Turn Your Combine Into A Forklift

Turn Your Combine Into A Forklift COMBINES Conversions 6-6-9 If it makes your blood boil to have that $100,000 combine you just bought sit idle 10 months out of the year, why not do what Dave Jackson did? He turned his combine into a king-size forklift. Jackson's Oliver combine, which has been at work on his Alberta farm since 1956, is worth much less than $100,000 but he says he's never liked to see it sit idle during the off season. Last spring, when he needed to move pallets of concrete block around a construction site, he finally came up with a new use for it. "Because the load is right over the drive wheels, it has tremendous traction. Besides the fork, we've also equipped it with a bucket for loading gravel in a pit. It carries big loads over the roughest terrain," says Jackson. The combine-mounted forklift, which will lift loads up to 12 ft. off the ground, mounts on the header lift. A 2,800-lb. load is enough to lift the rear end of his Oliver off the ground, says Jackson, so he has to add weights. The forklift mast is anchored to the combine frame by metal rods and safety cables. The entire unit dismounts in short order when switching back for harvest. Jackson says the only change he plans to make on the lift is to add live hydraulics to the old combine so he can raise and lower the lift assembly continuously. The lift itself lifts with a winch-driven cable. Jackson used a lot of scrap parts to build his lift and says a similar fork could be built to fit most any combine. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Dave Jackson, Rt. 1, Innisfail, Alta, Canada TOM 1AO.

To read the rest of this story, download this issue below or click here to register with your account number.