Opinions on Loaders, Curved vs Coventional

[Bob_Skurka]

Bob,
Who is the loader manufacturer your freind works for?

He is also a member here, he can "out" himself if he wants to, however I won't be doing that. One problem that manufacturers have here is that they can end up being seen as advocates or complaint departments from the public or even as targets for grief from competitors. I'd prefer to leave it up to him to him to reply, if he so chooses, but I'm not going to betray the trust of friendship

I hope you can understand.

 

[daTeacha]

The Frey product is quite interesting.

Frey Loaders :: Vertex

They basically put a hinge in the middle of the loader arms and a set of control arms across the top of the loader arms to make the loader automatically extend as it is lifted. Very helpful if you do a lot of high lifting. Otherwise, I don't think it would help my day-to-day work since I don't load trucks or stack materials very high.


KEG

If I felt I needed a different loader, I might be tempted to contact them to see if that extending feature could be modified so the operator could control it. It seems it wouldn't be too hard to do.

 

[whodat90]

Bob, those pictures are very telling, but I submit that they are deceptive. The fact that the loader arms on one are curved is but one of the factors that increase visibility on that tractor, two others I see being that the hood slopes considerably lower on the blue tractor and that the loader arms seem much closer together. Those three things (sloping hood, close loader arms, curved loader arms that follow the slope of the hood) all work together as a system to increase visibility. If you were to put the blue loader on the kubota, you wouldn't get significantly better visibility since the hood is still high in the front. Conversely, if you put the kubota's loader on the blue tractor you wouldn't lose much visibility since you would still be able to see down the hood. It seems to me like there's a couple different areas in which visibility can be added by design, center, left and right. Center is determined first by hood height and slope, and secondly by loader crossbar location. Left and right visibility, which for the purposes of discussion will be the area between the edge of the hood and the edge of the bucket, are determined by loader arm design and placement in the space between the hood and the loader edge. If a tractor and loader are designed together for visibility, then both areas of visibility can be improved.
whodat

Edit: another area I couldn't determine well enough to speak of is seat height. What, if any, is the seat height difference between the two tractors? The higher the seat, the higher your vantage point, and the better your downward viewing angle. Please note that i'm not saying that curved loader arms don't provide more view, I'm simply saying that your direct comparison between the two tractors shows the advances in ergonomics as a package much better than it shows the advantage of one loader design over the other.

 

[Bob_Skurka]

Whodat . . .I respectfully disagree with your assessment that the photos are decieving, in fact I think they are obvious, as are the observations you made about the hood/loader working as a system. This has all been discussed many times on many threads and your observation about the system is obviously correct. As for the seat height issue, that is only ONE component of visibility. Another is how far forward or back the seat is relative to the main pivot/mounting point of the loader. Another is the relative seat position to the height of the main pivot/mounting point of the loader.

With regard to your point about mounting a dogleg loader on a tractor with a curved & sloped hood, I would suggest that you are only partially correct regarding the visiblity. It is true you would not lose any visibility over the hood, however you would see a dramatic loss of visibility toward the bucket corners and would eliminate your ability to see the bucket edge/corner areas completely.

So here are the facts, the Case/New Holland loaders offer the best visibility in the classes where they offer curved loaders and that is because of several factors, not the least of which include the curved and sloped hoods, and the curved and sloped arms.

Also, and this is for the folks who mistakenly believe the curved loaders are longer over all, realize please that loaders made for New Holland SuperSteer equipped tractors do have a longer loader projection that is used to clear the SuperSteer option, also realize that the regular curved loaders, if they have a proper downward slope near the bucket, do not necessarily have to be longer than a traditional dogleg loader, and the loaders made for the non-SuperSteer tractors are comparable in overall length to other brands of loaders, including the aftermarket brands (give or take no more than a couple inches as each brand is slightly different).

 

[john_bud]

{snip}
Also, and this is for the folks who mistakenly believe the curved loaders are longer over all, realize please that loaders made for New Holland SuperSteer equipped tractors do have a longer loader projection that is used to clear the SuperSteer option, also realize that the regular curved loaders, if they have a proper downward slope near the bucket, do not necessarily have to be longer than a traditional dogleg loader, and the loaders made for the non-SuperSteer tractors are comparable in overall length to other brands of loaders, including the aftermarket brands (give or take no more than a couple inches as each brand is slightly different).

