loader build resumes!
Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:18 pm
Well I have crossed a milestone. After 8 or 9 months and something like 14 long pages, I realized today that the "adding a spool valve" thread can finally be closed.
Yesterday I went ahead and bolted the loader cross member and vertical receivers back onto the tractor. Early this morning I bolted on the transaxle reinforcements and buttoned up the various covers and sheet metal that I had removed in order to get access to the TCV.
So now the tractor is substantially reassembled and I'm ready to continue/finish up the loader build process.
This afternoon I drove out and remounted the loader onto the tractor. That's a bit of a first, because I fabricated the cross member and bolted it on then fabricated the tower receivers and bolted them on then built the loader assembly to match those tower receivers.
But this is the first time that I've completely disassembled everything and then reassembled it and confirmed that the detachable loader can still successfully attach and detach without moving heaven and earth. And it worked fine. There's a bit of grunting and wiggling and pounding with a rawhide faced mallet. But nothing extraordinary or out of order.
So early tomorrow morning I weld up a mounting plate to hold the new spool valve. And as soon as the new valve is bolted in its final position, I have merely to run the various hoses and 3/8 inch hard lines to the four cylinders before, for the first time, the boom and bucket controls will actually work when I pull the levers. It's been such a long road to get to this point it seems impossible. But I'm right on the precipice.
As soon as I can operate the boom and bucket by hydraulics, the final two steps are:
1: Attach the quick attach mounting plates. One to a set of forks, the other to a bucket. I'll have to do some minor fabrication and adjustment to get the quick attach plates on there in the proper orientation. I have yet to work out the full details of the sliding pin that will engage to lock the quick detach implement onto the tractor.
2: The final step will be to work out the balance of how much counterweight I need. And then create the counterweight.
I intend to buy ten 80 lb bags of concrete. I'll load them in the bucket and find the tipping point of how much weight in the bucket causes the back wheels to lift off the ground. From there I'll measure the fulcrum leverage from the center line of the front wheels to where the counterweight will be picked up by the 3-point hitch. And that will tell me how much weight I need slung from the 3-point to keep the back wheels on the ground plus about 500 lb for traction. Whatever weight that is, I'll make a concrete cube with steel shaft ears sticking out the side that I can just slide the rings of the three-point arms right over and lift it up. It seems foolproof to me...
Bob
Yesterday I went ahead and bolted the loader cross member and vertical receivers back onto the tractor. Early this morning I bolted on the transaxle reinforcements and buttoned up the various covers and sheet metal that I had removed in order to get access to the TCV.
So now the tractor is substantially reassembled and I'm ready to continue/finish up the loader build process.
This afternoon I drove out and remounted the loader onto the tractor. That's a bit of a first, because I fabricated the cross member and bolted it on then fabricated the tower receivers and bolted them on then built the loader assembly to match those tower receivers.
But this is the first time that I've completely disassembled everything and then reassembled it and confirmed that the detachable loader can still successfully attach and detach without moving heaven and earth. And it worked fine. There's a bit of grunting and wiggling and pounding with a rawhide faced mallet. But nothing extraordinary or out of order.
So early tomorrow morning I weld up a mounting plate to hold the new spool valve. And as soon as the new valve is bolted in its final position, I have merely to run the various hoses and 3/8 inch hard lines to the four cylinders before, for the first time, the boom and bucket controls will actually work when I pull the levers. It's been such a long road to get to this point it seems impossible. But I'm right on the precipice.
As soon as I can operate the boom and bucket by hydraulics, the final two steps are:
1: Attach the quick attach mounting plates. One to a set of forks, the other to a bucket. I'll have to do some minor fabrication and adjustment to get the quick attach plates on there in the proper orientation. I have yet to work out the full details of the sliding pin that will engage to lock the quick detach implement onto the tractor.
2: The final step will be to work out the balance of how much counterweight I need. And then create the counterweight.
I intend to buy ten 80 lb bags of concrete. I'll load them in the bucket and find the tipping point of how much weight in the bucket causes the back wheels to lift off the ground. From there I'll measure the fulcrum leverage from the center line of the front wheels to where the counterweight will be picked up by the 3-point hitch. And that will tell me how much weight I need slung from the 3-point to keep the back wheels on the ground plus about 500 lb for traction. Whatever weight that is, I'll make a concrete cube with steel shaft ears sticking out the side that I can just slide the rings of the three-point arms right over and lift it up. It seems foolproof to me...
Bob