Does Branson Offer Auto Bucket Leveling ? How Important Is It ?

[4570Man]

I don’t like the leveling on my backhoe. It locks you out of the ability to curl the bucket yourself while lifting. If you want what to curl you have to stop lifting. It doesn’t engage this feature unless you’re lifting fast. I don’t see what’s not to like about a regular self leveling loader. With a little practice it’s easily possible to lift the loader and level it yourself simultaneously so I wouldn’t loose much sleep over the issue. My backhoe also has a detent to curl the bucket back up from the dumped position. I don’t like that either, but if the detent was firmer it would be better.

 

[Mr Bitz]

Yes. Mostly it's when your doing heavy bucket work or even light material and your transporting the material a fair distance with the tractor. With a self leveling you cannot curl the bucket any farther back to keep the material from falling out regardless of what your boom height is once your curled back you can't really bounce the bucket to allow the material to settle in better whereas the non level unit you can. Just my opinion.

 

[Slowpoke Slim]

We had self levelers on our backhoes at the grading co I worked for in the early 90's. Most of the guys despised them and took them off. You got better "fine" control of your bucket without them. Seemed like an experienced operator was better/more efficient without them, and could transport full buckets across a site with less spillage. These were Case 580's IIRC, and that was a long time ago. Maybe the newer self leveling systems are better, but none of us seemed to care for them back in the day.

 

[Texasmark]

Can you expound on why you don't like them a little more? Seems to me that it would be better under all circumstances. but I could be missing something.

I'd like mine to have been one. Reason is you are constantly tweaking your tilt angle any time you are carrying a load that you want to keep level with any changes in loader height. Perfect example: Pull up to a pile of something, set your bucket flat as you drop the arms....a 45* angle on the joystick if provided and you have to be exact to keep them moving together, or you pump the lift, and pump the tilt and lift and tilt etc.

Once you get setup to make the plunge it really doesn't matter as you change things as the bucket fills anyway. But once filled and it's time to lift up somewhat to transport, or drop down to transport, you are back playing with the tilt in an attempt to keep the bucket where you put it when coming out of the pile.

On the "I don't have control" comment I don't see why the movement caused by the function would give one that feeling. Quite the contrary.

 

[travlitt]

Yes. Mostly it's when your doing heavy bucket work or even light material and your transporting the material a fair distance with the tractor. With a self leveling you cannot curl the bucket any farther back to keep the material from falling out regardless of what your boom height is once your curled back you can't really bounce the bucket to allow the material to settle in better whereas the non level unit you can. Just my opinion.

I can bounce mine with the self-leveling loader. I find the self-leveling loader works best for me when I am loading round bales on trucks or trailers or stacking the bales when unloading.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I don't like it on my Deere because it makes the already clunky loader even more so.

 

[LouNY]

I like my loader with the self leveling most of the time.
For most normal bucket work it's fine.
Loading silage out of a bunker or ag bag it does come up a bit short on the maximum rollback,
compared to the loaders without that we use.
It's when trying to get the last bit of loose or fluffy material that it doesn't have the roll back to get a heaping bucket load.

 

[Texasmark]

I can bounce mine with the self-leveling loader. I find the self-leveling loader works best for me when I am loading round bales on trucks or trailers or stacking the bales when unloading.

+1........That surely would help in that instance.

 

[Texasmark]

Well I guess the answer is a crap shoot. In reading the replies, maybe I'm not so dissatisfied (if that's the right word....maybe possibly missing out on something would be a better term) with my non-leveling after all. Since I have 2 tractors with non-leveling loaders at least they both work the same

 

[Branson Bob]

Yeah, as someone without self-leveling I would be concerned about not having the ability to curl/roll back the bucket to prevent spillage. Also I don't do too much fine work with my pallet forks so I feel (without really knowing for sure) that I'm better off without.

I can certainly see how someone who does a lot of loading/unloading pallets (or an equivalent task) would want self-leveling.