Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Front end loader

The photos of the front end loader were taken today. It has just come back in my hands after fifteen years away. It was built in my shop by my son who was fourteen at the time. It is capable of lifting over a 1/4 of a ton on it forks. 
It has two Toyota diffs in it, one is turned upside down and are coupled together making it four wheel drive, it is articulated and the gearbox is from a Toyota Dyna truck. The axils have been shortened about six inches on both sides if the center. This is done with an angle grinder cutting threw the housing and the axils and then re welding the pieces back together. The hydrolics came from the scrap yards, This is hard to do these days as they wont sell to the public for fear of insurance claims, crazy isn't it.
The machine weighs about three quarters of a ton. It evolved to where it is as the original hydrolic pump was a piston pump and has the movements of start and stop as the pump delivered its load to the cylinders. Finally a vane pump was found and installed with smooth operation as a result. He went on to make a hydrolic car for the Shell mileage marathon and a hydrolic train as seen in a previous post.
He is now a electrical engineer and was considered a no hopper at school. He built a truck and took it to the school fete and made  the school hundreds of dollars for the school by giving rides and was never given any credit or thanks, If he played football by there rules they would have given him everything, he was good at football but hurt too many of the players and wasn't allowed to play. I wont tell anymore as he gets embarrassed by me telling his stories. Nuff said. The photos speak for them selves.



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