Front End Loader Leveling Arms?

[rhamer]

As I'm currently underway with my FEL build, I have noticed that some FEL's have a second arm above the main one that connects to the curl cylinders via a pivot.

I can see that it is designed to keep the bucket at the same angle while lifting.

My question is, are these any good in practice?

It wouldn't be a lot of work to incorporate such a thing in my design, but I don't see a lot of them, so perhaps in practice they are a waste of time?

Any thoughts or experiences?

Cheers

Rohan

[allenr]

I like mechanical levelling loaders. They don't spill dirt or worse yet, rocks over the back onto the bonnet when fully raised.

And they don't react violently when raising like the hydraulic levelling loader I use now.

Of course there are more grease nipples and you'd need to get the geometry correct.

Love to see some photos whichever way you go!

[rus_geek]

If you plan to do any fork work, in addition to bucket work, I would definitely add the self-levelers. It is much easier to lift stacks, pallets, open-topped-anythings, when you know they will stay upright on their own...

$.02
-rus-

[zionview]

The parallel linkage is well worth the effort. I had one for a while. I also had an old TL-10 Tractomotive loader with over-center linkage-the bucket didn't start leveling until the loader was about 4 feet off the ground. I loved it for loading material like ear corn that would move around in tranport.

[Reg]

I understand the Kioti loaders above (I think) 45 HP or so size have this feature.
It is "In the geometry", i.e. there is a parallelogram for the bucket to remain at whatever angle during lift/lower.

I would DEARLY LOVE to have that feature on my own loader, but havn't taken the time/trouble to figure out how to do it or if it would be worth the time/material investment.

There might be a market for upgrade mods of this feature.

[rback33]

You don't want to mess with building your own MSL loader. There is WAY more geometry and engineering to make one of those work correctly. This is not just the loader, but the hydraulics as well. I don't see anyway you could do that unless you are already a loader engineer.

[Willl]

Originally Posted by rback33

You don't want to mess with building your own MSL loader. There is WAY more geometry and engineering to make one of those work correctly. This is not just the loader, but the hydraulics as well. I don't see anyway you could do that unless you are already a loader engineer.

Maybe not for you.

[rback33]

Originally Posted by Willl

Maybe not for you.

I know the perfect guy to do it! I have exchanged about 10 emails with him today. I guess that could be because he is the design engineer for our company. If you want to design your own, go ahead. Since I know EXACTLY what has to be properly engineered for it to work... I will pass.

[Reg]

Originally Posted by rback33

You don't want to mess with building your own MSL loader. There is WAY more geometry and engineering to make one of those work correctly. This is not just the loader, but the hydraulics as well. I don't see anyway you could do that unless you are already a loader engineer.

Whether or not I want to is entirely up to ME !
Whether or not YOU could see how I could do it is immaterial.
It is a simple enough problem (for ME) to solve.

& I might, once I convince myself that I want it badly enough (-:

[Renze]

Originally Posted by rback33

You don't want to mess with building your own MSL loader. There is WAY more geometry and engineering to make one of those work correctly. This is not just the loader, but the hydraulics as well. I don't see anyway you could do that unless you are already a loader engineer.

3 years ago, when i was still a trailer engineer, i rebuilt a junked loader and also built parallel linkage into it.
Since september 1st, i AM a loader engineer, in the 11 to 19 ton market

When you know the trick, its dead simple. It also increases your lifting capacity by 30%, using the same lift cylinders. Its hard to explain in words, but with a pic, you'd get it right away.
I'll search for a pic to show how its done and post it here...