A properly sized fitting I will always chose to go with ANYTHING BUT NPT.
They are an inexpensive (read cheap) fitting that was the best there was with the technology available decades back.
Today the options that are available far surpass both in strength and user friendliness the old NPT.
Yes the fitting are cheap, the hose ends are cheap and thus they are readily available at most farm and ranch store.
Yes the older equipment designs used NPT (see above) but their time is in the past.
Look at the newer equipment. I recently got a Terex loader and there is not one (that I can find) NPT on it.
My Fecon mulcher has no NPT (that I can find) on it. Want to address a piece of equipment that is subject to shock loads and vibration?
My 2007 JD has no NPT (that I have found yet on it in over 8 years of use.)
As was posted, the ORB and ORFS fittings are the fittings of the future. Yes they cost a little more than the NPT but not much and are far superior in every way. There is a reason that most modern equipment manufacturer's have switched away from NPT. JIC fittings are also good.
To chose an undersized JIC for comparison is a cheap marketing trick that is beneath EA. Also use a JIC elbow not a hose end fitting to do the picture comparison if you want compare it to an NPT elbow.
I know EA is not known for "heavy duty" equipment as they specifically cater to the small CUT and SCUT market in general (not in all cases but in general) and thus their light and medium duty stuff is a fantastic value. I do know that I looked at a couple of their pieces and found that they did not meet the needs/ratings of my CUT but it is at the big end of the CUT spectrum. If I had a smaller machine I would definitely look at their stuff. But this NPT is superior &@%@ is just that.
For those that say "on the weekend I only have access to the NPT hoses in the TSC and farm and ranch stores if something breaks." If that is true get a couple of NPT to JIC/ORB/ORFS or whatever straight fittings and you can survive the weekend and still have the best easy to use fittings on your machines 99% of the time.
Would I go out and replace every NPT fitting I had. NO WAY.
But I would, whenever I had to replace something, replace it with something else. But that is me.
OK Travis: EA makes a business/financial decision as to which fitting to put on their equipment (over the long haul with your sales volume it may amount to a lot of money), that is fine but don't put lipstick on the bloody pig. They are not a superior fitting in any way.
I started this thread to show what our grapple withstood, which was pretty D*MN impressive in my opinion.
Heck, i'd love to see some comparison videos. If others are so much better and ours is so inferior, go unhook your quick attaches and get to rockin' the levers!
Cheap marketing trick? Really?
Nothing about what we base our decisions on is cheap.
It costs us
MORE to use NTP over JIC. This is
NOT a cost saving decision.
Ted has been hands on with hydraulics for over 40 years. He knows what is available as well as the good and bad points for each style. What we are using now is US MADE, widely available, durable and no problems given in the field. Why change??
These are not for high flow/high pressure applications, so comparing it to a Fecon mulcher doesn't even make sense.
We haven't had any complaints with many hundred in the field.
If you demand more for your huge CUT, we could downgrade a grapple to JIC for you. We understand that JIC is more modern and have used them for YEARS on various things, so we know that there are faults. There are faults with about everything. Ted has torn up many JIC fittings in his day and simply went back to something that is much heavier. So far, we do not know of any failures. The swivel fittings prevents hose twisting from the cylinders all the way to your tractor as the lids close and as the grapple tilts/curls.
It's kinda funny that there aren't any "I broke my EA__________" (fill in the blanks) threads on TBN. People aren't complaining about their Wicked Grapples, they're praising them, taking pics of them and showing them off.
We intend to keep it that way, so we overbuild attachments, rather than cutting corners.
Oh, here is one of the largest CUTs on the market. Loaded rears and around 1,000 pounds pinned to the 3pt hitch.
Yea, the
L6060 isn't as heavy as some of the others on the market but Ted beats the ever living crap out of it like it's nobody's business!
We'll see if the next tractor will bounce like that.
Travis
