Picking up the PT from Overnite

[toy]

I believe when that happened to you was when someone posted about putting the two bolts in and tilting it back. I wouldn't lift it up and leave it in the air when doing this, I would let it sit on its rear wheels and then get me a good seat [milk crate] and hook up my impact wrench sit down and enjoy the job.

 

[RegL]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Moss road when you said that you used the pallet forks to tilt the brush hog up against a tree to take the blades off, When I go to sharpen the blades on mine and clean out the underside of mine I think I am going to try pushing the hinge part of the brush hog where the quick attach is forward and putting two bolts in the extra holes to make it stationary and then hook the power trac to it that way I believe it will tilt it up enough to do the service job[naturally don't hook up the hoses to the brush hog when doing this] . I sencirely believe that would work but I might be sencirely wrong. )</font>

Thats how I get to the blades on mine. After you tip it back drop the arms so back of brush hog is resting on the ground. I guess if you wanted to be extra safe, you could strap or chain top of brush hog back to the rops.I don't disconnect hoses, just shut tractor off.
By the way, bolting the mower up like this works great for mowing down bushes. Start with mower tipped back and rotate it down on top or into the bush. keeps the deck between you and the rotating blades. I was thinking of someway to use pins, or even a long rod to replace the bolts, so it would be easy to change back and forth in the field.

 

[toolz_not_toyz]

And now back on topic.... I picked up my new green machine yesterday afternoon. Started late and got back late thanks to a screw up at Uhaul. So I drove the tractor off the trailer last night and put it in the garage. It was too dark (pitch black!) to unload the truck. BUT....I drove the PT back onto the trailer just so y'all can see how well a PT425 will fit on a 5x9 Uhaul ramp trailer.

NOTE: It just fits without an attachment. But that's what the truck is for! There was plenty of space to strap down by placing one strap through the hydraulic tunnel area and then a second across the bottom of the ROPS. I also used wheel chocks on both sides of each rear wheel. I don't think the tractor even budged an inch either way during the entire trip. /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

 

[toolz_not_toyz]

This is the fit on the trailer from the side. The load was very stable. But there is one disadvantage to this setup (as someone pointed out earlier): you cannot see the trailer from the truck unless you make a very sharp turn. While that's not a big deal--since if something should go wrong back there a view of the situation isn't going to make things more pleasant--the problem is it makes backing up tricky since you can't see what the trailer is doing as you back up. Still, I was able to pull it off a few times without any problems. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[toolz_not_toyz]

So, the tractor went on the trailer and the 3 pallets of goodies went on the truck. It's a good thing it wasn't 4 pallets because there would have been a problem getting everything on! When you look at the tracking information you do see a count of how many pieces are on the way. Clearly, one is the tractor and you can expect everything else to be on pallets.

 

[toolz_not_toyz]

This is a shot of the stuff on the truck. The folks at Overnite were very nice to deal with. One of the guys loaded all 3 pallets on the truck with a forklift and drove the PT down the ramp (I had to load that, but I didn't want to deal with any liability driving it on the dock).

By the way, it's a good thing I took a gas can with me because the PT was dry when I got there. The battery was OK but I was prepared for it not to be--I had one of those fancy battery booster packs with me.

 

[toolz_not_toyz]

It's neat that you are given the opportunity to appreciate the PT's capabilities at a very early stage. I can't imagine trying to get this stuff off of the truck without a PT. It's a good thing I didn't have to use the PT for loading at the Overnite terminal though because the forks were packed under the 4n1 and LM buckets!!! /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

If need be, I could have loaded at the terminal because I did bring with a pair of tin snips thinking PT would probably strap things to skids using metal strapping. They did. And I was ready for it. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[toolz_not_toyz]

Are we having fun yet? The PT 425's ability to act as a fairly capable forklift is just awesome. To be honest, I wasn't expecting it to handle this type of job that well as I thought that having to make tilt adjustments on the forks (to correct the plane as you raise/lower the lift arms) would be a huge drag. And to be honest, it does seriously impact efficiency vs. a real forklift that relies on a mast so you don't have to make that correction. Of course, a real forklift will also let you shift the forks left/right to make last minute corrections and a real forklift has multiple control sticks so you can raise/lower, angle, shift all at the same time...but hey, this will do and you get used to it.

Some have commented that the controls are overly sensitive when reaching the bottom of the range. I've noticed this too but again, I've driven many forklifts that also exhibit this problem and you can feather the controls to avoid that.

 

[toolz_not_toyz]

One thing that I noticed, and that I don't recall having seen discussed in this forum, is that the PT 425 now has a digital hour meter.

 

[toolz_not_toyz]

Here's the full view of the cockpit controls.