Does anyone make...?

[orb]

A york rake that attaches to a front end loader? I was thinking it would be a very usefull tool to have real rake tines (not bucket teeth) and gauge wheels that you could mount on a loader bucket. Ideally the attachment would be easy on the lawn and there would be a way to use the bucket behind the tines to lift and deposit the raked material to a dump pile.

If there isn't something like this on the market , I would appreciate any thoughts on building something like this.


Orb

 

[MicroPilot]

Do you mean something like this?

(from this thread)

 

[orb]

Wow that looks dangerous! like something out of Mad Max. No my idea is to have spring teeth mounted to the bottom of the bucket with outrigger gauge wheels. You could put the loader in float position and rake the sticks up without tearing up the lawn.

 

[Bowhunter]

I think I saw one on front of a skid-steer at a local dealer. If it fits a skid steer it may be adaptable for a FEL.

 

[RobS]

Came across this site a couple of years ago.

Rural Home Technology

They offered a front mounted rake with wheels for tractors, skid steers and pickup trucks (mounted on a snow plow frame). Their claim was much better dirt road maintenance capability.

I tried the web site but didn't get a response. Might be a temporary thing /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[KiotiJohn]

At 1:28 am EDT, I pinged the site and got a 0 return on my request. Maybe their server has crashed and they don't know it. John

 

[RobS]

Yeah, I tried again from home last night and got nothing. It's been a couple of years, hard to say what happened. I wish I could remember the name of their product to do another search. Maybe someone else will as I'm sure I learned about it through TBN /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Just did a search and their site still comes up in Google. The product is called "Front Runner" /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[orb]

Thanks Rob. I wasn't able to view the site directly either but I was able to get their pages downloaded from the google cache. Apparently they sell the front end loader model through a company called Sweepster now. When I called them, they said that I would need to go through a dealer to get one and list price....are you ready for this... hope you are sitting down... is around $3,400!

Here is a picture and description for a skid steer.

sweepster grader rake

I think I'll study the pictures for a while and when I get some free time I'll look into making one myself. The salesman told me that you need to take off the bucket and use the loader arms for their design.

I would like to make something that installs in front of the loader and either flips up to allow the loader to scoop the debris or can be used as exaggerated loader teeth. Any design ideas wold be very much appreciated.

Orb

Oh, check out the rest of their site, they have some other pretty cool tools:

cool tools

 

[Currmudgeon]

There's a thread, somewhere in TBN, where someone made a manure bucket by mounting box blade tines on the front of his bucket. It was aggressive, but less so than the land clearing/demolition grapple pictured in this thread.

I suppose you could build something from an off the shelf landscape rake. They're not that expensive. You'd definitely want the gauge wheels, and to run the rake on float, or it would be a serious gouger, I think.