Anonymous Poster
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- Sep 27, 2005
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For my bigger tractor I have real forks, they come on and off in literally seconds with no lifting or fooling on my part except flipping a couple of levers that a 6 year old (literally) could do. Putting them on you don't even get off the tractor. And no, pics are not of my tractor but you get the picture (bad pun)./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif
For my BX I'm going to go with a loader-rake since I'm not going to be carrying 6-8 logs at the same time or huge stuff. It can be re-pinned out of the way or removed quickly as well. I'm waiting for some work on my other tractor to be done to make the rake for it, otherwise the BX would be "with-rake" right now!
If you were doing any serious fork work you'd want a dedicated attachement as the bucket blocks the view necessary to make it easy. I am happier being able to go back and forth 10 times a day with no fuss. Sometimes I have the wife or kids be my "eyes". The forks for my big tractor have been used to haul logs, stumps etc., I'm modifiying a grapple attachment to work with the forks as well as the bucket so I can more easily get big piles of brush. The biggest disadvantage to the hanging forks is depending on what you want to do you have to either chain them around the back of the bucket, or make some brackets w/pins to keep them against the bucket edge as they will hang like a limp noodle. Most of the time I don't bother doing this, but if you wanted to for instance very carefully pick something up you'd want more precise control. Eventually I'll make a custom cargo strap with some snap on hooks. Haven't got frustrated enough yet to take the time to do it!
I may be wrong but the clamp on's look like work to attach and for big objects I don't know if hanging something on the tip of the forks (as can happen) wouldn't be hard on the bucket bottom. But as they say...whatever floats your boat!
I am very happy with the on-off speed as many times I wouldn't bother to put the fork attachment on my Ford as the loader bucket had to come off. For a day of fork work they are great, but I found myself balancing things on the bucket and driving .000002 mph a lot when I was too lazy to take the bucket off. These solve that problem.
I posted a link to a couple of pictures below. A number of companies make things like these, the forks I got from Woods I think, the loader rake is from Washington state, I think I gave Harv the address some time ago (have to dig it out if you need it).
Lift on! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
http://www.oldcarparts.mygarage.com/images/loader_rake.jpg
http://www.oldcarparts.mygarage.com/images/Forks.jpg
For my BX I'm going to go with a loader-rake since I'm not going to be carrying 6-8 logs at the same time or huge stuff. It can be re-pinned out of the way or removed quickly as well. I'm waiting for some work on my other tractor to be done to make the rake for it, otherwise the BX would be "with-rake" right now!
If you were doing any serious fork work you'd want a dedicated attachement as the bucket blocks the view necessary to make it easy. I am happier being able to go back and forth 10 times a day with no fuss. Sometimes I have the wife or kids be my "eyes". The forks for my big tractor have been used to haul logs, stumps etc., I'm modifiying a grapple attachment to work with the forks as well as the bucket so I can more easily get big piles of brush. The biggest disadvantage to the hanging forks is depending on what you want to do you have to either chain them around the back of the bucket, or make some brackets w/pins to keep them against the bucket edge as they will hang like a limp noodle. Most of the time I don't bother doing this, but if you wanted to for instance very carefully pick something up you'd want more precise control. Eventually I'll make a custom cargo strap with some snap on hooks. Haven't got frustrated enough yet to take the time to do it!
I may be wrong but the clamp on's look like work to attach and for big objects I don't know if hanging something on the tip of the forks (as can happen) wouldn't be hard on the bucket bottom. But as they say...whatever floats your boat!
I am very happy with the on-off speed as many times I wouldn't bother to put the fork attachment on my Ford as the loader bucket had to come off. For a day of fork work they are great, but I found myself balancing things on the bucket and driving .000002 mph a lot when I was too lazy to take the bucket off. These solve that problem.
I posted a link to a couple of pictures below. A number of companies make things like these, the forks I got from Woods I think, the loader rake is from Washington state, I think I gave Harv the address some time ago (have to dig it out if you need it).
Lift on! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
http://www.oldcarparts.mygarage.com/images/loader_rake.jpg
http://www.oldcarparts.mygarage.com/images/Forks.jpg
