavier, harder to maneuver, harder to store, etc. (My shed is just deep enough to close the door behind the tractor as it is. If I add a front bucket, I can no longer close and lock the shed door. And that's a bad plan around here. So I'll store the tractor itself in the secure shed, and leave the loader under a tarp. No one is going to steal a random loader assembly.
And I didn't have the luxury of just "making this one a loader" and then picking up something else to be the mower. As I say, I only have room for one, so that one has to do double duty.
Due to the extra work, I'll admit it was very tempting to just build it as non-detachable and then go back and make it detachable later "if I really felt like it." But the more I analyzed it, the more I realized that it's much more difficult to make it one way and then go cut out half your work and re-make it another way. Too much work, too demoralizing. The time to do it is on the front end. The more I thought about it, it was either build it detachable, or don't build it at all. So detachable it was.
"Never be afraid to try something new. How hard can it be?"
