Front-End Loader Fitted To Back Of Jeep

Front-End Loader Fitted To Back Of Jeep TRACTORS Loaders 24-5-29 Steve Cox wanted to put a front-end loader on his 1955 Allis-Chalmers B tractor. He found a loader that had been mounted on a 1949 AC "B" but it was too wide to fit his tractor. That's when a friend of his mentioned that he had just fitted a front-end loader to the frame of a 4-WD pickup. Cox searched all over the state for a 4-WD that would do the job and finally found a 1978 Jeep Cherokee for $100 in Maine that would work. "It had enough width and was the correct height off the ground. I realized that if I put the bucket on the back, the engine and front end would act as a counterweight," says Cox. He cut the jeep off right behind the front seat and then reinforced the frame and installed new leaf springs. To mount the loader to the frame, he had to modify the loader slightly. He used a kid's swingset to hold the loader and backed the jeep under. He bolted an I-beam across the jeep's frame behind the seat and bolted angle iron from that to humps in the frame over the rear tires. With a little welding and bolting here and there, the bucket was mounted solidly to the frame. For hydraulics, Cox was lucky that his neighbor worked for a company that makes hydraulic lift platforms. He bought two new Prince hydraulic cylinders for $79 each and found a 12-volt hydraulic pump to run the system for $50. But the pump was too slow so he installed a belt-driven pump that runs directly off the engine. The final task was building a hydraulic reservoir. Cox works at a shop that uses heat-treated heavy aluminum sheets so he was able to obtain some end scraps to weld up a square 10-gal. tank. He also made a baffled 25-gal. removable gas tank that he can take off and haul to the gas station, since the jeep is not street legal. "Having the gas tank mounted on the truck bed and not underneath makes it easy to remove it if I ever need to do more welding on the truck," he notes. Once he had it finished and started digging with the bucket, he realized he had to stiffen up the rear end. He took out the rear shocks and replaced them with a piece of 1-in. dia. cold rolled steel inserted into a piece of 1-in. ID steel pipe. "The pipe attaches to the top shock mount and the steel rod to the bottom mount. I drilled four holes into the steel rod and two in the pipe. I use bolts to pin them at different heights, depending on how deep I need to dig with the bucket. The highest setting just skims the ground. The lowest setting digs about 6 in. into the ground," says Cox. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Steven Cox, 98 Egypt Road, Raymond, Maine 04071 (ph 207 655-3586).

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