DeereMann
Platinum Member
If it's an FEL that you are having the most trouble with when hooking back up, try this-
Take a floor jack and slide it under the torque tube cross member just behind the bucket that runs from one side of the loader frame to the other. Then, jack the tube up slightly to relieve the pressure in the roll back/dump cylinders. They are usually the culprit when it is hard to reattach the couplings, as the bucket will tend to roll back under it's own weight over time when stored, which in turn pressurizes the cylinders/lines. You can also just grab the torque tube and lift the bucket up by hand (the buckets/loader arms on the smaller units aren't so heavy that the average man can't lift them enough to relieve the pressure) a little and stuff some boards under it to hold it if you can't use a floor jack, or get one to where you're trying to hook back up at. Every JD FEL I have owned has had this same issue.
Good idea - the only caveat is you'd need a guy to lift the tube while the other plugs in the hoses - unless you make a shim stick to wedge it up. Still seems kind of dumb to have to do this - I just park the FEL in the corner with bucket flat where nobody can push on it. The park stand is stable enough as long as nobody pushes on it with the bucket flat.