My 4100 with the 410 loader with 60" bucket was useless for digging without the toothbar. Not enough machine weight to get enough traction to push the blade into the ground, and not enough breakout force on the bucket to pry up the hard clay I have. Heck, it was even kind of whimpy when just trying to fill the bucket from the un-compacted dirt pile when I was using it to back-fill my house foundation.
I added a toothbar and it became much more useful.
My toothbar is easily removable as well, but it has never been removed. It is held in place by two 3/4" bolts through the side of the bucket. Removal would require the annoying step of cleaning enough of the caked dirt off to get a wrench on the bolt head inside the bucket, but nothing complicated or time consuming. Its also kind of heavy - once removed you are not going to just casually toss it on a shelf for storage.
A couple of times I thought about removing it when loading some rocks off of pavement, but it was quicker to just shovel the last couple of bucket-loads into the bucket by hand.
I am also contemplating increasing the hydraulic pressure on the SCV - rumor is that it comes factory set to only 1500 PSI.
Besides increasing the ability to dig, the teeth are useful for:
- Raking. Dumping the teeth to a vertical position and pulling back, you can rake out a smooth, controlled amount of material. A forward pass with the bottom of the bucket (teeth up out of the way) removes the grooved teeth marks.
- Lifting things. It is easy to use a corner tooth to snag certain types of things and lift them. Other attachments are a common example of things that get lifted this way.
- Increases the capacity of the bucket. Especially for things like larger rock, rubbish, and construction debris. Even for dirt, the heaped capacity is bigger. Unfortunately, the increased weight reduces the payload. The 410 on my 4100 is under-powered as it is - it often cannot lift a fully-full bucket of dirt.
- Traction. When you need to pull the tractor up out of a hole full of wet clay using the loader, the teeth can really grab the ground and help claw the machine up and out.
- Putting holes in things (unintentionally). The teeth do stick out another 6 inches or so. Its easy to misjudge where they will go during a turn and drive a corner tooth into something like a building, a vehicle, etc.
- Rick
I added a toothbar and it became much more useful.
My toothbar is easily removable as well, but it has never been removed. It is held in place by two 3/4" bolts through the side of the bucket. Removal would require the annoying step of cleaning enough of the caked dirt off to get a wrench on the bolt head inside the bucket, but nothing complicated or time consuming. Its also kind of heavy - once removed you are not going to just casually toss it on a shelf for storage.
A couple of times I thought about removing it when loading some rocks off of pavement, but it was quicker to just shovel the last couple of bucket-loads into the bucket by hand.
I am also contemplating increasing the hydraulic pressure on the SCV - rumor is that it comes factory set to only 1500 PSI.
Besides increasing the ability to dig, the teeth are useful for:
- Raking. Dumping the teeth to a vertical position and pulling back, you can rake out a smooth, controlled amount of material. A forward pass with the bottom of the bucket (teeth up out of the way) removes the grooved teeth marks.
- Lifting things. It is easy to use a corner tooth to snag certain types of things and lift them. Other attachments are a common example of things that get lifted this way.
- Increases the capacity of the bucket. Especially for things like larger rock, rubbish, and construction debris. Even for dirt, the heaped capacity is bigger. Unfortunately, the increased weight reduces the payload. The 410 on my 4100 is under-powered as it is - it often cannot lift a fully-full bucket of dirt.
- Traction. When you need to pull the tractor up out of a hole full of wet clay using the loader, the teeth can really grab the ground and help claw the machine up and out.
- Putting holes in things (unintentionally). The teeth do stick out another 6 inches or so. Its easy to misjudge where they will go during a turn and drive a corner tooth into something like a building, a vehicle, etc.
- Rick