Bob, Have you measured many loaders (or compared specs) to determine the distance from the front axle to the loader pivot pins? The curved loaders I have seen "appear" to be 10-12" farther forward than my old style Kubota or Ford Industrial loader.

Just to be clear: I have NOT studied this in depth at all - just my understanding from the few that I have looked at. I would like to see some hard facts on it to clear it up in my mind.

Oh, On the topic question - Curved vs Conventional; Were I buying new, I would want the best lift, clearance, cycle time, view and price possible and would mentally juggle those factors around to make a decision. View and price would probably have the greatest influence as lift capacity, clearance and cycle time are all going to be very close across manufacturors. I mean a 2000# lift loader lifts 2000# no matter who makes it.

Cheers!

jb

 

[CMunger]

John,
The comparisons I have made, have been the same as yours, the bucket on a curved boom loader is out about 12" futher. I do not care what the loader specs are, none of the specs take in consideration of what the tractor will handle. Let's do not forget why these curved boom loaders were created. New Holland needed it, and designed to go along with their Boomer sloped hoods and "Super Steer" front axle, which I believe was some brilliant design/engineering.

Chuck

 

[rback33]

sugarloaf,
Where are you located? Here is a link to the Deutz website. DEUTZ FAHR
You can then use the dealer locater to find one near you.

 

[Bob_Skurka]

John,
The comparisons I have made, have been the same as yours, the bucket on a curved boom loader is out about 12" futher. I do not care what the loader specs are, none of the specs take in consideration of what the tractor will handle. Let's do not forget why these curved boom loaders were created. New Holland needed it, and designed to go along with their Boomer sloped hoods and "Super Steer" front axle, which I believe was some brilliant design/engineering.

Chuck

I'm going to have to correct you here. #1 - Case/New Holland came out with the curved and sloped hoods a year or two BEFORE they developed the curved loaders. The machines used traditional dog-leg loaders with the curved/sloped hoods. #2 - Case/New Holland only offers SuperSteer on SOME of their New Holland models and NONE of the Case machines. There are a couple different loaders for each machine, the loaders for the SS equipped tractors do have a longer loader projection. But the standard tractors have loaders that do not project out the way the SS loaders project.

Bob, Have you measured many loaders (or compared specs) to determine the distance from the front axle to the loader pivot pins? The curved loaders I have seen "appear" to be 10-12" farther forward than my old style Kubota or Ford Industrial loader.

Yes, but not many of them. Simply because it was a flawed concept.

Let me explain why your observation may be somewhat flawed. You really can't take the measurement between the pivot point from the front axle of one machine and compare it to the distance between the pivot point to the front axle of another machine. The problem with that is that some tractors have shorter wheelbases and some have longer. So a tractor with a short wheelbase will make the curved loader appear to project farther forward. Take a Woods, Buhler or Bush Hog loader, install it on a NH TC33 (without SS) and compare the overall length to a TC33 that has standard LA14 loader on it. Overall length is not substantially different between any of the 4 versions. But visibility is greatly enhanced with the curved loader.

Also, this may vary by brand. Montana uses a curved arm loader that does not impress me very much. It has a nice downward slope, but also has a very high mounted position (on most models) such that the attachement/pivot point near the operators area is well above the steering wheel and the loader arms remain above the hood level for much of their forward travel so while they are a marginal improvement in visibility over a traditional dog-leg loader, they are not as good (in my opinion) for visibility as some of the other designs.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

Bob, I agree with your assessment of the different styles of loaders, but would your comparison not be as dramatic if your Kubota & New Holland were the same size tractors? Is not the New Holland a smaller tractor? Smaller tractor = better visibility?

 

[Bob_Skurka]

Bob, I agree with your assessment of the different styles of loaders, but would your comparison not be as dramatic if your Kubota & New Holland were the same size tractors? Is not the New Holland a smaller tractor? Smaller tractor = better visibility?

Yes and no. The two loaders have pretty similar lift capacity, going up in size to the next NH would be a loader mis-match with the NH loader having much more capacity than the Kubota. So while the NH tractor is slightly smaller it is not much smaller, both use exactly the same front tires, both are within 300 pounds of each other. But yes, the Kubota is longer overall. However, I've measured similar visibility measurements on larger NH tractors too. Again, as discussed in another post, there are several factors that account for visibility, they include hood shape, loader style, seat height realtive to the loader and the hood, seat set back relative to the front edge of the hood, etc.


It is always hard to compare different tractors because each has their own characteristics.