Grill Guard

[dstig1]

I made a guard for the back of my grapple earlier this summer out of 3/4" 9ga expanded metal, and that has helped a lot, but I found that there are times when the grapple is up, usually when dumping high up on a large burn pile that sticks would poke at my grill, and were denting it, and risking worse damage like poking the rad or HST cooler, so I figured I would use the rest of the expanded metal to improve the grill guard.

This was my first real use of the new Miller XMT304/22A wire feeder setup with C25 gas. This was sooo much easier than using 3/32 6013 like I did last time for this on the grapple. I'm liking this setup a lot!

I bent the metal with clamps and the BFH directly onto the grill guard, which worked quite well for this. I really don't have a way to bend heavy stuff like this at home (wish I had a press). Since the grill had 3 sections at different angles, I needed to notch it, which made the piece I had to bend much smaller for each section. That helped a lot.

No time to paint it yet as I hook onto it to secure the tractor onto the trailer, and it had to go back to the storage unit. No other good way to secure the front of the tractor, at least the way it is set up now.

 

[woodstacker]

Good looking gard. I just finished my grapple and learning what I can do with it.Koiti dk 55. My next project is putting a snow plow eather on the loader or mount off the tractor frame. Looking for Ideas.

 

[clee4020]

Grill guard looks good. I did something similar this past spring. I need to finish mine (the center section), but tractor has been busy at the farm. Hopefully soon I can get it back to my house where I can work on it. Posted a before and some after pics. I decided to make a chain box while I was welding. It and the receiver tube have come in handy.

 

[foggy1111]

Nice job Dstig1. I think these mods will save you allot of aggravation. :thumbsup:

I've done much the same to my green tractor and grapple. Those branches sneak up on 'ya.

 

[dstig1]

Thanks guys.

Clee- I like how you tucked yours inside the frame. Looks cleaner, but there was no way I could bend this stuff well enough to make that happen. So I wrapped around the outside to give it more strength and more metal to secure (weld) onto. I wasn't going to try and catch the edges alone as I felt that would be insufficient.

 

[clee4020]

You can't tell from the pics, but I welded small round stock around the inside of the frame to give it more strength and something else to weld the mesh to.