Get a Grip

[jinman]

Recently I purchased a rock bucket for my tractor. I have lots of rocks on my property and using a normal bucket, even with a toothbar, was less than ideal. The rock bucket I bought is a Houle 5-foot bucket with 1-1/4" tines.

It didn't take me long to see three things:

1. I'm gonna love using this rock bucket because I can see exactly what I'm doing with it at all times. There are no blind spots. I can pick up rocks with it like stooping over and picking them up with my hand. The ridge in the tines holds the rocks in the "basket" while I lean the tines down to dislodge additional rocks.

2. I need more rear ballast.

3. This would be a ideal for handling brush and deadfall if I had a grapple to grip with.

 

[jinman]

So this is where I saw ol' PineRidge getting help with his grapple from Andy Tatro and I decided to get the Iron Horse Grapple kit to mount onto my rock bucket.

My plans include:

1. Make the grapple removable by using U-bolts

2. Do as little welding as possible because I weld like old people tap dance.

3. Use small 1/4 in. hoses and fittings with a small orifice to give me good control. I'll use the third remote valve on my tractor to control the grapple.

Here is the Iron Horse Grapple as I received it from by UPS. The hydraulic cylinder was sent by a separate shipment.

 

[jinman]

To mount the grapple to my rock bucket, I needed a flat beam inside the tines on which to set the grapple base. I chose 4"x 2", 1/4" wall tubing for the beam. Because I wanted to use off-the-shelf u-bolts, the maximum length was around 7", so I had to be careful how I constructed the beam. Here are the pieces being cut and end caps being welded on. This will follow the style of my rock bucket.

 

[jinman]

If I had made the beam 4" x 4" for all it's length, my u-bolts would need to have been 8" long. to mount it to the bucket. By leaving only the single 2"x 4" tubing on the ends, I was able to use the u-bolts I had.

When I got read to install the beam, I had another surprise. I couldn't get the u-bolts in position without removing the rock bucket from the quick-attach plate. In these pictures you can see how I made backing plates for the u-bolts out of 1-1/2" x 1/2" channel. All these pieces are cut 6" long, drilled, deburred, and painted black.

The beam installation went just as expected.

 

[jinman]

My first real snag came when I realized the u-bolts I was planning on using to mount the grapple base to the beam were too darn short. I had absent-mindedly ordered 5" bolts when I needed more 6" ones. Well, after a trip to the store, I continued on (One nice advantage of using readily available parts). /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[jinman]

With everything mounted and torqued down tight, it's now time to take the angle grinder and cut off the excess bolt ends. I'd already managed to snag myself twice on those long and sharp bolt ends. Notice also in this picture that there is a 1" pipe behind the grapple base. That was needed for fill since the grapple base is only 3" wide.

 

[jinman]

I don't see any need to bore you with the details of how I ran my hoses. I just put quick connects on the loader so I could remove the rock bucket, and I put a quick connect right where the loader quick connects are so I could remove the whole loader. The last quick connect was the rear remote adapter. I just routed hoses like the loader hoses/tubing is routed and attached the hoses temporarily with cable ties until I can find a better solution.

Well, here is my grapple in all it's glory. Open wide... /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[jinman]

Does anyone hear Jaws music playing in the background? /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[jinman]

Slight underbite. I may have a solution for this. It will depend on Andy Tatro making me a couple of extra pieces to extend the bite.

 

[jinman]

There's only one way to fill a mouth like this.