OP
rasorbackq
Platinum Member
Think that was mentioned before I may have to consider that option.
Have a winter to decide what to do.
Have a winter to decide what to do.
OP, thanks for starting such a thought provoking thread! I've been looking in on this thread for a few days myself waiting to see what creative ideas were came up with. I had an idea of my own with parts of it based on an old homemade hay wagon I used many years ago.
Salvage an old 2WD pickup rolling chassis. Just the frame, suspension, wheels, tires, original parking brake system, and a tie rod to keep it steering properly.
Grab the cheapest handbrake/parking brake from some junkyard ya can find and create a mount for it with it tied in to the parking brake cables on your rolling chassis.
Build a nice big flatbed on the whole frame.
Purchase or create your own bumper-pull type tow bar and attach to the front, it doesn't need a long tongue, just three or four feet...
Take a piece of chain and create a loop at the end of the tongue, just long enough you can hook on a couple of the backhoe teeth, and curl the bucket in so the teeth are up and the back of the bucket prevents the tongue from raising enough to provide enough slack for the chain to hop off the teeth.
My thoughts on this as a solution: It keeps 100% of the weight on your wagon. A backhoe on the back of a tractor is a good deal of weight and already has an effect on the stability of the machine. Tongue weight of a tow-bar solution is only a few pounds as it will pivot up and down at the connecting point of your wagon. Having a working handbrake solution on the wagon would help in two ways, first it would hold the wagon during loading operations, and second you could set the brake half-way for traversing down large hills to help keep the wagon from pushing the tractor down a hill with heavy loads onboard (good tires on the back of the wagon are required for the brakes to do much good). Once you get to your dump site, just flip it over on it's side with your loader to empty then drag it back over on it's wheels for another round.
It could be done really cheap. If sourced properly, you could probably earn money in the process (selling parts from a free junk truck to get to what you need).