Feathering Backhoe Controls

[bx24]

ttkeeler

With practice you WILL get better. When I first learned how to drive an over the road truck, I was grinding the gears like there was no tomorrow. I would have bet my life that I was never going to get better. But within a short amount of time, I was shifting smoothly without thinking about it ... it becomes second nature. There is no way around the learning curve. The good news is that it is a curve is an exponential curve. Each hour you will be twice as good as the hour before and it stays that way for a while.

As far as specific advice, practice using both hands at the same time. You keep the power (with higher RPMs) but you eliminate a bunch of the jerking because the fluid it going through two or more valves and not "slamming" into the closed valve when only one operation is being performed. If you have not ever used one before, maybe no one ever told you this, but you will almost always be doing two things at at the same time anyways once you are a pro. You really do have to "feel" what the machine is doing.

When you are digging, you want to make sure the teeth are pointing towards where they are going. Again this sounds obvious, but sometime folks don't pay attention to the bucket position and try to muscle their way through things. If you are on a large excavator that is fine because it will rip through almost anything, but on a smaller rig, stuff like this is key.

You'll get there ... but practice doing multiple operations (curling, lifting, pulling) all at the same time.

 

[CurlyDave]

How fast are you running the engine? When I was learning to use mine someone suggested running the engine at a low speed to start off. As you get the hang of it, you can speed it up. For me this was great advice, so I'll pass it on.....

This has been exactly my experience also.

Fast engine speed = jerky motion, make mistakes, break things.

Slow engine speed = smooth operation, learn faster, get more done; can now get into areas where I would never have tried 50 hours ago.

The most amazing thing is that I am now faster with the hoe than when running at higher speed.

 

[ragkar]

I had the same problem with mine. The dealer looked into it and then disassembled the joystick console to find that a couple joystick bolts were loose. Just a thought.

 

[dillo99]

I would definitely check to make sure the controls are all tightened up as ragkar suggests. Slop in the controls makes it more difficult to do minor controls.

I have used a couple different backhoes and there is definitely a difference in the controls - some are more fine grained than others. With that said, if you follow the advice people have given above and keep practicing you will get the hang of it in no time. It really does become easy over time.

 

[TGD]

I always found it easier to run the engine at a decent operating speed at least 1/2 speed up to the normal speed for digging (2200 or above) when getting used to digging with the backhoe.

More pressure and flow make for smoother operation of the controls. So increase the engine speed to about 1/2 throttle to start if you are uncomfortable with 2200 or more. To slow a speed will make everything hard to do and require much more control lever than is necessary.

Use your fingers on the controls to move them and not your whole hand, this makes it much easier to feather the controls and limits the travel you can apply to each control. This I found was the most important point.

If you can watch someone really good work the controls on a Case 580 or something similar, not your neighbor unless that is what he does for a living. You will see them feathering the controls.

Use two controls together, this smooths things out and makes for more natural digging. Need a little more of this? Let off that a little all using your fingers. This ability of using multiple controls at once is limited on small tractors because there is usually not enough flow to correctly operate more than one control at once, but it can be done with enough practice.

Watch the swing and get used to how far the boom will swing before hitting the stop and try to feather a smooth hault without hitting the stop.

If you screw up take your hands off the controls and everything will stop. Don't try to correct a screw up at the controls with more control action, it only gets worse at that point. Think about what went wrong and how to do it differently and try again.

Work for about an hour or so straight in the seat digging before taking a break. Work at something productive, like digging your wifes bushes up with the roots intact, or digging a hole thats say 5' to 6' long x 4' wide x 4' deep (shallow grave for when wife kill you for digging the bushes up). It does not have to look pretty, but try to get it fairly close to square with a level bottom it teaches feathering the controls and what control is needed for what movement. When the hole is dug, take a break and then use the hoe to fill most of it back in. Try not to gorge the ground where the spoil pile is but try to get as much back in the hole using the bucket as possible.

By the time you are through, you will find your operating pretty well and your fingers will probably be tired.